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.
A 258 km round trip from Idrija - roughly 5 h 39 in the saddle. The stops in between: Škocjan Caves, Snežnik-Ždrocle and back through Škocjan Caves. 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 47 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.
95 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 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.
Back at Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the. That is the ride.
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 → 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.