DAYS 62 - 63
Slovenia
Date: SUNDAY 10th June DAY 62
Weather: Lovely again, not so humid after the storms.
Mileage: Start at 3,455, end the day at 3,759, a long drive of 304 miles
We leave the beautiful and quite wild northern CROATIA and head for Alpine SLOVENIA where we are going to visit Lake Bled. The change could not be more marked. We leave an area still scarred by the war from 20 years ago. Lovely people, but lots of abandoned houses and bullet holes. First we drive about 100 miles through what is basically a desert. Just scrub and rock, almost no trees. Then we start seeing these enormous great flat river estuary valleys, rich farmland, scattered red roofed villages. Then, as we approach Slovenia we start to see real trees again. It is only when we see trees 40--50 feet tall we realise we haven't seen full sized trees since we left the area around Rome. South of there on the rockier ground trees just stay small. Cross the border and wham!!! Trees, trees, and more trees.
DESERT
FARMLAND
Across the border into SLOVENIA and it is, as Sara described, as though the whole country had been scientifically landscaped to perfection. The houses are all now chalets. All have gardens, with flowers and real lawns. The villages are picture perfect, no litter, not a thing out of place, classic farm buildings abound, immaculate fields, vegetable patches. We drive to our hotel and it too is a large Swiss chalet style with pine walls and ceilings. Great restaurant, degustation dinner with wine flight (as you do), very nice country,
TREES, TREES, TREES
WATER
SARA
DAY 63
Date: MONDAY 11th June
Weather: Lovely again, just right, about 28C and dry.
The previous day being a day of rest for half the team, and a five hour bloody drive for the other half, the rested half insisted on doing something energetic, so we did. We started with our new fave, electric bikes. Free at the hotel would you believe? We grabbed two and off we went round Lake Bled. Lovely ride. We came across an Archer plying his trade, so we took up archery for an hour or more. Sara was surprisingly good and beat the more worn out half of the team. We then spied a cable car and a long metal pipe winding its way back down the grassy mountainside - grass toboggan on a rail!!! Bike over to that, up we go, down we come again!!! Me fast as a fast thing, Sara - not so much. They let people off at safe intervals, no chance of catching the person in front. Unless they are 'Brakeman Sara'. I did shoot a video to see just how slow you can go, and also to show the face of the man right behind her (where he had been for a mile or more). I have to admit it is NOT the most exciting video ever, so forget it!!! After that we drive up to another lake some 25 miles further up the valley. That is an eye opener. We drive the back roads through quaint villages as old as the hills (but still immaculate!). Antique tractors everywhere, haymaking by hand, literally by hand, cutting with sythes, raking it up by hand too, then hanging it out to dry on wooden racks. All ages at it on a weekday, everyone looking fit and happy, oddly like a film set. What a great place.
Sara's are the five in the target, Brian's are the one in and one out. Three in the bush. Guess who won?
The pics on the left are easy to work out, the one on the right is a masterpiece,
This site does not do it justice, but just wait until I have it professionally blown up to a meter tall and framed. I will have it signed and hung in our house in pride of place. Sadly it won't be me signing it, Luckily thought I am the agent for the photographer, Sara flipping H, Great picture!!! Taken as ever with a phone.
SLOVENIA has been the prettiest, cleanest, greenest, loveliest country bar far so far. High accolade but well deserved. The pace of life, the old fashioned systems in a first world country, the sheer beauty of every flipping where. You just have to see it in June. "But what it would be like at the height of the season????" That old chestnut. Who cares? We are off in the morning to drive 2 hours to the Grossgluckner High Alpine Pass Road, the highest pass in the Austrian Alps and not far off the highest full stop. 2,5004m high. Bear with ........