Predjama to Idrija

It was another good breakfast this morning. The restaurant at Predjama castle has a few attic rooms people can stay in, and the hostess was very kind and made breakfast for us an hour earlier than they would do normally, because we had a long walk ahead of us.

That is the main thing- it felt a long way. The Via Alpina guide suggests going from Predjama to Idrija in 2 days, but the 2nd suggested day was very short, so with blatant disregard for the ‘with ease’ part of the project, we decided to do it in one day and then have a day off. It seemed like a good idea when this was planned, but as we were already weary from the previous days, this morning we were not so sure.

So our walk today was getting on for 22 miles and involved 3400 feet of ascent and rather more descent.

It started with a long climb to the summit of Javornik. The going was relentlessly easy on a wide track.

The descent was a bit steeper, and it was exciting to get our first glimpse of the Julian Alps ahead.

Not sure if you can see the mountains in the background.

Eventually we came down to the attractive village of Crni Vrh, which surely has some vowels missing (in fact lots of Slovenian place names look like bad Scrabble hands to my ignorant eyes). We had our sandwiches in the village square in Crni Vrh.

The rest of the walk to Idrija started off flat for a few miles, and hot in the afternoon sun.

The final descent to Idrija was long and steep and slippery, but eventually landed us on the valley floor. We crossed a surprisingly wobbly bridge high above the river, before we hobbled into the town, looking forward to a day off tomorrow.