Monday, September 11, 2023
We sleep moderately well, most of the night we are feasted on by mosquitoes, occasionally waking up and listening around.
We get up at 5:00, by 5:30 we are already packed and ready to leave. We hope for a pleasant place somewhere along the way where we could nap again and catch up on the missing sleep. We stretch a little and warm up, although it is already hot so early. For a good morning, a 1.5km climb awaits us, after 600m we already have our first break. We push the bikes up the last part of the climb (14% incline), followed by a slight descent and breakfast at the bus station.
Finally, a more friendly road, 10km descent! Since we mostly go through the shade, we put on thermal fleeces, but at times we still feel chilled through them. Another shorter climb and yet another longer descent. Along the way, we also come across a scenic viewpoint.
After 22km, we reach the most unpleasant climb for today, 7km long and about 400 vertical meters of ascent, most of which we ride in first gear. We have more breaks than fingers on our hands, but the best moment is when Iris finds figs along the way, as big as a small fist! Most of them are already overripe, but we manage to collect about a dozen. Lesson for next time: CHECK the fig well to make sure it’s not wormy, it’s really not pleasant when you find worms in the second half.
All this time we keep heading towards Pazin, but before the town, we turn left and stop at the Plodine supermarket for a well-deserved snack and a cold drink. By now we have ridden 41km, and it’s only 11 o’clock.
We really don’t want to go back into the sun and heat, each of us eats 2 huge sandwiches and drinks half a liter of cold drink, then we camp out at the most remote table in the bar and spend the next 4 and a half hours there. We update the blog, Instagram, and diary for the past. We fill up with water and before leaving, we go to the toilet and to the store for soup (Iris has been dreaming about soup for dinner for half the day). We definitely start to appreciate the time when you can just sit somewhere in the shade. Such little things start to mean a lot. We continue our journey at 15:30.
Most of the way further is not too strenuous, a sinusoidal elevation profile, a little up and a little down, but such shorter climbs are much more bearable, as you have a rest during the descent. In the town of Karojba, we see at least three advertisements for the Alto pizzeria and decide to go there for an early dinner, as we both have been dreaming of pizza for two days. Today is Monday and normally, the pizzeria is open every day from 7 am to midnight, except on Monday when it is closed. Such luck…
In the next 15km, there is no pizzeria, but we stop along the way at the fast food Vidik, however, they only have grilled food, which we currently do not fancy. Next to it is a scenic viewpoint on a hill and the town of Motovun. Luckily, we can avoid this hill and descend another kilometer to the plain before the town of Livade.
We are quite tired, so we are not picky about the place to sleep again. By the busy road, we find a larger meadow, on the edge of which there is shrubbery, in front of which we plan to set up a tent and it will not be visible in the dark. It’s too early for the tent, as it’s only 17:45 and we don’t want to sit in the tall grass next to mosquitoes, spiders, and similar creatures. So we move on to Livade and there we find a nice table with a bench at the roundabout, and there is also a tap with drinking water!
There we cook soup for dinner, write a little blog and diary, and the rest of the time we vegetate and wait for the dark. In the meantime, we find a potentially better place to sleep a few hundred meters out of the village on Google Maps and Primož goes there to scout. Change of plan: this will be our bedroom for tonight. In the twilight, we move there, set up the tent, and lock and cover the bikes.
We are almost asleep when the local dog choir starts barking and howling for no known reason, without any melody. We comfort ourselves that they are certainly not barking at a bear or wolf, but we are still a little more attentive to suspicious sounds around the tent overnight. Fortunately, we smell so bad that any bear with any self-respect will widely avoid us.