With Iris and the kids happily settled in Graz for the time being, I am continuing the travels by trying my hand at tour cycling. Yes, you know when you see cyclists with their bikes heavily laden with luggage, sweating up a hill looking like they might pass out and you think to yourself ‘what could possibly be the attraction in that?’ – well, that is going to be my life for the next while and I’ll be doing my best to find out.
The plan is to head south and explore mostly Slovenia and Croatia. Two weeks into it, this is the journey so far:
Final touches before hitting the road. I’m riding a 29er mountain biking with the tyres and seat swapped out for touring. I had a great time researching, shopping for it and putting it all together!
The idea was to have a decent and comfortable road bike that could also easily handle rough tracks and be used for some light cross country mountain biking on the days I’m not travelling. It’s fit the bill well.
My journey began with a 80km mostly flat ride from Graz down to Maribor in Slovenia on a grey, drizzly and overcast day.
A pumpkin patch along the way
Hanging shoes from power lines seems to be a popular past-time in Slovenia. These ones were in Maribor which was a great place to hang out and explore the surrounding Porjorge region by bike.
I hopped on a train with my bike down to beautiful Ljubljana which was surprisingly cheap and straight forward to do. I spent a day cycling around Trivoli park as well as some of the ‘Path of Remembrance and Conradship’ which was built on the site of a barbed wire fence which surrounded the entire city during WWII.
Every kind of mushroom imaginable in Trivoli Park in Llubljana.
Did I mention that hanging shoes from power lines seems a popular pasttime in Slovenia?
Llubljana is a beautiful town with friendly people and with no real expectations, it completely took me by surprise in a very good way. It was also hosting the European Basketball Championships while I was there. A few of us from the hostel had a great night out in the alternative neighbourhood of Metelkova and then met some cool people at this square where the Slovenian game was on a big screen, followed by live music.
The next day I was off to Lake Bled
I’ve generally tried to find the smallest roads possible as they tend to be more interesting and have much less traffic. Sometimes if a path looks interesting, I just follow it in the hope that it will take me closer to where I want to go.
Occasionally I’ve ended up cycling across fields, 4WD roads and even onto single track, but with the help of satnav, the routes have almost always worked out.
Small town on the way to Bled
Lake Bled is ridiculously beautiful
While I was there, I tried canyoning for the first time in a nearby canyon called Grmecica. It involved following the canyon down a couple of kilometres, navigating the various waterfalls and rapids by abseiling, sliding, swimming and jumping. Some of the jumps were quite a leap of faith, being 6 metres down and a couple of metres out to clear the rocks below. I loved it!!
I took a day out to do a 80km tour intoTriglav National Park to Lake Bohinj and back to Bled.
I had my first mechanical issue on an uphill stretch where my chain got well and truly wedged between the rear cogset and the wheel.
Luckily the cycling gods were smiling on me this fine day as it happened just outside the only house of many kilometres either side. After a couple of minutes fiddling, a guy came running with a tool set and helped me dislodge the chain with a couple of screwdrivers. Not only that, but the place happened to be a restaurant where I chatted with the guy over this delicious lunch. For the first time in my life, learning German actually proved useful as this was the only language he spoke other than Slovenian.
I was expecting a few mechanical issues on this trip, but never could have imagined that breaking down could be so pleasurable…
The day involved a lot of climbing, but the scenery was great, with the first snowfall of the season happening the night before.
The trails decending to Lake Bohing were a challenge to navigate…
But I got there and the mountain biking on the North side of the lake was good fun.
The next day I headed off back through Triglav National Park to Kranjska Gora.
This is Radovna, the site of a masacre in WWII where German soldiers razed a village killing 24 men, women, and children in retaliation for an ambush on a couple of German soldiers.
Other than a couple of other tour cyclists, this was about the extent of the traffic that day.
The view from the pension where I had lunch…
Hmmm… Why?… Your guess is as good as mine.
The next day I embarked on quite a climb up the beautiful Vrsic pass on the way to Bovec.
The climbing has been much less painful than I was anticipating. With a mountain bike on sealed roads with touring tyres, there is never a shortage of low gears to slip down into and grind away.
The scenery was pretty impressive – particularly due to the amazing emerald-green colour of the Soca River.
It was a very social day. Whenever I have the panniers on my bike, it seems that people are always interesting in what I’m doing and where I’m going. I kept on running in to a couple of cool Americans, Kate and Jason, who I ended up hanging out with the next day also.
Having enjoyed my first canyoning experience, I was up for more. We decided on the Fratarca Canyon near where we were staying in Bovec.
It involved a lot less leaping, but much more sliding and abseiling like down this 45 metre waterfall. A nervous smile!
Having heard a lot about ‘Couchsurfing’, a network of travellers who help each other out through hosting and organising events etc, I decided to give it a go. My first experience was staying with Breda and her husband, Slavko, in the small village of Livske Ravne near Bovec. If this experience was anything to go by, I think I will become hooked on this quite quickly. Breda and her husband were excellent hosts and it was great to get more of an insight into the region and its people.
The view from close to Breda’s house.
Breda took me to some of the nearby trenches. The valley was a major front in WWI where over 300,000 soldiers lost their lives.
The next day I was on the bike again, heading down to Nova Goriza.
Clearly I was not welcome in this town. They could have atleast spelt my name right!
My next Couchsurfing experience was with Andreja and Marco in Nova Gorica. It was Andreja’s birthday so I was lucky enough to share in a few drinks with her family and friends. What was intended as a one night stay became two and we spent the next day relaxing and drinking wine in the nearby valley full of vineyards.
…and also ventured back into the Soca valley for a trek
The next day was a hilly day of riding through the Vepara wine district.
I passed by the Skocjan caves, which contains the biggest underground canyon in Europe and the third biggest in the world. It’s been compared to Lord of the Ring’s Moria and I can see why. Imagine Gandalf on this bridge crying ‘You shall not pass!’
(not my photo btw – no photography allowed)
