CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 157 km round trip from Ljubljana - roughly 3 h 14 in the saddle. On the way it passes Idrija - Smelting Plant, Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa, Idrija - Old Town and Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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.
Ljubljana is a small capital with a big sense of itself, and it sits in a basin ringed by hills, with a castle on a steep wooded rise at the centre. The old town huddles beneath it along the green Ljubljanica River, which bends through the middle, and cafe terraces cover the banks. Dragons are the city's symbol, appearing on the Dragon Bridge, a green-copper and concrete span of 1901, and on the coat of arms, and they are said to derive from the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, who supposedly founded the city after killing a dragon in the marsh. The tale is a charming fiction. In reality, the Romans founded Emona here, and the Habsburgs later ran the town as the capital of Carniola.
Read the complete Ljubljana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ljubljana is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. 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.
At least about 61 km into the recorded legs you reach Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa. 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.
Idrija - Old Town, about halfway. Next is Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the.
Deep in a wooded gorge above Idrija, where the stream called Idrijska Bela tumbles over pale limestone, stands one of the strangest pieces of old engineering in Slovenia: a klavže, a water barrier built of massive dressed stone blocks across the narrow valley. Its job had nothing to do with power or flood control. Idrija's mercury mine, one of the two largest in the world for centuries, devoured timber for its shafts and smelters, and the forests close to town were soon exhausted. So the miners built these dams on mountain streams, let water build up behind them, piled cut logs in the bed below and then opened the gates. The released flood swept the timber all the way down to Idrija, where it was caught at a rake across the river.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the sits at 63 km, about halfway. 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.
back through Idrija - Old Town comes up about 93 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 94 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa. 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, late in the day. Next is Ljubljana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ljubljana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 157 km.
Ljubljana → Idrija - Smelting Plant is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrija - Old Town → Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the is 12 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the → back through Idrija - Old Town is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Idrija - Smelting Plant → Ljubljana is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.