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.
From Osilnica it runs 636 km to Osilnica; allow about 13 h 33 of riding. On the way it passes Snežnik-Ždrocle, Škocjan Caves, Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the and Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Slovenia into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 57 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Snežnik-Ždrocle comes up about 88 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 147 km into the recorded legs you reach Škocjan Caves. Next is Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the.
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, about halfway. Next is Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power, 47 km on.
Cividale del Friuli was founded as Forum Iulii, a market town established by Julius Caesar, and it gave its name to the whole region of Friuli. In 568, when the Lombards crossed the Alps and invaded Italy, Cividale was the first city they took, and it became the seat of their first duchy. The Lombards ruled much of Italy for two centuries, and Cividale preserves some of the finest traces of their culture. The Tempietto Longobardo, a small eighth-century chapel overlooking the river, holds a row of stucco female saints of extraordinary grace, among the most beautiful works of art of the early Middle Ages. It is the centrepiece of the UNESCO listing of the Longobards in Italy, Places of the Power, along with sites from Brescia to Benevento. The National Archaeological Museum displays jewellery, weapons and grave goods from Lombard tombs.
Read the complete Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power sits at 186 km, about halfway. Next is back through 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 through Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the comes up about 411 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 487 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Škocjan Caves. 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, late in the day. Next is Krokar.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Krokar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 636 km.
Krokar → Snežnik-Ždrocle is 88 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Snežnik-Ždrocle → Škocjan Caves is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Škocjan Caves → Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the → Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power is 101 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power → back through Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the is 96 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Idrijska Bela - Belca Water Barrier on the → back through Škocjan Caves is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Škocjan Caves → back through Snežnik-Ždrocle is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Snežnik-Ždrocle → Krokar is 88 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.