Bovec – Villa Turchini 62.52km 🚴♀️ 4.35.51 ⏱ 13.6km/hr ⬆️ 1020m (1290m volgens strava) ⬇️ 1255m 🌡28C
We set the alarm at 5:00am to have a look at the weather forecast and decide how to plan the day. Since it showed there would be rain 🌧 and thunderstorms 🌩 from 10am onwards we get up quickly, packed our bags, had the usual breakfast struggles and left.
The first eight kilometres to Zaga were mind blowing! There was hardly anyone on the road and these white fluffy clouds ☁️ were hanging really low in the valley in front of us like a straight Bert (as in Bert & Ernie) eyebrow. We wanted to hurry up, but failed because of the beauty in front of us. Well at some point we couldn’t delay any longer so we just cycled into the small town of Zaga. Or small town, we passed it in a poo 💩 and a sigh (Dutch saying).
We made a turn to the left and from there on it was all up for the next seventeen kilometres. For us and our 35 kilo bikes 🚲 that takes more than two hours. Oh how we miss our 8 kilo race bikes sometimes. Although they would not be able to do this job. And probably die cause of the huge bumps and holes 🕳 in the tarmac.
The road was dead silent. Okay, it wasn’t even 7:00am on a Sunday morning, but still. Two motor bikers 🏍 passed us and three cars came from the opposite direction. That was it. And when we got off the road at Uccea we did not see anyone anymore. The road itself was really nice. The view of the big green mountains full of trees 🌲 was intense. The climb was smooth, for the most part, not too steep and since there was no one else we could cycle next to each other and chat. We thought we only had to go up but for a small stretch we went downhill a few hundred meters and all of a sudden we passed the Italian border.
Happy to have reached our sixth country, but so so sad to leave Slovenia 🇸🇮. What we are going to miss about this country? EVERYTHING!! The pure natural beautiness, the kind people, the awesome roads and bike paths, the fact that there’s hardly any garbage, or dead animals, on the side of the road. Slovenia, you were a fairytale and we will be back!
We saw the cow 🐮 crap 💩 before we heard the bells 🔔. This could only mean one thing, we were up! And the cows 🐄 were walking in a meadow at the top of the mountain. Being herded together by some dudes and a dog 🐕. And the bar we spotted on google maps was open as well, so Italian espresso here we come! Allora, we also had crepe with forest fruit and a Apfel Strüdel. The place was the cutest and a great reward after our climb.
Okay enough drewling about Sl❤️v❤️n❤️❤️, we are in Italy 🇮🇹 now! So the first village we passed was Uccea. Except for a handful of deserted houses there was nothing there. The road up was a one way small road through a really dense forest 🌳. It wasn’t too hot but it felt very humid so we were sweating a lot. I called the road out of Slovenia dead silent, well this road already had its funeral ⚰️ and is 10 feet under the ground. It was almost kind of scary. We were still only climbing, no hair pin turns this time, just a long gradual incline with some steep parts. We took a few breaks to eat a banana 🍌 or an apple 🍎, you guess who ate what, or some cookies 🍪 or candy bears 🐻, our trip treat as you know.
After our coffee ☕️ break we had to climb another ten meters or so before the insane downhill started. But not before a group of Austrian 🇦🇹 hikers cheered us on, a little annoying actually. The downhill was absurd. So crazy steep and such bad road surface. Even Mas did not like going down this one. Loose gravel, potholes everywhere, mud and puddles on a very steep decline is no fun. So we went down 500m in 4 kilometres and this time there was some traffic. Once we were down we had to cycle on a bigger road towards Resiutta, but it was no problem, there was lots of space. Still high mountains around us, it was much warmer down here and even sunny. We had lunch in Resiutta at eleven. A big plate of pasta! Over lunch we decided to cycle on and not stay for the night. Since we expected bad weather early on this would have been our hiding place, but the sun was still shining so on we went!
We continued our way on a nice bike path. We went through a couple of tunnels, cyclists only. It seemed to be an old train track turned into a bike path, pretty cool. Sad enough the path ended after a few kilometres. We decided not to go back to the main road, because Mas had spotted an old ‘road’ on the side of the mountain. It was a little tricky (gravel, rocks and grass), but all went fine and we got back on the main road after a while. Cars were speeding right next to us, but the road had a super wide shoulder and we saw quite some other road bikers so it must be okay. When we saw a tunnel coming up we decided to get off the road and follow a bike route through some meadows and later on a good side road all the way to Venzone. From here we crossed the river and had to go up one more small climb of about 150m incline to Villa Turchini, our campground on Lago di Calazzo.
Once we got to the campground ⛺️ dark clouds were packing up above us so we rushed to set up the tent before it started to rain 🌧. We managed to do all of it before the first drops ☔️ fell. We took a shower and planted our clean butts at the the campground bar. It didn’t rain for very long so afterwards we went for a walk along the lake towards another bar to see if we could watch the women’s World Cup final over there. Sad enough we couldn’t, so we walked back and had to listen to the game on Dutch radio as the campground WiFi was too weak. We hung out in the restaurant the rest of the evening, had pizza 🍕 and listened to some thunderstorms before we crawled into our tiny cozy tent.
