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.
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.
419 km from Idrija to Idrija, about 9 h 36 of riding. The stops in between: Škocjan Caves, Snežnik-Ždrocle, Krokar and back through Snežnik-Ždrocle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
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 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 43 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.
86 km in you reach Snežnik-Ždrocle. 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, 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 sits at 172 km, 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 comes up 215 km in. Next is Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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 closes the day.
Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the → Škocjan Caves is 46 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 → Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.