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.
From Ig it runs 294 km to Ig; allow about 4 h 29 of riding. The stops in between: Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa, Škocjan Caves and back through Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Količa na Igu
The Ljubljana Marsh is a wide, flat plain of peat and wet meadow south of the city, drained since the eighteenth century by canals, and it hides one of the most interesting stories in European prehistory. Some five thousand years ago people built houses on stilts here, at the edge of lakes that have since vanished, and the remains of their villages lie preserved in the peat. The pile dwellings near Ig are part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, shared with five other countries.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Količa na Igu is where the day begins. Next is Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa.
2. Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa
Idrija sits at the bottom of a narrow, steep-sided valley in western Slovenia, and for about five hundred years the town made a living from the red mineral cinnabar, the ore of mercury. The mine at Idrija was one of the largest mercury mines in Europe, second only to Almadén in Spain, and the two sites share UNESCO World Heritage status. The Kamšt is the best monument to that history: a huge wooden waterwheel, more than thirteen metres across, built in the late eighteenth century to drive pumps that kept the mine from flooding.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa comes up about 68 km into the recorded legs. Next is Škocjan Caves.
3. 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.