Slovenia: before, during and after

I haven't posted for more than a fortnight, which doesn't happen to me too often.  After the family went I was hellishly busy and knackered and busy.  Did I say I was busy? The garden needed a lot of attention and then we started getting ready for the trip to Slovenia. On the day before we went I had the news that I definitely have Lyme's Disease.  Once we arrived back in town I went for the paperwork at the lab, managed to grab an appointment with my doctor, who then prescribed 3000 milligrams of amoxycillin a day for 3 weeks.  Let's hope that that'll fix it!

And then we left with Andor in tow. We decided to go for a couple of geocaches en route and they provided a delightful detour and a break from motorway driving for Roy. The first one was near an old watermill, the second one on a lovely big hill full of vineyards and valleys (see above!) where the village was called Jeruzalem. We found both caches easily and carried on happily for several more hours.  Our base was in Bohinjska Bistrica, at the end of our 550km drive, where the campsite was great, the mountains impressive and the natives friendly.

This was the view from our favourite restaurant on the first night. The Julian Alps, with Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia was on our doorstep and apart from the orienteering many other pleasures awaited us.

Well, the first day was many things, but pleasure - NO!! It was very hot, well above 30 degrees Celsius. It was also very, very difficult, both physically and technically. You may be able to spot that I went AWOL several times, so I was down in 12th place out of 17. I have run on very intricate, rocky, karst before, but this seems to have been beyond my brain powers. I suppose the long trip the day before as well as the heat didn't help, so now the target was to get back the 20 minutes I was behind my usual rivals.

The second day was altogether better.  The terrain was still intricate alpine karst forest, but I could cope with it better and brought myself up by 2 places overall to 10th by being 6th on the day. The only person not an altogether happy bunny was Roy, who was worried about the car's clutch plates, gear box and brakes all at the same time. The gradients, the hairpin bends, not to mention the rough forest roads with no ashfelt in sight put Roy into his worrying mode, only finally realising that in the one way system he could not turn round, but had to go round on another 5km loop of some more rough forest road to get out of there. I could tell at the end of day 2 that I will have to use all my persuasive powers to get him drive us back up there on day 3.

Well, Roy made it and so did we.  I had yet another good(ish) run, 4th on the day and one more place up overall and Roy had a lovely place under the trees to hide from the heat and have this view of the assembly field. Unfortunately, due to the heat we didn't really feel like going sightseeing in the afternoon, but at least we managed to swim in the Sava Bohinjka river, which formed one of the camp site's borders.

Day 4 was back in the fiendishly difficult forest from day 1 and while I coped better than 3 days before, it was far from a good run. I was 10th on the day and dropped back to be 10th overall as well. Just as we finished our lunch - around 3pm - the heavens opened. It was a full blown cold front that was going through and it rained on and off until the early hours of the following morning.  That put paid to another bout of sight seeing we were planning, but at least it cooled the air.

And then came the last day, which really gave an otherwise already great week a proper ending.  The weather was still beautifully warm, but the edge was off the heatwave.  There was also a pleasant breeze and the courses were mostly downhill.  We actually came down on a ski slope and in the neighbouring forest.  It was fast and furious, but you could make big mistakes if you didn't concentrate.  The map scale changed to 1:7500 and I enjoyed it a lot. On this day I was 3rd and overall came up to 7th place.  Considering the heat, the difficulty of the terrain and my general physical state I was very satisfied with 7th. In the newly cooled down fresh air we decided to go on an outing to the source of the Sava river, which is an interesting waterfall and to Bohinj Lake, both reasonably close to our camp site.

We had a look at this lovely old church and found some gorgeous frescoes inside.  The church and the bridge are at the head of the lake, providing a thousand photo opportunities from a variety of angles.  This is actually Andor's photo, but the setting is so pretty, you have to be really hopeless not to take a decent photo around this lake.

The statue of an ibex was right next to the lake the other two photos are of the route to the waterfall and the waterfall itself.  Recently there has not been the usual amount of rain, so it didn't show itself at its best.  Apparently, if there is a lot of rain the waterfall comes down in several stages and can be as high as 600 metres.  Currently it is nearer its usual 85 metres, not exactly impressive.  We were actually very glad of having taken a fleece, as it was positively cold up there. After another night's sleep we woke early, packed up and departed for home.  The trip was fairly uneventful, although there was a motorway closure - presumably due to an accident - which forced us to make a short cut between two motorways and while the jam and the windy small roads have added about 45 minutes to our journey, it also shortened it by 25 kilometres.

Roy found this funny sign at a motorway rest stop and I hope I don't need to explain what it is about. The trip home seemed a lot longer, not only because of the detour, but because Roy was tired and we went round on the motorway all the way in that corner near the border, which on the way down we cut off for the geocaching. We stayed in town only one night and arrived back in the village yesterday. Since then I have been washing clothes, deadheading flowers, watering the garden, picking up plums for Roy's moonshine, visited our Dutch friends and had tried to catch up with one whole week's of e-mails, FB messages and other computer matters.  We did make friends during our last few days in the camp site with a semi-retired English couple, who we had invited to stay with us, should they come this way on their travels.  They might turn up at the weekend or soon after.  So I think I should go to bed now and carry on sometime next week.  Taraaaa!!