Safe Return Doubtful

Things calmed down after Friday’s deluge. Saturday was forecast to be very wet as well, but that rain never materialised, instead a blanket of low cloud and mist slowly broke up leaving wispy segments loitering against ridges and below, in the valley. The peaks of Triglav were still shrouded, but the vistas still inspired awe.

Steadily we trekked up the Alpe Adria Trail to Planina Zaslap at 1400 metres; steadily applying to me rather than Roja, who after a few dozy days in the van, was keen to be his usual thirty metres ahead of me. He turned his nose up at the streams, which he would normally be in, as they were in spate, spectacularly surging by.

The Alpe-Adria Trail is a polar along distance path, heading from the glacier to the sea, from the Grossglockner to Muggia on the Adriatic coast, 750 kilometres. Of the few other people I encountered were a Montana couple on the trail, using a Slovenian support company for luggage and transfers.

https://www.alpe-adria-trail.com/en/the-trail/

There are a few high Alpine Planinas, or pastures, on this side of the park. Several, such as Zaslap, offer refreshment until the end of this month, and sell their cheese also, in this case at 14 euros a kilogram. At the cabin I met the Belgian couple, my only neighbours on the camp field, who had arrived just after me in the storm yesterday. Both of us had failed miserably to get our vans up to the higher point of the sodden field, and settled, forlorn, lower down. We chatted for a while; my unintended limp, or favouring of the left leg, often attracts sympathy, or humour, in this case some interest as Peter and his partner were both physiotherapists.

Later in the afternoon we indulged in what van dwellers do, I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours, but with a better result than usual. We had been talking beer, as you do, and Peter gave me a bottle from his local brewery, La Rulles, which I swapped him for a Broadside. By coincidence, the Rulles brewery is about 2 miles from where I stopped this week, Habay. It’s Orval country as well, so well worth another visit at some stage. The beer, enjoyed with the rugby later in the evening, was excellent.

It’s dark at 7 pm at the moment, and pleasantly cool, about 8C. With the beer, the evening’s World Cup Rugby went down a treat. I’ve given up with the often dreadful punditry and commentary, and tend to exchange my views by text or call with friends. We make so much more sense.

Today, Sunday, Roja and I headed up the east side of the massif, the opposite of yesterday. Not far into the hike I passed a guy doing some work on the renovation of an old house and farm buildings, and we got chatting. He had just found a First World War grenade in his garden, and showed it to me. Between 1915 and 1917 this was the Isonzo Front, a stalemate in the war, during which a series of 12 battles were fought, the Battles of Isonzo. The building owner was here for the weekend, from Ljubljana, slowly renovating, and now, waiting for the bomb disposal section of the Slovenian police to arrive. The photos below show the precariously excavated grenade, and the guy’s renovation project..

Our destination was Planina Pretovč, at 1200 metres, a mountain pass as well as pasture, and the gateway to the spectacular peaks 1000 metres above and to the west. They will have to wait for another day, and join that ever-extending list of things to be done once fully mobile.

We were out for a good four hours though, just over ten miles, so I can hardly complain. It was a second magnificent outdoor day in this wonderful National Park.

Another World Cup evening lies ahead, but with any stoppage in play, of which there are usually quite a few, I find myself turning my head to the impressive spectacle of the rock faces out of my side windows..