Day 29 - Idrija to Postonja - Oh The Places You'll Go - 2025

May 9, 2025

Day 29 - Idrija to Postonja

Twice the Fun

Our 8 km 7% climb yesterday was so good, lets go for a 13 percenter today! Well the whole 8 km wasn’t 13% but the first 3 certainly were, and they were 3 of the first five we did.

Good thing we slept well last night.

We had another short day in front of us and we took a slightly longer ‘scenic’ route that included that initial 13% climb rather than a straight shot down the moderately busy but ok Hwy 102, to Postojna.

It turned out to be a great call as once again we cycled for the first couple of hours largely by ourselves, save for a few goats and cows. What a beautiful country; hills, waterfalls, dense green forests, pastures with the said goats and cows, lovely old farm buildings and small rustic villages. There were people about too, in the villages and on the farms, but road traffic - nada.

That’s a pretty good equation for cycle touring. This nirvana scenario ended by the time we came to Logatec and the traffic picked up to ‘moderate’ levels, which was ok, but when you’re coming from nirvana ……

Just after Logatec though we had an ‘on the road meetup’ with Tony and Georgie, a couple from the UK who were on their way home after making it down to Istanbul. We probably took up way too much of their time as they still had quite a way to go to get to their Warm Showers host tonight and we only had a few km’s left to get to Postojna.

And why Postojna? Well it is a major cave attraction due to where it’s situated on the massive karst plateau that makes up much of southern Slovenia. We had such a great experience at the Gouffre de Padirac caves in France on our last tour that when we read about these ones in other CB journals (principally Jill Gelineau’s) we thought we’d give them a try.

Much like the Padirac experience, the first impression is one of “OMG - this is a version of Disneyland’. Yes it’s very touristy, and we’re compounding that by staying at a hotel right by the caves. But they are an attraction for a reason and hopefully in the relative low season that we’re here, it will be as good as the Padirac caves were.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s report. We’re catching the first morning tour tomorrow, and then we’ll check out and head for Ljubljana.

So, another wonderful day of biking in this beautiful country. It’s a little cold right now (we were once again in full gear - tights, soft shell jacket, windbreaker and full gloves for the downhills) but the sun is forecast to come out and warm things up over the next few days. That will take the cycling from ‘beautiful’ to ‘spectacular’.

Heart

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So long Idrija. Nice little town, just a bit shy on some travel amenities.

I have to add in here about the comments we received from TA about Idrija and the ride we did yesterday. You can see Scott’s comments on a pic from yesterday’s post where we’re just starting our climb - he’s got a link to their day from 1998 - it’s a great read and shows how small and interconnected our little world is. Another thing I took away was that there really is nothing new under the sun. I thought our route was a rare beast, a L T McLeod original (there aren’t many in here), but nope, TA did it 27 years ago!

Man hole covers in Idrija celebrating their mining legacy

These 13% climbs let you get to really good viewpoints quickly! A nice look back at Idrija.

GOAT. Referring to the farm animals. Nothing to do with me.

Back to the program, climbing. The final chapter has started and the grade has levelled to something quite nice.

Hills, forest, pastures … everywhere … all the time

Buddy, the road’s not the place for you with your pace. Get a move on

90% of the climbing done. Time for a snack and a drink.

Continuing to roll through the beautiful country. Ridge and hill top riding maintains our elevation around 800 m for a few km’s before we get into sustained downhill (and the pics end)

More green green hills. And still beautiful

Forestry seems to be the ‘other’ industry besides farming

The exciting and fast downhill is now behind us, no pics. Just outside Logatec we met up with Tony and Georgie from the UK. They’ve been on the road for about 10 months and are heading back home

and these cows have seen it all before, but hey, to us it’s all new!

SOTD

Boots or Hearts by Canada’s fav’s, The Tragically Hip

During our ‘right out of the box’ climb today I started singing the chorus to this Hip classic with my own little add-lib … and it stuck in my brain all day.

‘Fingers and toes,
fingers and toes,
forty things we share …
forty one if you include all the cars we’ll see out here’

…and i think we saw three cars on the climb and maybe 41 by Logatec

Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 1,406 km (873 miles)

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