We had a great time in Slovenia! None of us had been in this beautiful country before, and for 2 of the group, it was their first time in Europe. We all appreciated the helpfulness of the people, extremely neat houses and farms and well-marked hiking trails (often with refreshment opportunities along the way). We were also blessed with superb weather. We arrived in the capital city of Ljubljana at different times and dates. We first met as a group at breakfast in the Hotel Emonec on the first day of our official tour (Monday, June 3). We explored this pretty, small city during the day, then met up late in the afternoon for the taxi shuttle we had arranged to take us to our first destination, Jezersko, near the Austrian border. Here we stayed at a small, family owned and run, apartment hotel called Hisa Kocka. On arrival, Arianna, representing Helia (the group providing for our self-guided tour), and also the daughter of the hotel owners, gave us a briefing of our trip, provided us with very detailed route directions with pictures of every instruction and updates to reflect recent conditions (slight detours to avoid downed trees, for example). She also introduced us to her mother, Antonia; they gave us all a drink of a pear liqueur and also sang us a Slovenian song – they had beautiful voices! We walked to a nearby pizza restaurant and enjoyed a late supper on the outside patio with great views of alpenglow on a nearby mountain. We were fortunate with the warm temperature of the low 20’s, as we heard throughout our trip that it had rained steadily the whole month of May, and only let up a few days before our arrival; it had been only 5 degrees the week before. Hiking started the next day, with a very interesting loop hike up to Ceska hut (approx. 14km round trip and 690m ascent/descent). The trail was accessible from the village, then onto a trail up through the forest that became quite steep and rough, but we were aided by cables and wooden ladders, some in poor repair, but adequate for our needs; views were very nice along the way. This section of the route was suggested to be avoided if the trail was wet, but we were fortunate with the warm, sunny conditions so were able to reach the hut (still closed until later in the month) with only a few snow patches near the top (1542m). Views were spectacular there. We met a skier up there who climbed up higher to ski down – he said that he was able to ski much further when he was there 2 days earlier; the snow had greatly receded with the recent warm weather. We only met a couple of pairs of hikers all day. After lunch and signing the register, we went back down the ladders, etc, then veered off to a different trail into the valley that went by a lake, with a convenient restaurant that we stopped at for a beer on the way back, then returned to for our evening meal. Again, it was mild enough to enjoy eating outdoors. We had the only rain of our trip with light showers on and off for about an hour as we approached, and drank under cover at, the lake.


View from trail on way to Ceska hut

Rough trail (with cables)

Ceska hut

Descending a ladder

Lakeside restaurant

Evening colours from restaurant

The next morning, Arianna drove us in 2 batches about 5km to the trailhead for Goli Vrh, a high point (1784m) on the Austrian border. You could imagine people escaping across the mountains, like the Von Trapps crossing from Austria to Switzerland in The Sound of Music. The trail started out through trees, then open mountain meadows, then craggy summit. There were more flowers on this hike, including my favourite alpine flowers, gentians (multiple types). The views were again great on this hike, and not many other people (probably 10 in total) on the trail. We walked back to the hotel, with most of us stopping at the lakeside restaurant for a quick drink en route. Walk was approx. 14km 800m/900m ascent/descent. As soon as we got back to the hotel, Arianna and her husband took us in their 2 cars to the Hotel Zaplata in the village of Preddvor where we stayed for the next 2 nights.


Meadow view to Goli Vrh

Group at summit of Goli Vrh - some in Slovenia, some in Austria

Flowers by water trough

Gentian, and others

Spring Gentians

The next day (Thursday), we did another beautiful, but different, loop hike up to St. Jakob’s Church (18km, 1000m, highest elev. 1492m). The trail up was quite steep and there were more hikers than the other hikes to date, but still less than a trail on a typical weekday in Kananaskis. There were lots of nice flowers on this hike as well. We came to a couple of very nice viewpoints and pretty ridge walk. On the return to the Preddvor, we stopped at a nearby lake for a beer, then back to hotel about 5:45. Nearing the village, we went through some hayfields and saw how the distinctive traditional hay racks are used.


Trail down, with marker

Family loading the hayrack

A shuttle picked us up from the hotel Friday morning and drove us to the village of Ljubelj at another spot on the Austrian border. This was another interesting hike (approx. 14km, 469m/971m ascent/descent). We started hiking along a narrow path along the side of a mountain, with great views, then got out our headlamps for a 250m tunnel built centuries ago to aid transport of goods. We resumed the fairly flat trail along the mountain, with cables along much of it due to the steep dropoff. The next section was a fairly gradual downhill through woods and mountain pastures, much of it along farm tracks. There were a couple of huts en route, not fully open, but we had lunch at the picnic tables in the back yard of one of them. We continued and explored the ruins of a castle on the edge of the village of Begunje on the way to our hotel. We all arrived at the Hotel Lambergh, quite hot and thirsty, which was where most of us were staying. Although we had the address, we didn’t see Kim & Dave’s hotel on the walk there; they were told it was in the village, about “10 minutes” back and that it had a good restaurant. We decided to go to that restaurant for dinner, after we had a chance to clean up (and use the hotel pool) and have a beer. It took us over 30 minutes to walk back to the centre of the village and find the hotel; Kim & Dave said it took them 40 minutes without the benefit of Cristina’s language skills to ask for directions – they decided to take a taxi to meet up with us the next morning! There was a special Slovenian folk evening at their hotel; we all enjoyed watching some of their folk dancing before dinner, then Kim & Dave went in for the full evening’s entertainment while the rest of us had a quieter dinner on the hotel patio. With better instructions on a short-cut back to our hotel, it only took us about 20 minutes to return – Cristina saw the only large wildlife of our trip on the walk back – a deer.


Mountainside trail (before tunnel)

Exit from tunnel

Castle ruins

Slovenian folk dancers

Our Saturday hike to Bled was the longest distance (21km), but mostly flat (about 500m ascent/descent near St. Catherine’s church and Vintgar Gorge. We were in the open about half the time, through hayfields on dirt farmtracks and through several pretty villages. We enjoyed drinks at an outdoor café at St. Catherine’s church, then went down to the very beautiful Vintgar Gorge, paying the 10 Euro entry fee to walk along the extensive walkways along and across the gorge for a couple of km. The gorge was breathtakingly beautiful, especially with the sun illuminating bright green pools in places along the river. We re-grouped at the café at the end of the gorge, then continued our walk down to the resort town of Bled, where most of us were staying in the grand old Hotel Triglav, with our balconies overlooking the picture-postcard view of the small island with a church on it in Lake Bled (the only island in Slovenia!!). Kim & Dave, who had joined our group after the initial booking, were again in another hotel right in the town, on the other side of the lake, and wisely took a taxi. Later that evening, Kim emailed that the staff at her hotel removed a partially engorged tick from her neck – not sure when or where she would have acquired it…


Vintgar Gorge

Vintgar Gorge

Vintgar Gorge

We spent the next day (Sunday) relaxing in the Bled area. We all walked around the small lake (approx. 5km), checked out the shops in town and enjoyed the water in various ways – swimming, boating, taking a small tourist boat out to the Island.


Lake Bled

Our last full day of hiking was on Monday; we were picked up from our hotels by shuttle which took us up to the Rudno Polje Biathalon Center on the Pokljuka Plateau (1384m) to start our hike to our final destination of Bohinj. Due to a road closure, this ride was a lot longer than the usual 25 minutes (1 hour). The last part was on steep windy mountain roads that the driver maneuvered much faster than any of us would dare! The hike was mostly downhill (900m descent) and about 15km. There were lots of flowers on the first part of the trail, through meadows, then into small farming settlements and a hut that was open for refreshments. The next part often involved dirt tracks or old logging roads, with some detours due to tree blow-down across the original trail a couple of years ago. We came out of the logging area into the historic village of Studor, where we had lunch on an old stone wall in the shade of a big tree. As it was Monday, most of the restaurants and the museum were closed. After lunch, we had a nice walk down to the shore of Lake Bohinj where we paused to dip our feet (or more) into…the water there is colder than Lake Bled, but crystal clear as all the water we saw, with lots of fish near shore. Refreshed, we pushed on to the village of Bohinj and our hotel (Kristal) on its outskirts.


Lake Bohinj

Tuesday was another ‘at leisure’ day, with our group splitting off to do various activities in the area – canoeing, hike up to a waterfall, lakeboat to end of lake, then up cablecar to Mt. Vogel ski area for some hiking, views. We reconvened at the hotel late in the afternoon – there had been a brief hailstorm at the hotel end of the lake, but not at the far end where those of us going to Mt. Vogel were at the time. None of us were caught in it, but we decided against walking to another restaurant that night as rain was forecast, so we ate at the hotel restaurant.


St. John's Church, Lake Bohinj

Wednesday, June 12 we all dispersed at various times from the hotel for our onward travel. Thanks to a great group for sharing this experience: Susan, Bill, Cristina, Kim, David and Ginger from Barb, c/s/p