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.
From Ljubljana it runs 321 km to Ljubljana; allow about 5 h 44 of riding. It goes by way of Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on, City Fortress of Palmanova and back through Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on. It crosses from Slovenia into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Ljubljana's Church of Saint Francis of Assisi stands in the Šiška district, north-west of the old centre, and it is one of the buildings by Jože Plečnik that UNESCO listed in 2021. Plečnik was born in Ljubljana in 1872, trained in Vienna under Otto Wagner, and worked in Prague, where he renovated the castle for the first Czechoslovak president, before returning to his home city in 1921. He spent the next decades remaking Ljubljana in his own style, with bridges, markets, a library and gardens, mixing classical forms with a personal, almost playful imagination. The church in Šiška, built in the late 1920s, is among his strangest and most original buildings.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi is where the day begins. Next is Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on.
The Klavže at Idrijska Bela are a surprising piece of engineering, a huge stone wall built across a narrow gorge in the eighteenth century, with a gate in the middle. The idea was brilliant and simple. The mercury mine at Idrija, one of the largest in Europe, needed vast quantities of timber for its shafts and furnaces, and the forests were in the hills, far from the town. So the woodcutters piled logs behind the barrier, the gate was opened and the stored water carried the logs in a rush down the stream to the mine. Such water barriers, called klavže in Slovenian, were used here for generations, and the one named after Putrih is among the grandest.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. Next is City Fortress of Palmanova.
From the air Palmanova is a perfect nine-pointed star, and even from the saddle you can feel the geometry. The roads come in through monumental gates, cross the moats and ramparts, and run dead straight to a vast hexagonal piazza in the middle, where the whole town seems to stop and look at itself. It is one of the purest examples of an ideal Renaissance city ever built, and it sits on the flat Friulian plain between Udine and the Adriatic like a diagram that somebody forgot to take back.
Read the complete City Fortress of Palmanova write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach City Fortress of Palmanova. Next is back through Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on, late in the day. Next is Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 63 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Church of St. Francis of Assisi. That is the ride.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi → Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on → City Fortress of Palmanova is 90 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
City Fortress of Palmanova → back through Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on → Church of St. Francis of Assisi is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.