Linking two of Croatia's most celebrated national parks by bicycle sounds like a postcard pitch, but the reality is more honest and more interesting than that. You are riding through the Lika plateau and the Dalmatian hinterland, where karst limestone defines everything — the colour of the soil, the shape of the hills, the way water appears and vanishes mysteriously beneath your feet.
The 250 kilometres spread comfortably over four or five days, and the opening stretch out of Plitvice is genuinely lovely: quiet inland roads through oak and pine, with almost no traffic before you drop toward the coast.
The surface is the thing to plan around. Roughly half the route uses sealed asphalt in reasonable condition, but the connective tissue between villages can turn to packed gravel or cracked tarmac without much warning. A gravel or hybrid tyre in the 38–42 mm range will spare you grief.
There is no dedicated cycling infrastructure here — you share the road throughout — but outside the summer peak the traffic is manageable. The one significant climb comes as you approach the Dalmatian range before the descent toward Krka; expect around 600 metres of elevation gain on that day, on gradients that are steep enough to notice but never savage.
Accommodation is patchwork. Sobe signs and small guesthouses appear in most villages, but book ahead in July and August when Dalmatian tourism swells. Bike hire is available in Šibenik near the Krka end and in Zagreb for those arriving by train, though bringing your own bike on Croatian regional trains is straightforward. Riding north to south, Plitvice to Krka, gives you the better descent and the coast as your reward.
April to early June and September are the sweet months — go earlier or later and you will fight either midsummer heat or closed guesthouses.