Skocjan Caves

Next day it's a 35km cycle each way to Park Skocjanske Jame (Skocjan Caves). Expecting an easier cycle than yesterday as informed by my cycle expert "easy cycling today, good roads and quite flat" he said, I was surprised that after around half way it turned into another stretch of road usually cycled only by professionals and nutters. Steep, never ending ascents and speedy, windy descents was the dish of the day capped finally by a incredible long descent towards to the village of Divača that went on and on and on. The acceleration was so great I just could not keep up with the pedals. Seriously believing I was going to have to walk back part if this one.

Skocjan caves is a system of 11 interconnected caves again full of marvellous limestone formations of various colours, that has an even more appealing walk than the caves at Postojna. Here a path winds up and down through chambers, over natural bridges and sinkholes and along a unique underground gorge where the Reka Velka that originally formed these underground caves flows through the caves forming a series of cascades and waterfalls. The park area has been designated as a UNESCO world heritage site.



Again I observed the no photos rule, so these have been borrowed from the offical site at http://www.park-skocjanske-jame.si/

Cycling back is a bit of a challenge, back up that hill that seems to have been about 5 or 6 km constant climbing. The 55-60 km/h speeds reached gong downhill are more like 11 km/h on the way back up. It's hard work but I make it and for the rest of the journey home stop off regularly to stock up on chocolate and glucose drinks to give me the energy to get back.

Meet Nancy from Brisbane at the hostel, another Aussie on a working visa in the UK, who seems to spend more time travelling than actually in the UK ! She is going on the Trans-Siberian from China to Moscow in August, so I have plenty of stories to tell about my time on that train. It's good to think back and talk about experiences from that trip that now seems such a long time ago.