The RockAroundTheWorld bus is back in action and heading for an autumn escape to Croatia. If you plot a route via the Hull-Rotterdam ferry, you’ll find you pretty much drive straight through the Frankenjura and southern Austria. It would be rude not to drop in to break the journey, so of course we did!

An 8.30am disembarkation and a foot-to-the-floor drive (or as near the floor as you dare at €2.50 a litre at an autobahn service station!) had us arriving in the Frankenjura around beer-o’clock, but our favourite stop-over at Gasthof Eichler was closed. A search of the UKC hive-mind threw up Gasthof Zur Guten Einkehr as an alternative. Things looked like going a bit pear-shaped when we were told that the campsite there was also closed, but we cheered up when it materialised that all this meant was that they wouldn’t be charging us to stay there! Result! Four beers and two excellent meals, plus free camping for £30 – we’ll be visiting again!

It’s also very handy for one of the area’s finest middle-grade crags: Rothelfels. Overnight rain had left everything a little moist, but we wandered up to the crag anyway, along a sylvan track up wooden steps to a final short slog up to the base.

The trees are so dense you only catch sight of the rock at the last minute.

Zinnenwand, a soaring 30m crack at V- (about VSish) looked like a worthwhile objective, and so it proved – fun and juggy, if a bit polished!

Here’s Helen on a more recent offering, Bruder Jakob, that doesn’t feature in the latest version of the guide.

A couple of YECTOYDs under the belt, we set off to beat the Friday rush around the Munich ring road and were in the Southern Austrian region of Carinthia by evening, in a lakeside campsite in the Maltatal valley.

Picturesque view across the Millstätter See in the morning…

… and if you look closely you can make out one of the most unusual crags I’ve ever come across.

Jungfernsprung is literally lakeside, you park in a “only for Climbers” lay-by, hop over the wall (having scanned a QR code to download the 3D topo!) and make your way down a few iron rungs and cables to belay from specially constructed floating wooden platforms.

We did Aqua, 6a, and TipTop, 6b, both steady for the first 15m or so with brutally steep, crimpy finishes. Not destination climbing, but you can’t say that the local community has spared any effort to make it a convenient one.

Popular too – there were half a dozen teams by the time we left on our way to Croatia.

Crossing into Slovenia, skirting Triglav, Lake Bled and Ljubljana, we arrived at the border with Croatia in the late afternoon, with our destination campsite just a few km away and looking forward to a cold beer as we watched the sunset. It wasn’t to be – turns out the border neat Rakitovec is only open to EU nationals. Thanks Google for the great shortcut (and of course thanks Boris for the gift that keeps giving!) Top tip – head for the more significant border crossing near Socerga.

Didn’t quite make sunset, but we did celebrate our arrival with a cold one with a magnificent view down onto the ancient fortified town of Buzet.

A thousand miles across six countries in three days, and managing to squeeze in a couple of crag stops on the way – we felt we’d earned it!