5. Heading south through Slovenia - wine, caves & the coast

Trying to leave Storm Boris behind, we headed a couple of hours south to the Vipava Valley - famous for its wonderful wine production. But before we settled for the night, we made a touristic excursion to the famous UNESCO Skocjan Caves.

Blustery Vipava Valley

Horrified by the number of coaches, busses and cars gathering when we arrived, we assembled with around 100 other tourists for the booked 1pm tour 🤣 It was quite an experience! But to be fair, absolutely incredible. The tour took us underground through a 6km network of hidden passageways and huge spectacular chambers full of the most beautiful array of stalactites and stalagmites, carved out by the River Reca over thousands of years - absolutely stunning! The river actually flows openly through one of the ginormous chambers, the Whispering Cave, and with tremendous force given the recent rains - quite a scary experience walking on the narrow walkways that cling to the cave walls above! Interesting too that the river actually emerges above ground @30km further downstream in Italy. 

Wow, what an experience! It was totally awesome and mind blowing, and dwarfs anything we have seen before - the incredible force of nature, and our own insignificance 😃 Emerging from the caves like drowned rats, thankfully our planned stay for the night was only @20 minutes up the road at a lovely winery 🍷Sadly photography wasn’t allowed in the caves, so borrowed a few pics from the internet 😃

Scary walkway in the cave

River running through the whispering cave

The water was nowhere near this calm!

Emerging from the caves 🤣

A pair of drowned rats 🤣

Arriving at the Rouna Winery, the wind was howling and it was still very wet - unfortunately still not managing to outrun the reaches of Storm Boris 😢 But on the plus side we checked in to the most beautiful winery and vineyards where they were well set up to receive camper vans for the night. Finding a sheltered spot to park, we wasted no time at all in booking onto the organised wine tasting session for the evening 🤣

Beautiful grounds at the Rouna Winery

Rouna 

The winery - developed with EU grant funding, was brilliant 🤩 The facilities for camping were amazing - extensive areas to park, toilets, showers, electricity, kitchen, washing machine (we quickly got a load done 🤣), fire pit with wood and lovely areas to sit out, coffee machine with pods, and an honesty bar / fridge with a range of their own produced wines, and all for €15 a night - an absolute bargain anywhere in the world, but particularly in Slovenia 😃 Apparently kept deliberately low in price - but we never got to the bottom of understanding what this was about. 

Dave negotiating the coffee machine 🤣

Anyway, our host for the evening was a charming Slovenian woman, who chatted with us about Slovenian culture, politics, and general way of life - as well as introducing the range of wines which we sampled - 5 different wines (full glasses!) with meat, cheese and bread snacks to accompany - all for €23 per person - an absolute bargain! All the wines are currently only sold locally, as production is too small for export. But they are hoping that this may change in time - Slovenian wine is excellent 👍 Both felt quite tipsy on the return to the van 🤣

Although our host had many positive things to say about Slovenia, we inevitably ended up focusing on some of the country’s challenges - mainly around low wages, high cost of living and lack of affordable housing - the latter often resulting in family homes being extended to accommodate adult children, the positive of this being a strong family culture, and with a great sense of pride in their country, and particularly around the green sustainability agenda. EU membership has definitely attracted much funding around improving infrastructure and developing tourism, but also brings with it challenges around contract arrangements and who the beneficiaries of development projects sometimes are. Great also to chat politics with some German guests, although sad hearing their disillusionment with the current social democratic/ green coalition - feeling a move too far to the right in policy decisions - more populist politics 😢 Brexit is inevitably asked about - people struggling to understand the UK decision to leave the EU……but anyway, great to chat politics and life in general, and ultimately focus on our shared hopes, aspirations and values, for ourselves and also what we wish for others, definitely one of the positives of meeting people from different countries when travelling ❤️

Artistic platter - per couple 🤣

Bread & canapés board per couple 😃

Delicious Sauvignon 

All a bit tipsy towards the end 🤣

With slightly sore heads the following morning, our plan was to get the bikes out and explore more of the lovely villages and wineries around the Vipava Valley - but unfortunately this time it was the extremely strong winds that stopped play, with gusts of around 60mph, and set in for the next 24 hours. So yet again we packed up and continued with our journey south, hoping for some better weather 🤞 But not before we’d purchased a case of our favourite wine from last night - the delicious Rdece,  a blend of the local Rekoska grape with Merlot grape, having been dried on the vines in 2015 to concentrate the grape juice, and then matured in oak barrels for 2 years 😃

Easily our favourite 🤩 

It was an extremely blustery journey south, (thankfully short) and pretty soon we arrived at the coastal town of Izola Its quite a complex boundary demarcation around the Italian, Slovenia and Croatian coast, with Slovenia only having a tiny amount of the beautiful Adriatic coast. The obvious Slovenian jewel is Piran, but we opted for the less touristy town of Izola a few kilometres along the coast, and recommended by an English couple we met the night before at the wine tasting. 

Beautiful Izola

Watching the guillemots & the snow capped Dolomites in the distance 

Parking was easy, just by the Marina - nothing salubrious, but it did the trick, and at €10 overnight, an absolute bargain for Slovenia 👍  Handy also that there was a Lavazza coffee machine right next to where we parked 😃 We attempted a short walk along the coast, but turned out too tricky with developments blocking access at times, and for dogs. So settled for a relaxing afternoon before heading into the old town of Izola later. Izola old town is charming, a small Venetian port town which was actually an island until the early 19th century. It is packed with well preserved old buildings, narrow winding streets and small squares, and has a lovely authentic and relaxed feel to it - and also an end of season vibe. We felt quite warm, but was interesting to see locals all dressed for winter 🤣

Beautiful Izola streets

Izola 

Spent a lovely evening pottering around the beautiful artistic streets,  and had a lovely meal at a local fish restaurant, watching the sun set over the bay - perfect 😍 The food was quite simple, but well cooked and tasty 🤤 Se we were pleased we had visited Izola - as opposed to the much more popular town of Piran further along the coast - it definitely has an authentic charm to it. This was probably likely to be our last night in Slovenia as we planned to head into (Croatian) Istria the next day. Obviously excited about what was to come, but also really sad to be leaving this most amazing country 😔 

My first Aperol Spritz of the trip 😃

Tasty fried cheese & tartare sauce 😃

Fried hake and scampi - simple but delicious 🤤 

Lovely evening, and the local Refosk wine again

Izola bay and fishing boats

More reflections to come on our time in Slovenia in the final blog post 🤣

Onwards to Istria 🇭🇷