I’m beginning to think I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m only 15 minutes into the Tour de Hvar trail run, my quads are burning and I’ve already slowed to a walk. The path up to the Purkin Kuk viewpoint is beautiful, shaded by pines and sharp with the herbaceous, aniseed scent of cow parsley, but ferociously steep – the 20 per cent gradient makes it feel as if I’m trying to run up a flight of very uneven stairs.
“Pomalo, pomalo,” I mutter to myself as I focus on putting one foot in front of another. I learnt this slang word that translates as “no rush” only yesterday, chatting to mother-and-son team Koraljka and Louis Marić, who sell the island’s best artisan coffee and home-baked pastries at Kojo Café, which is tucked away in a quiet backstreet of Stari Grad. “It’s the most important word on the island,” Louis tells me. “Sometimes we even use it instead of hello.” It turns out that Hvar’s unofficial motto is good trail running advice, too.
