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 316 km round trip from Idrija - roughly 6 h 07 in the saddle. On the way it passes Škocjan Caves, Snežnik-Ždrocle and back through Škocjan Caves. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Idrija is a small town in a narrow valley in western Slovenia, and for five hundred years it was one of the richest places in Europe, because under it lay mercury. The ore was found in 1490, and the mine became the second biggest in the world, after Almaden in Spain, and employed generations of miners. The two together were listed as a World Heritage site in 2012. Mercury was vital for extracting gold and silver, and for mirrors, medicines and later industry, and the Habsburg emperors treasured Idrija. The miners' wives and daughters made lace to earn money, and Idrija lace is still made today, taught in a school, and a local pride.
Read the complete Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa is where the day begins. 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.
Škocjan Caves comes up 51 km in. 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.
102 km in you reach Snežnik-Ždrocle. 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, late in the day. Next is Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa. That is the ride.
Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa → Škocjan Caves is 53 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 → back through Škocjan Caves is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Škocjan Caves → Gorenja Kanomilja - Kanomilja or Ovcjak Wa is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.