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 425 km to Ljubljana; allow about 6 h 13 of riding. It goes by way of Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa, Škocjan Caves, Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba and back through Škocjan Caves. It crosses from Slovenia into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Five thousand years ago, someone in the marshes south of Ljubljana made a wheel, and it is still here to prove it. In 2002, archaeologists working in the peat at Stare gmajne found a wooden wheel with its axle, made of ash and oak, which turned out to be about five thousand one hundred years old, the oldest known wheel of its kind in the world. It is now in the City Museum in Ljubljana, but it was found in the Ljubljana Marshes, the Barje, a broad, flat, wet plain between the city and the hills, which was once a lake. In the Neolithic and Copper Age, people built villages on stilts above the water, and the wood, preserved in the waterlogged peat, has survived for millennia. The pile dwellings of the Barje were included in the UNESCO listing of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, in 2011.
Read the complete Church of St. Michael write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of St. Michael 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 about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Škocjan Caves.
Underneath the sleepy stone villages of the Slovenian Karst, a river called the Reka plunges into the earth and carves one of the largest underground canyons known anywhere. The Škocjan Caves, a UNESCO site since 1986, are the reason the word karst became the scientific name for this kind of limestone landscape everywhere in the world. Inside, a narrow footbridge spans the Reka gorge far above the roaring water, the chamber walls disappear into darkness, and the scale is so huge that your mind struggles to accept it is all underground.
Read the complete Škocjan Caves write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 142 km into the recorded legs you reach Škocjan Caves. Next is Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba.
Aquileia today is a village of fewer than three thousand people in the flat farmland of Friuli, near the head of the Adriatic, but two thousand years ago it was one of the largest and richest cities of the Roman Empire. Founded as a Latin colony in 181 BC to guard the northeastern approaches to Italy, it grew into a great trading port, connected to the sea by a river and a canal, through which amber, wine, oil and glass moved between the Mediterranean and the lands beyond the Alps. Attila sacked it in 452, and many of its people fled to the lagoons, where their descendants helped found Venice and Grado.
Read the complete Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba, about halfway. Next is back through Škocjan Caves.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Škocjan Caves write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Škocjan Caves sits at 223 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 365 km into the recorded legs. Next is Church of St. Michael, 56 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of St. Michael write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of St. Michael closes the day.
Church of St. Michael → Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa → Škocjan Caves is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Škocjan Caves → Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Archaeological Area and the Patriarchal Ba → back through Škocjan Caves is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Škocjan Caves → back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa is 79 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa → Church of St. Michael is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.