Slovenia's Julian Alps

I knew they were there, tucked away in the corner of Slovenia and I had heard that they were beautiful, nonetheless, to drive into the Julian Alps was still a lovely surprise. Everyone who has been there told us to visit Lake Bled. It's not far from the border with Austria so by the time we'd driven from Plitvice, we had crossed most of this small country, which was the first of the former Yougoslav Republics to declare independence. Unlike the others, the police force were all supportive of the regime and I read that they just changed uniforms one day and, maybe putting it a little too simply, that was that.

We ate our picnic lunch as usual, by pulling off the road into somewhere interesting. Today was no exception, as we stumbled upon a small village where everyone walked around wearing swimming costume.

We felt a little uncomfortable being fully clothed, especially as it was hot. As we stood by a river another chap walked across the road from someplace unknown, wearing his budgie smugglers and as he stood by the river bank he rubbed shampoo in his hair and then jumped in to wash it out.

Don't get me wrong, this was no poor deprived village, there were plenty of houses bigger than ours. I just can't explain it and if it were to happen in the UK the river police would stamp on this hair washing practice even if they didn't put a stop to villagers baring too much flesh.

Bled's lake is about 2,200m by 1,300m and it is picture postcard perfect, with a castle on a rocky outcrop and an island on which is a monastery. The lake is accessible to swimmers and boaters, rowers and board paddlers so it's a lot of fun.

They say "when in Rome...", well when in Bled you eat cream cake!

The Bled campsite is lakeside and there's a grass beach, which we happily lay on before having a swim the day we arrived. This was fortunate as during the evening the storm clouds rolled-in. We weren't expecting bad weather as earlier in the day they'd had an earlier storm, complete with continental-sized hailstones.

However the lightening started and the rain fell. We retreated to the middle of the tent to sit it out. This was no ordinary continental thunderstorm however. This was a full-on electric storm. Each flash of lightening was a strobe light of about five flashes. The rain was normal torrential but the thing carried on and on. We went to bed but it was hard to drop off as the flashes were so intense. As we tossed and turned through the night, the rain continued.

A couple of days later we were talking to a car park attendant at the top of a mountain pass. The conversation was about the weather and she mentioned that they'd had a storm. When we said we'd been in Bled for the same evening she said "Oh I heard it was terrible there". "Do you really mean it?", says I, "Yes they said it was really bad in Bled". So I'm not exaggerating!

The Julian Alps scenery is stunning...

This mountain stream was cold, really cold. I had intended to skinny dip as I got the idea from that lunchtime spot a day or two earlier, but didn't get further than this...

It was numbingly cold, not that Dawn believed me. I was accused of being a wimp, so we had a paddling competition.

I think that was confidence before rather than elation afterwards. However we were both happy on the podium.

Charlie sent a message suggesting we drive the Vršič pass over to Kranjska Gora if we got chance. The route would be a big detour, but what the heck. We are so glad that we did. It's a small road, no trailers are allowed and you find out why early-on as it is steep, narrow and there are fifty hairpins across the two sides and it climbs to 1,611m.

It's an old path connecting Trenta with Kranjska Gora and Villach, that was first widened in 1909 and then converted to a road during WW1, by 10,000 Russian POWs. There were three hundred deaths and many more casualties from a couple of severe avalanches during 1916. In fact a memorial church was built on the northern side and the road was named The Russian Road, Ruska Cesta, in their memory.

Going down the northern side, the gradient is 18% for 900m, that's a long hill and much of the rest is very steep rather than just steep.

What a sight the mountains are in Kranjska Gora. This is the view back south towards the pass, the following morning...

We camped at the Natura Eco camp in Kranska Gora, which was lovely and dark, quiet and delightful. I'm not sure if there's a Cool Camping section on Slovenia, but this camp is right there with the best. 

We slept in the Landy, first time for a while. We know our routine now which is a little tricky if bad weather threatens as we have more 'stuff' than one would have for a shorter trip, plus a tent of course.