CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 413 km round trip from Koper - roughly 7 h 13 in the saddle. The stops in between: Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa, Idrija - Old Town, Idrija - Smelting Plant and Snežnik-Ždrocle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 1 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Koper is Slovenia's seaport, a small walled town on a peninsula in the north of the Adriatic, and it spent centuries as a Venetian city. The Venetians called it Capodistria, and ruled it from the late thirteenth century until 1797, and the old centre shows it clearly. Narrow stone lanes lead to the main square, where the Praetorian Palace, a pink-and-white Gothic and Renaissance building, stands beside the Loggia and the cathedral. The bell tower can be climbed for a view over the red roofs to the bay. A short coast of only forty-six kilometres is all that Slovenia has, and it is made the most of.
Read the complete Koper write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Koper is where the day begins. Next is Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa.
Idrija sits at the bottom of a narrow, steep-sided valley in western Slovenia, and for about five hundred years the town made a living from the red mineral cinnabar, the ore of mercury. The mine at Idrija was one of the largest mercury mines in Europe, second only to Almadén in Spain, and the two sites share UNESCO World Heritage status. The Kamšt is the best monument to that history: a huge wooden waterwheel, more than thirteen metres across, built in the late eighteenth century to drive pumps that kept the mine from flooding.
Read the complete Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa comes up 38 km in. Next is Idrija - Old Town.
Mercury is a strange thing to build a town on. In 1490, according to the story, a local cooper was soaking a tub in a spring when he noticed a gleaming liquid metal in the bottom, and the find was the start of one of the biggest mercury mines in the world. Idrija, a small town in a narrow valley in western Slovenia, became rich on the metal, which was used for medicine, mirrors, gold extraction and later for gunpowder detonators. The mine ran for about five hundred years until it was closed in 1994, and together with the mine at Almaden in Spain, Idrija was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2012.
Read the complete Idrija - Old Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
77 km in you reach Idrija - Old Town. Next is Idrija - Smelting Plant.
In 1490, so the story goes, a tub-maker soaking a wooden vessel in a spring found shiny drops of liquid metal at the bottom. It was mercury, and the mine that grew from that discovery at Idrija, in the hills of western Slovenia, became the second largest mercury mine in the world, operating for five centuries. Together with Almadén in Spain, it was inscribed by UNESCO in 2012. The smelting plant, where the ore was roasted to release the mercury vapour, was the heart of the operation, and its buildings and furnaces now tell the story of the industry and its toll on the workers.
Read the complete Idrija - Smelting Plant write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Idrija - Smelting Plant, about halfway. Next is Snežnik-Ždrocle.
Ždrocle is a fragment of primeval beech forest on the slopes of Snežnik, the big karst mountain in the far south of Slovenia, close to the Croatian border, and it is one of the components of the great European UNESCO listing of ancient and primeval beech forests. That listing stretches from the Carpathians to Spain, but here you are in its Dinaric heart, where beech, fir and maple grow on a chaotic surface of limestone sinkholes, sharp ridges and hollows full of moss. Snežnik itself rises to just under eighteen hundred metres and holds its snow late, which is how it got its name.
Read the complete Snežnik-Ždrocle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Snežnik-Ždrocle sits at 154 km, about halfway. Next is back through Idrija - Smelting Plant.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Idrija - Smelting Plant write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Idrija - Smelting Plant comes up 192 km in. Next is back through Idrija - Old Town.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Idrija - Old Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
230 km in you reach back through Idrija - Old Town. Next is back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa, late in the day. Next is Koper.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Koper write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 413 km.
Koper → Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Idrija - Smelting Plant → Snežnik-Ždrocle is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Snežnik-Ždrocle → back through Idrija - Smelting Plant is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa → Koper is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.