Day 13 Juliana trail (Kranjska Gora to Mojstrana)

The hotel we were staying at in Kranjska was huge and when we awoke we went down for our included breakfast and the dining room was heaving with activity. There were loads of people all dressed in hiking or biking gear and everyone was filling up getting ready for their day.  We joined them.

It’s amazing how there are so many active and hiking routes around here with so many people doing them yet we still find ourselves all by ourselves on our hikes.  The stage we were embarking on today was actually the official first stage of the Juliana Trail so we thought that maybe we might encounter some others beginning the hike as we are probably now getting into the popular hiking season. We will wait and see.

The start of our hike took us through the town centre and we both felt that it was a place that would probably be worth coming back to.  As we left the town and followed our directions we looked back and the town of Kranjska Gora with the mountains behind gave us a lovely memory of the place.  Still it was on with the hike for us.

There seemed to be a few contradictions in the guidebooks as to what exact path we were meant to be taking today, which was strange I thought as it was the first stage, but we decided to take all the options with us and decide which option as we went.

All the options had us crossing a bridge to begin with but when we got there it was closed for repair!! We found a route around and soon enough we’re back on the right track and heading straight up the opposite side of the valley.  The track this time while steep was a wide gravel track so we trudged our way up and once we got to the top we were treated to some wonderful views.  It really was worth it and then of course we started our way back down.

As we descended we noticed that the waterfall across the valley that we had an option of visiting next looked remarkably dry.  It wasn’t a trip that was officially on the trail so we decided that trudging back up the other side of the valley to see a dry waterfall probably wasn’t worth it so instead we carried on towards our destination of the day Mojstrana.

The discrepancies in the routes now became clear as one had us following the bike path we had followed the day before while the other routes cut through the woods.  We decided for the woods.

It was a lovely flat walk and while there weren’t any restaurants for us to spend our day in we did find a lovely river bank where we set up our chairs for a quick break before carrying on. 

It was another pretty flat day (other than the start) and we ate up another 20km or so. We were glad we chose to walk through the woods for while it was slower it was a lot nicer and we occasionally had our wooded walk broken up by some beautiful fields of wildflowers.

We arrived fairly fresh in Mojstrana and that actually marked our halfway point of the Julian Trail. Ten stages done and ten to go (the side trips don’t count).  We have done 215 km of hiking (this time including the side trips)

Our accommodation unfortunately wasn’t exactly fantastic and after a quick ten minute walk around town we had explored pretty much all there was to do.  We had originally decided to stay 2 nights here and have a rest day/hike up to a waterfall but we both decided that we would prefer to carry on and take our rest day later when we had more to do.

So sorry Mojstrana but we quickly rearranged our next couple of nights and set ourselves up for a big day tomorrow!  Looking forward to it. T