May 16, 2023
Ogulin (HR) to Črnomelj (SI)
It's days like today I'm glad we like bikes.
I think we may have finally deprived our kid of enough sleep that he decided to sleep in. Or it was a fluke. But he slept till 8 when we went in to wake him up because we needed to get out the door.
The forecasted 70mm of rain decreased to 55mm overnight, so we were feeling a little more optimistic about the day. It was definitely raining when we set off though and we loaded Tobias into the trailer inside the house to keep him dry. The day started with a decent hill. The only downside to our detour to Ogulin was that whichever way we did it, we had to climb out of there again. Tobias was in good spirits serenading James up the hill. The descent of 200m would have been fun in different conditions. It was a good road surface and there were barely any cars around. However with low visibility from the clouds, the rain, and all the surface water we took it pretty easy. It was a bit much for Tobias and he got grumpy about halfway down. It was hard to check if he was okay because there was nowhere to shelter and he would get drenched if we opened the cover for more than a second. We checked quickly to make sure he wasn't cold then boosted on down to the town of Trošmaria where we found a porch to shelter under and share some cookies and change his nappy. Unfortunately due to the not waterproof panniers the first few cookies were mouldy. The rest seemed okay though.
We continued a tiny bit more down to cross a river. There was a huge puddle on the bridge so deep that I got wet feet and worried that the trailer would flood. It was an awesome route - quiet roads, lots of forest, and probably great views. At one point I commented to James that the sky looked even greyer ahead then realised that it was actually the other side of the valley that I was looking at.
After 30km we came across the first restaurant where we could get inside and have some lunch. It looked so warm and inviting, with a big warm fire. But Tobias had fallen asleep after his cookies and we wanted to cover as much ground as possible while he slept since it was raining so heavily. So we sheltered in the bus stop across the street to pull out our emergency Snickers and scoffed these while we rode up the road to Slovenia.
There was no border control so we rode straight across the bridge and into Vinica. We took an interesting and steep Komoot road that had so much water running down the right that we had to stick left. We were back on interesting back roads where Tobias woke up near Nova Lipa and we found the road so flooded that it was closed. It was hard to chart a detour route because within seconds the phone screen was wet and unusable. But the distinction between street and driveway in Slovenian villages is not always clear so we had to stop a lot.
Finally after bumping along a gravel road we made it to the main road and time trialled to the nearest restaurant. We were completely soaked through. Tobias touched my arm and said "mama brrrr". I felt bad for the staff. They came in and mopped under us while we sat warming up over our soup.
It was hard pulling on the wet waterproofs, but we needed the wind break at least. Even harder was getting back onto the bikes in torrential rain with a belly full of soup, beer, and fries. But we knew we had only 15km to Črnomelj where we had arranged to stay with Justina and Jože through warmshowers. There are parents of Franci, a who has cycled all around the world but cannot host in Switzerland where he lives, so his parents do instead.
After 10 fairly busy kilometres we were welcomed out of the rain and into their garage. Tobias hasn't been super keen on strangers picking him up since we've been on this trip but he went straight upstairs in Justina's arms while we got the bikes and stuff sorted. They have 6 children and lots of grandkids, so they are used to almost 2 year olds which is nice. Tobias is not the first child to pull down the beaded curtain in the kitchen apparently.
The rain actually eased up for half an hour so I could get Tobias outside on his bike to try and burn off some energy. He was more interested in dropping stones into the drain. Justina prepared us an amazing meal with pasta made with eggs from their chickens and lettuce from their garden. Even wine made from their own grapes. They are an amazing couple and have spent their lives walking in the mountains in Slovenia and abroad.
We have just 30km to novo mesto tomorrow where we will take a day off the bike. And there is only 5mm of rain forecast so it's almost tropical.
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Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 940 km (584 miles)
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