To Ljubljana
Some time has gone by and things have not gone as expected.
From Piran I rode back to the edge of Trieste and then had a brutal climb to get onto the karst (around mile 26 on the profile). The landscape is hilly but not dramatically so and then drops off very steeply down to Trieste and the coast.
I found a nice place to camp near Škocjan Caves. I set up camp near a big river* and enjoyed a nice evening in the sunshine.
*(I don’t like to camp too close to a noisy river - the last time I did so I spent the whole night dreaming I was strapped to the figurehead of a Francis Drake style galleon. I was exhausted in the morning but relieved to be dry!)
The next day I went to the caves. They were quite amazing and spectacular but did make me wish I didn’t suffer from frightofheightitis. At one point we (the tour group) crossed a skinny little bridge 150 feet above a waterfall. I hardly dared look but it was very cool. Apparently I was in the deepest discovered underground canyon in Europe - 460 feet.
Factoid: a stalactite in the caves grows 1 cm every 100 years. Some of them are bigger than a house.
I got back to the surface in the early afternoon and the weather had cooled dramatically. It was also getting windy and there was a little rain in the air. The wind got stronger and stronger and by the time I was back to camp it was really cold. Temperature was low 30s and the wind was gusting at 40+ mph. There was only one thing for it and that was to hunker down in the tent and wait it out. That took from about 3:30 in the afternoon until 7:30 the next day. Yikes.
I was glad to get packed up and moving in the morning. I headed for Postjan Where there are more caves. I decided on a hotel that night as the weather was still pretty rough. I was glad I did because it led me to eat in a great restaurant. I had traditional Slovenian food - wild garlic soup followed by hare ragu with strukli. The food was delicious but the best thing was the atmosphere. In the US we get used to restaurants that flip the tables. The emphasis is on how many meals they can serve rather than the diner’s experience. I love the European way of being at the table for as long as you like being relaxed. This gave this place such a nice cosy friendly atmosphere. Great stuff
The next day I was slow getting started and decided I’d had enough of caves. Also it was cold and I thought getting into the city would be more fun than being out in the boonies. I headed for Ljubljana. There was a headwind all day but no major climbs and there were bike paths most of the way.
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Leaving Postjana - sometimes I don’t know what Komoot is thinking
I had to reroute a couple of times getting out of Postjana
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