After having a relaxing time at a campsite, surrounded by the emerald-green river Soča and its gorges and waterfalls, we recluctantly packed up and moved on today.

The area around the Julian Alps is so beautiful, the rest of Slovenia has a lot to live up to. Our first few kilometers outside of Kobarid took us up and down rolling hills, through green farmland and villages. There was no intensive farming that we could see, just large pastures, the occasional chicken coop and many small garden plots filled with lettuce, beans, corn and squash. Before long we arrived in Tolmin and stopped to do some of our regular chores: grocery shopping (two rounds, because we couldn’t figure out what to buy the first time), a stop at the petrol station to get some gas for cooking and some time on the internet at the tourist bureau.

The afternoon was already ticking away by the time we’d done all our errands and had lunch under a clear blue sky, watching paragliders soar above us. We thought that once we got over the Dolomites that might be the end of the mountains but there are still plenty to jump from, if you’re a paraglider, or to challenge the legs if you’re a cyclist!

We’d planned to forge ahead to Ljublijana, or at least to make a good part of the distance, and we did make a start out of Tolmin, up into the hills, but Friedel was still suffering from a headache that appeared earlier in the day so we decided enough was enough. We took the first shady spot we found as our spot for the night.

It looks like a small gravel pit. Not the prettiest of spots, although we do have a babbling brook just behind the tent and we’re out of view of the road, which is very quiet in any case. Tomorrow we are hoping to reach the Slovenia capital, where we’ll probably spend a couple days, and then maybe on to Zagreb. As we’re really just killing time before meeting Friedel’s uncle in Munich, we’re considering all kinds of directions on our bikes!