8/5/2022
Daily Miles: 19
Total Miles: 284
We had asked for breakfast at 7am again today, since we knew we had a long day into town. Breakfast today was bread with spreads and scrambled eggs. Our plates of eggs were huge and it looked like we each had about six eggs worth of scrambled eggs. It was hard to get it all down, but we don’t like leaving food on our plates at the huts.
We packed up and then walked down the road back to the trail (which was actually just more road). It was already hot when we started walking, so we knew it was going to be a scorcher of a day. Looking at the weather for Idrija (the town we were heading to), the high for today was 96 degrees, and with the high humidity, we expected an uncomfortable day.
Today was another day of walking through farms and along roads with small bits of forest trail mixed in. It was generally very pleasant walking, with nice views of the surrounding hills. We could still see small glimpses of the Julian Alps along the way.
Our first stamp of the day was at a small peak called Bevkov. There was a shrine and a bench at the peak, so we got our stamp and relaxed on the bench for a bit. We had originally missed the turn for the peak, because the trail marker was hidden behind some farm machinery…we had to backtrack a bit once we realized our mistake and quickly got ourselves on the right path.
We continued on and in a few hours came to a small village and found our second stamp of the day. For some reason, the stamp was for a peak, but was not actually at the peak…not sure how that happened. As we continued down the road, there were a few kids playing near a shrine. Once they saw us coming down the road, one of the boys started to ring the bell at the shrine…it seemed like a very friendly hello.
With about an hour and a half left of walking, we came upon a restaurant that we weren’t expecting. We were excited for the possibility of something cold to eat or drink…in fact, we ended up with both (cold Radlers and a bowl of ice cream). It was a nice stop in the shade and it was hard to force ourselves to pick up our packs and keep walking.
After the restaurant, we walked on a paved road for awhile. It seemed like the signage and trail markings really dropped off at this point. We knew we had to leave the road and get on a trail heading due west, but there weren’t any trail markers indicating where to turn. We ended up looking at the GPS and figuring out a path that seemed reasonable and that would likely run into the SMT.
That actually worked out pretty good and we finally saw a few trail markers again. As we got closer to Idrija, it seemed like there was a spiders web of mountain bike trails through that area and it was really hard to follow a trail. Beardoh navigated us down into town and we finally hit blacktop again.
It was already 5pm, so we were glad to finally make it into town. We spotted a kebab place on our way to the hostel, so we stopped in and picked up dinner. The hostel in town is very nice and clean. Once we got checked in, we ate our dinner and then took showers. It feels so good to be clean again.
Idrija feels like a good place for us to be finishing our hike. We have gotten the chance to hike through the three mountain ranges of the alps and enjoyed their dramatic beauty. With the heat being so high (and not forecasted to come down much), we are glad not to be hiking in those temperatures anymore. We are looking forward to spending our final few days in Slovenia at the coast and experiencing a different side of the country.
Latitude/Longitude: 46.00242,14.02358
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