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.
340 km from Idrija to Idrija, about 6 h 19 of riding. The stops in between: Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Snežnik-Ždrocle and back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Klavže at Idrijska Bela are a surprising piece of engineering, a huge stone wall built across a narrow gorge in the eighteenth century, with a gate in the middle. The idea was brilliant and simple. The mercury mine at Idrija, one of the largest in Europe, needed vast quantities of timber for its shafts and furnaces, and the forests were in the hills, far from the town. So the woodcutters piled logs behind the barrier, the gate was opened and the stored water carried the logs in a rush down the stream to the mine. Such water barriers, called klavže in Slovenian, were used here for generations, and the one named after Putrih is among the grandest.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on is where the day begins. Next is Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 67 km on.
Ljubljana's Church of Saint Francis of Assisi stands in the Šiška district, north-west of the old centre, and it is one of the buildings by Jože Plečnik that UNESCO listed in 2021. Plečnik was born in Ljubljana in 1872, trained in Vienna under Otto Wagner, and worked in Prague, where he renovated the castle for the first Czechoslovak president, before returning to his home city in 1921. He spent the next decades remaking Ljubljana in his own style, with bridges, markets, a library and gardens, mixing classical forms with a personal, almost playful imagination. The church in Šiška, built in the late 1920s, is among his strangest and most original buildings.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 163 km into the recorded legs you reach Snežnik-Ždrocle. Next is back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 67 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi, late in the day. Next is Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on. That is the ride.
Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on → Church of St. Francis of Assisi is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi → Snežnik-Ždrocle is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Snežnik-Ždrocle → back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi → Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.