We got up ready and rearing to go full of energy and excitement. It helped that last night we ate dinner at our guest house and were absolutely blown away by the quality of food and service. Luckily we are staying at the same place on the way back so the prize of eating at the restaurant will definitely see me through the tough times over the next month.
We had a 3km walk through the town to get to the start of the hiking trail and on the way we stopped off at a little restaurant/bar for some breakfast and found ourselves being greeted by a lady who had the same accent as me. Turns out she was a Nova Gorica local who married an Australian man while travelling and was living in Brisbane before they made the move to her home town about 3 years ago. It’s definitely a small world. After having a lovely chat and promising to come and say hello on the return trip we headed off again.
Interestingly none of the locals we have spoken too about the Juliana trail have even heard of it but all are very interested in the route and when we show them all have said how amazing it is going to be. So I don’t think we are going to be seeing too many other hikers on our travels. Especially as we are starting on a section that is considered an add on.
We hit the start of the trail, crossed a massive bridge spanning the Soca river and then headed up. Pretty much from the get go we were heading straight up the side of a mountain and both were very glad that we had done some steep climbs at altitude in Chamonix because with our packs we were both soon sweating. The views back to Nova Gorica and around the valley were spectacular.
The weather forecast was not going to be great for the day, especially after 12pm which was a shame as once we hit the top of the ridge we would then spend several kms walking along it. Just as we crested the ridge and started walking along it the weather closed in and we quickly put on the rest of our wet weather gear. Unfortunately the foretold views of the Dolomites in Italy and Slovenia’s highest peak Triglav disappeared.
The ridge line is dotted with WW1 bunkers and trenches and it was pretty eye opening to see how rugged and treacherous the front line would have been. We walked through some of the trenches and it was a pretty somber experience.
We had to keep moving pretty quickly as the ridge line was rather exposed and occasionally a huge peel of lightning and thunder would echo throughout the valley. It didn’t help that all I kept thinking about was our metal hiking poles attracting the lightning. But we made it off the ridge in one piece and then the heavens really opened up. We were walking through the forest on a muddy track and both were a little miserable. But the best thing about this hike is that we get a warm bed and a hot shower every night so we trudged on.
We came out of the forest and found ourselves amongst rolling hills dotted with vineyards and cherry orchards and although it was still grey, the rain had stopped and the views were breathtaking. We made it to our accomodation and were greeted by our guesthouse host who promptly poured us a glass of wine and gave us a bowl of fresh cherries to consume while we waited for our room.
Our spirits picked up pretty quickly and after dumping our bags and drying out what we could we headed back out to view what had been described at Slovenia’s prettiest village of Smartno. A fortified town of about 2 narrow streets with little picturesque houses which surrounded a church. Not sure it was worth the additional 5kms I had to walk to get to and from but it was nice. 😂
By this stage we were both knackered and headed back to our rooms. We got home just in time for a huge hail storm to pass through. Lucky we weren’t still on the trail. Day 1 down only 30 something to go. S