Saturday, 29 June, 2024 – Wednesday, 3 July, 2024
On Saturday morning, we woke up early, packed everything back on the bikes, and Iris’s family decided to keep us company for part of the ride. In Cerknica, we went for one last bike check at Bike Center Cerknica. We cycled to Postojna, had a snack with Iris’s family, and then parted ways. We were back on our own. Of course, we started with a long break in the shade of a tree. When the sun wasn’t at its strongest anymore, we headed toward Nanos. There is a water pipe in Razdrto under Nanos where we had dinner and washed ourselves. Following an unpaved road, we found a nice camping spot and pitched the tent. During sunset, we had a view of cows and cars on a highway bridge behind them in the distance.
In the morning, we went back to the water pipe and tried out a new way of washing clothes. We stuffed everything in a dry bag, added water and soap, then mixed and stirred it as hard as we could. When we estimated that the clothes were clean(er), we took them out one by one and rinsed out all the soap. It worked perfectly for us—we used much less soap, and everything was well foamed. Since our bikes are so loaded, there are many places to strap wet clothes, allowing them to dry out while riding. While eating breakfast, a small lizard showed up to warm up in the morning sun. It wasn’t well-behaved or shy since it pooped on the table next to us. Bon appétit!
Our goal for the next two weeks is to get near Gardaland, which is about 350 km away. We will spend a few days there. From Razdrto, we took a steep downhill road where we almost burned our brake pads, so we took a poop-break in the forest to let them cool down midway through the descent. By noon, we managed to cycle 30 km, which was our goal for the day, so we stopped in the shade in the center of a small village. We spent the next six hours taking naps, solving sudoku puzzles, and searching for airplane tickets. We also registered on the WarmShowers website, where you can host cyclists at your home or get hosted by someone else. We hoped for the latter. There is a $30 sign-up fee, but it is definitely a good investment since Italy strongly prohibits wild camping, with fines ranging from €100 to €500. We found a potential host for tomorrow and wrote to him, fingers crossed!
Hopefully, we will learn from this mistake, but during the six-hour break, we forgot to dry out our tent. Before leaving, we repeated our evening wash-up routine near the church where we had water. From there, we took another unpaved road and found a camping spot 15 meters away from it, hidden behind the bushes. After nearly placing the tent on an anthill, we moved 1.5 meters away. Hopefully, they won’t be interested in us. Last night in Slovenia!
If you have ever used the Komoot application for navigation with a bike, you know that it doesn’t really care what type of road it takes you on. A narrow goat trail between the bushes? Sounds good, you got it. So we weren’t surprised when it tried to take us on some hilly, large-rocks-covered path to cross into Italy. We were already on our way when we decided that it wasn’t worth it to ride on such a bad road with fully loaded bikes (40-50 kg each), so we turned around, went to the last intersection, and cycled uphill towards an asphalt-covered road that had a legit border crossing into Italy (not that anyone was there to check us). Once in Italy, Komoot did its thing again, and we rode on some rocky roads, balancing on our bikes. Then we got to Monfalcone (Tržič).
Again, we had about 30 km done around noon and were both exhausted, so we took a longer break in the city. We still hadn’t received any response from our planned WarmShowers host, so we were losing hope for him. During the break, we studied our planned path and wrote to three more potential hosts for the next few days, hoping for better luck. By the way, our WarmShowers Android application keeps crashing and logging us out, and their website is terribly slow, so it’s not a great user experience.
Iris is starting to have a sore throat and runny nose; we hope nothing serious comes out of this. When we left the city, there were nicer and bigger houses by the road, but every single one of them had a fence around it. This made us think that the fences are probably there for a reason. We stopped around 2 pm next to a church by the road and spent the next 3-4 hours there in the shade. We figured nothing would come out of WarmShowers for that night, so we wrote a short introduction about ourselves, where we’re going, and that we need a place to pitch a tent or some floor to sleep on under a roof. Then we asked ChatGPT to translate this to Italian since we will need to ask locals for help and Italians (especially the older generation) are known for not speaking English. During this time, we also managed to dry out our tent. Lesson learned!
Sometime between 5 and 6 pm, a wind started to pick up and dark clouds gathered in the northwest, coming in our direction. We packed everything up and started to pedal as hard as we could on a busy road with strong side-wind bursts. Then it started to rain lightly. We passed a lot of buildings, but they were mostly shops or factories. Then we found a farm by the road, and Iris went to ask for shelter. Thankfully, we had our translated text on a piece of paper since the man didn’t speak English. Nevertheless, he accepted us and introduced us to his son Carlos, who allowed us to pitch a tent on their land and also offered us water and a bathroom. Right before the heavier rain started, we managed to set up the tent, then we hid under a roof next to it and washed ourselves a bit. We also hid our bikes and locked them up. Thank you, Carlos and family, we’re really grateful for your help. You saved us from being soaking wet and still on the road, looking for a place to camp and worrying about being caught and fined. We went to bed early, spent an hour writing this blog, and then fell asleep from exhaustion.
The next day, Tuesday, Iris was feeling worse, so we stopped at Lidl to buy some tea bags and a lemon. We started pedaling really slowly that day, even though Italy has now turned into one huge flat surface. In a whole day, we had minimal ascent! We’ve concluded that Italy has a huge mosquito problem. Anywhere we stopped, there was a group of them waiting in line to bite us. At one moment, I had at least five of them sitting on my leg. That’s the main reason why we managed to set a new daily record for kilometers: 46. It was easier to slowly pedal along than to sit in one place and be a meal. The only exception was when we took a break in the middle of a harvested wheat field where the wind was blowing and we didn’t see a single mosquito. But sadly, because of the wind, we also couldn’t cook a proper meal, so we had a snack-lunch. When evening came, we rode past a house with people outside, so we stopped and asked if we could set up a tent somewhere close. They approved!
Even though the weather forecast predicted a dry night, it started to rain in the middle of it, continuing well into the Wednesday morning until around 10 am. That broke the streak of our wet-night-dry-day days, and we packed up the tent in the rain. We also cycled the next hour in rain gear and light rain. Around 11 am, we arrived in La Salute di Livenza, where we met with Primož’s family. A properly cooked meal, recharged electronics, a shower, and a refill of our food supplies. We also washed most of our clothes. We planned to have a rest day, and we actually did relax and rest for the next seven hours. But when they left, we had to cycle on and find somewhere to sleep. We made almost 15 kilometers before finding a nice house with someone outside where we could ask to spend the night. We tried to communicate with our broken (almost non-existent) Italian, pointing at things and smiling, and we managed to get a place under a roof to set up a tent. Then we met the whole family, some of whom spoke English, allowing us to talk for a bit. Thank you to all of them, a really nice family, and they also offered us food, water, and a bathroom if we needed any.
