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.
From Palmanova it runs 624 km to Palmanova; allow about 13 h 07 of riding. The stops in between: Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier, Škocjan Caves, Snežnik-Ždrocle and Krokar. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Italy into Slovenia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
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.
City Fortress of Palmanova is where the day begins. Next is Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier.
The water barriers of the Idrijca are among the strangest industrial monuments in Europe: massive stone and timber dams built across a narrow mountain river not to store water for drinking or power, but to float logs. Locals call them klavže, and the biggest have been nicknamed the Slovenian pyramids for their huge, carefully cut blocks. They lie in the deep, wooded gorge below the Vojsko plateau, a short ride from the town of Idrija.
Read the complete Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier comes up 50 km in. 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.
100 km in you reach Škocjan Caves. 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, about halfway. Next is Krokar.
Krokar is one of the last true virgin forests in Europe, a reserve of beech and fir on a steep slope above the Kolpa river in southern Slovenia, where humans have never logged or managed the woods. Trees grow, fall and rot as they have done since the end of the Ice Age, and the result is an extraordinary tangle of giant trunks, dead wood and fresh saplings, home to fungi, beetles and birds that need old, undisturbed forest. Since 2017, Krokar has been part of the UNESCO site of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe. The reserve itself is strictly protected and not open to visitors; you can walk along its edge, but the heart of it is left alone, which is precisely the point.
Read the complete Krokar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Krokar sits at 199 km, about halfway. Next is back through Snežnik-Ždrocle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Snežnik-Ždrocle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Snežnik-Ždrocle comes up 249 km in. 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.
299 km in you reach back through Škocjan Caves. Next is back through Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier, late in the day. Next is City Fortress of Palmanova.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City Fortress of Palmanova write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 624 km.
City Fortress of Palmanova → Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier → Škocjan Caves is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Škocjan Caves → Snežnik-Ždrocle is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Snežnik-Ždrocle → Krokar is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Krokar → back through Snežnik-Ždrocle is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Snežnik-Ždrocle → back through Škocjan Caves is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Škocjan Caves → back through Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vojsko - Idrijca Water Barrier → City Fortress of Palmanova is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.