The security guard came and shone his torch across the beach on to my tent as darkness fell and I went to sleep a little on edge after my last brush with the authorities. A scream from the woods woke me with a start in the night and I left the beach at dawn, scrambling to pack up as a rain shower arrived.

I felt weak and sore so stopped on a pebbly beach for a bland pot of pasta and egg. When you’re hungry, even pasta and egg tastes good.

Croatia was just a few kilometres away but I decided to take another detour and explore the Bay of Kotor, said to be Europe’s southern most fjord but actually a ria – a drowned river valley rather than a glacial valley.

Hugging the southern shore I came across a Yugoslav submarine tunnel bored 100 metres in to the cliff. At the entrance was a series of metal cages filled with fake polystyrene rocks that could be folded across to conceal the tunnel from spy planes. I paddled in and nearly jumped out of my boat when a diver surfaced in front of me, fully clad in wetsuit and mask.

I paddled through the narrowest point of the bay, just a few hundred metres wide, timing my run to dodge the ferries. A rain shower passed through and the sky cleared to reveal magnificent mountains rising up from the waters edge.

That night I cooked up some mussels I’d pulled off a buoy and camped beneath a tree, enduring a thunderstorm and torrential rain. My tent passed the test and I stayed dry.