The Julian Alps

Pic of the day! This was a place called Kransca Gora, we passed through on our van trip.

Bled. Wow. Thats what the travel books say and its just as picturesque as they make out. The best thing though is that it also has a massive amount of outdoor things to do there.

We arrived in Bled feeling pretty average after a night out in Ljubljana. However the picturesque Bled quickly turned us around and got us out walking around the Lake. The town of Bled in situated on a lake that is just magnificent, the water is a rich blue colour, a nice castle proped on top of a hill, a church on the island in the middle of the lake and a backdrop of snow covered mountains, what more can you ask for?

We were anticipating that bled may just be a gateway to all the activities around the area known as the Julian Alps, however we quickly found out that we could do it all from Bled on day trips, which always makes it much easier not having to haul the bags around to new accom.

You can head out to the church by gondola. A bit cold to swim there at this time of year.

Our first adventure started with a day of canyoning with our guide canyoning bob. We'd never been canyoning before, but hopefully will do a bit more now, it was a ripper. Sliding along channels on your bum or stomach, jumping off ledges into pools and abseiling down little waterfalls. It was great fun.

Adventure number two was a full day tour of the area surrounding Bled. We had intended to take the bus to all these destinations, however as this tour did it all in one day and didn't require us to do anything we were more than happy. The scenery along the whole tour was magnificent, over high mountain passes and though deep valleys. The highlights of the day were rafting in the Emerald River, the water really was emerald colour, it was amazing, and driving the van onto the train for a 50min train ride with beers in the car.

Bled lake very picturesque. Also can take a row boat to the church in the middle.

Our last day in Bled led us to the Triglav National Park, so called after Mt Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia. We didn't take on Triglav, but went for nice 10 hour walk into the park. Starting at 6:30 we were off to the bus and started walking in the park about 8:30. The first two hours was a bastard as this was the section we climbed approx 1000m to get up to the main paths, there was some serious sweating going on, but we made it up and walked another 2 hours to lunch at one of the mountain huts (which was closed, how we continue to miss the seasons i do not know). The walk back down took a little longer than expected and with the blisters and chaffage making themselves known, we were two happy little vegemites when we finally made it to the bus stop at 7:20.

bled lake

The next morning we hired a rental car, it all went very smoothly indeed, we were very sceptical of what was to come. The right hand side, what are these idiots doing, on the left you numskulls! Onto the right hand side for the first time we ventured in our little Renault Clio (so little infact the boot hardly held the backpacks). We hired the car to get down to the Skojcan Caves, the lonely planet claims these caves have no equal worldwide, how could we miss them? As the LP says the caves are unbelievable, Andrew has made the call of slotting them into his top 5! In places they are about 170m high, we crossed a bridge 45m above th river bed below, it was just amazing. Unfortunalty the Slovenians have banned cameras from the caves so we only have postcards from the side of the caves, sorry. Anway we got the car back in one piece and after a bit of squabbling over the phone with Avis, we were away and happy as pigs in you know what.

Off to Piran on the Slovenian coast, all 45kms of it!