Slovenska Planinska Pot

The Slovenska Planinska Pot is a magnificent long distance trail through the mountains of Slovenia.  The total distance is about 630km.  I managed 530km of the trail in just over 14 days, from 20th August to 4th September 2016.  I didn't feel it was possible to complete the remaining 100km in 2 days, so abandoned before the end. The map below shows the stages I hiked from Maribor to Ajdovščina.

Day 2 - Mariborska koča to Grmovškov dom

After yesterday's short walk up from Maribor, this was the first full day of the trip: 42km, 2,000m ascent.

My intention had been to reach Slovenj Gradec today, but this wasn't going to happen. And in fact I never caught up with my planned schedule, despite back-to-back long days and early starts. Virtually every stage turned out to be longer and tougher than I'd expected.

It was a little tricky to get onto the right trail, and to follow the correct path through the woods, with no sense of what direction I was heading in.  After about 2km, the heavens opened with freezing cold torrential rain. There was nothing for it but to scarper for some shelter. I 'sprinted' off down the hill to reach Hotel Zarja to get some protection from the absolute monsoon rain.  Everything was soaked in seconds.  It was early and off-season, so the hotel was not yet open, but eventually a couple opened up and I managed to order a coffee, whilst bracing myself for a day of getting battered by the weather.

I don't remember much about this day, apart from it rained pretty much the whole time, and the scenery was desolate forests and peaty, boggy paths.

It was already getting dark when I reached Grmovškov dom, and I'd been cold and wet for hours, so there was no real possibility of heading on any further today.

I hung up my sopping wet clothes as best I could, and got some food and beer downstairs.

Day 1 - Maribor to Mariborska koča

Reaching the start of the trail on Day 1 was not trivial.  An early start was needed to catch flight from Glasgow to Paris, then another flight to Ljubljana, then a taxi to Ljubljana railway station to make the 4pm train to Maribor.  I then had 2 and a quarter hours on the train to relax, and get roughly sorted out to hit the trail, albeit it was going to be fairly late when I finally started.

On arriving at Maribor, I caught another taxi up to the start of the Slovenska Planinska Pot trail at Spodnje Radvanje.  Luckily the taxi driver could understand my map, and knew where to drop me off.

It took me a few minutes of faffing, and working how how to stamp the žig at the first checkpoint, before I finally started moving at about 18:45, so pretty late to be heading 8km uphill into the woods.

I managed to grab some water from a tap in the garden of holiday home, before being properly underway.

The trail was pretty straightforward, although got muddled up with ski areas higher up, and trickier to follow once it was fully dark.  Just as I arrived at the Mariborska koča a most fantastic orangey full moon crept into the sky.

The hut had only one other guest, a girl from Maribor. I drank Slovenian Laško beer, and had a wonderful bowl of soup.  This would be the staple diet for the next 2 weeks.