Safe Return Doubtful

All this rugby is having the effect of lowering my cultural intake. I’ve actually watched every game so far, which I didn’t think I would. Correspondingly, I haven’t seen a film for 3 weeks, and whereas I usually get through 6 books a week, I’m down to half that.

I’ll finish a book from a very good Slovenian author later today, Evald Flisar. Previously I have read ‘My Father’s Dreams’, and am currently on ‘Three Loves, One Death’. This, is much lighter than Dreams, about a seemingly dysfunctional family moving out of the city to live in a mountain village.

A couple of unforced errors have been the highlights of the last couple of days. My brain is addled with rugby at the moment.. Yesterday we left Krn and drove about an hour to the southeast of the country, the high country close to the Croatian border, thereby joining the Dinaric Alps which began a bit further north at the Julian Alps. They extend 700 kilometres to the south to the Accurseds, in Albania. I will be amongst them until the winter chases me lower.

Around lunchtime I stopped off at an 1816 dam, or water barrier. It was a warm afternoon, and an ideal spot for an hour’s wander.

My first error was not remembering Slovenian road regulations. I thought I was observing the speed limit, after a sign for 70 slowed me, but a speed camera caught me entering a village. The yellow sign for the village is a speed sign in itself, for 50 kph, and unlike in most EU countries, the speed limit doesn’t show on Google Maps navigation. The guy told me he had to write a ticket, and that the fine was 120 euros, though foreigners had to pay cash, of half that. I had 40 euros, and he said he would settle for that. Though I did get a ticket, it did seem a bit smelly..

The weather had been fine all day, but approaching the forested Snežnik massif I climbed into cloud. Despite being quite busy in the holiday season, and not that far from cities, this is a remote region. The roads are forest tracks and not sealed, and very few places have cell phone reception. So the last twenty kilometres or so were slow going. My dilly-dallying along the way meant I didn’t get to the hikers’ car park until 6 pm, and by then, at 1300 metres, it was only 9C, with a strong wind also. Quietly watching True Detective (Season 1, for a second time) later in the evening, I was momentarily disturbed when a branch from a tree above fell and hit the windscreen.

This morning much of the thicker cloud had lifted, though cling to the peaks, the highest of all, the mountain of Snežnika at 1796 metres, my mission for the morning. But it was delayed by my second unforced error.

Trying to get the van to a higher car park, the wet sandy gravel and gradient was too much, and I needed to reverse to a parking place thirty metres or so behind. But I got the van stuck. You think I would learn, this is the third time now. Spain last year, and Norway the year before that. It’s front wheel drive, and just too heavy at the back.

I dug out the gravel to be left with bare rock, which took a half hour or so, then by good fortune a car arrived, the only one of the day, a young Polish couple. With their help I could reverse a few centimetres only from the precarious edge, and drop of 100 metres.. exciting stuff.

I was deceived into thinking the mountain was quiet. It was apart from two groups. The first was a group of Austrian environmental scientists teaming up with their Slovenian counterparts who were hosting them. This is a Bio-Reserve park, of special ecological importance.

The second, was a school group… they haunt me…

Close to the summit is a refuge, which usually only opens in the summer months, but the teachers of this group of fifty 17 year olds had called ahead. I arrived ten minutes or so before them. A guy already there told me of a tame red fox that customers encouraged with snacks. Not today though, as he had been hurried away by Roja just a few minutes before.. It was a 6 mile round trip, a climb of just less than 600 metres, and took about two and a half hours.

Back at the van we then drove an hour or so across the Croatian border. The cloud had cleared while I was climbing and the afternoon was with a clear sky. I’m now in the Risnjak National Park, in the far northwest corner of Croatia. Much of this area has become depopulated over the last twenty years. I’m up at a remote village that has practically no population apart from a couple of older farmers and a few holiday conversions. Without the wind of last night, it is one of the quietest places I have been in for some time. At 560 meters asl and 7 pm, it is a very pleasant 20C. I will stay a second night here I think, it is a really good place.