Snežnik-Ždrocle and Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
424 km
Riding-time estimate
8 h 51
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
424 km from Leskova Dolina to Leskova Dolina, about 8 h 51 of riding. On the way it passes Krokar, Količa na Igu, Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa and back through Količa na Igu. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Snežnik-Ždrocle is where the day begins. Next is Krokar.
2. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Krokar comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is Količa na Igu.
3. 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
about 145 km into the recorded legs you reach Količa na Igu. Next is Idrija - Kamšt water pump with the Rake wa.
4. 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.