I've heard the old saying, 'what a day'? well that applied to us. We started the day on a good note, found the market to buy some milk, yogurt and bananas for our breakfast. We sat down on the side of the road and got stuck in our 2.50 breakfast. I love a bargain.
We rolled out of Dolenjske Toplice at 8am ready to attack the mountains. The first came straight into the ride, but at least we were covered by the overhanging forest. The ride up the first mountain was perfect, not too hot, and not too steep. We just cruised along watching the valley floor disappear beneath us. We could see for miles as we continued higher and higher. We stopped to take some photos of the surrounding landscape from 1/2 way up the climb.
As we continued to the 2nd climb the road became gravel. For the next 10kms we suffered in temperatures reaching 40 degrees and the first part of the climb went to 12%. Now since we're real cyclist who don't need drugs to climb hills, I think we did a fine job in reaching the top. And like all good mountains, the fun is roaring down the other side and into the valley below. The photo above is Peter in the distance climbing the gravel mountain outside of Ivancha Gorica. No matter how stuffed we were, the amazing views of Slovenia greeted us around every corner with miles of green pastures and beautiful homes nestled on the side of mountains. Life is pretty good.
The photo above was taken 1/2 way up the first climb. It's a shame I don't have a photo of the other mountain, it was huge.
I took the above photo which is the Autobahn that runs through Slovenia, Croatia and on towards Italy. We might give that motorway another crack tomorrow.
The photo above was taken just before we entered the town of Brest. Just to reach Brest was a nightmare. We had been told by one of the locals that we should ride 5kms out of town and we would come to a SBS shop and then we should turn right. We should continue about 5kms and then come to the town of Brest. It didn't actually turn out correct. We rode 6kms and then climbed a 5km mountain, gave up and returned to be told it was 500 metres out of town. Bullshit. I was pissed off considering the temperature hit 45 during the climb. Eventually we found Brest and I'm happy.
From the town of Brest we rode along a nice country road being sheltered from the sun which wouldn't let up all day with it's ferocity. I should add that we had a strong headwind all day to contend with. So with the heat, wind and mountains, we were slowly being defeated and needed to call it a day. From 3pm we decided to find the next place to get a room. From town to town we were told no room at the inn. The photo above shows an amazing old entry to a town that we came across towards the end of the day. It looked just like something out of Xena the Warrior TV show. That's one of my favorite shows.
At stage we were running low on water so I called out to a family that were standing at the back of their house if we could fill up our bottles. They waved us down and now we had enough water to get us to the finish.
We ended up at Mantova Hotel in the town of Vrhnika, the town we had hoped to reached today. The bad thing about it was the advice we were given added about another 20ks to the trip. And that's more time out in the sun.
The photos below were taken yesterday, but I couldn't add them because of the slow WiFi in the camp.
The photo above proves that Harvey Norman exists in Croatia. We did see the shop as we left Zagreb yesterday.
The above photo was taken of the catholic church sitting in a field all on its own.
We found a lot of places were people were swimming yesterday. The water looked clean and plenty of fish could be seen from the bridge.
The above photo is of Peter and I celebrating the 2000km mark of our journey.
So that's a wrap for today. We hope to enter Italy tomorrow if I get the directions right.
Until tomorrow, safe riding.
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