Laura Waters joined our guided walking tour through Slovenia, Italy and Croatia, and wrote about her magical experience for Escape.
 

I am walking a forested trail alongside the Mostnica River when guide Luka knocks on the trunk of a tree to “wake the fairies”. Slovenian mythology says they live here and the landscape is so fairytale perfect it’s starting to sound plausible.

The river is pale mint and so clear I could probably read a book if it were lying on the riverbed metres below the surface. In Mostnica Gorge, it writhes like a serpent for 2km, scooping potholes and pools, frothing over waterfalls and carving walls at times 20m deep and a metre wide.

This beauty sits within Triglav National Park, Slovenia’s only national park and celebrating 100 years of protection. Bagging four per cent of the country and most of its 400-plus 2000m peaks, it’s a treasured wilderness in the country’s northwest, about a half-hour drive from the capital, Ljubljana.

Limestone is the bedrock. The sea that once covered here left compacted layers of fossil-bearing limestone, later shaped by erosion, colliding tectonic plates and glaciers to create jagged karst mountains so pale they’re at times almost white. Lapped by emerald forests, flower-filled meadows and rivers filtered gin-clear by the porous rock, it’s a hiker’s dream. Guided by Nature’s 11-day Slovenia, Croatia & Italy Hiking Journey is showcasing some of its best day walks.

Mount Triglav, the park’s namesake and highest point, sits centre stage in the Julian Alps and our first hike above the tree line is intended to reveal it in all its glory, but the 2864m summit is masked by cloud. No one is disappointed. Emerging from forest onto an open ridge, we’re hit with a panorama so vast all we can do is grin in wide-eyed wonder.

Rippling mountains flanked by sheer rock and striated like merino fleece plunge over 1500m, by Luka’s estimate, and snow dapples the peaks. Luka points out walls favoured by BASE jumpers. We don’t get mountains like this at home. We also don’t get mountain huts dishing up hearty lunches of barley and sausage stew but after descending Mount Brdo I can think of nothing better. A cheeky schnapps is the standard follow-up.

The park’s largest permanent lake is Lake Bohinj, a jigsaw-puzzle cliché of teal waters wrapped by the mountains, wildflowers and the quaint Church of St John the Baptist. It’s our home for a few nights.

In the stillness of a late afternoon, we cruise to the lake’s far end by electric boat for a 5km walk back along the shoreline. “If you see people swimming, they’re crazy!” says the on-board host. The water averages 8C. And there are crazy people. But this is a landscape that inspires wild abandon. One of our guides takes a dip in an adjoining river the kind of blue I’ve only seen on South Pacific islands. Flower scents float on the breeze and we pluck wild strawberries growing trackside. By walk’s end, I can’t resist pulling my boots off and wading in up to my knees for a refreshing pebble “foot massage”.

It’s all heavenly now but the Julian Alps were a battlefield in World War I. On the Kolovrat ridge bordering Italy, fierce fighting took place between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops. In suitably grim fog, we walk the third defence line of the Italian army, through trenches cut into the hillside, now preserved as part of the Walk of Peace.

In 1916 Russian prisoners built the road that carries us up 24 switchbacks and 711 metres to Vršič Pass. From here, it’s a relatively gentle hike past spears of snow-smeared rock, moss-covered boulder gardens and stands of vibrant green larch to the summit of Slemenova Špica. The view is pure alpine drama. Surrounding mountains appear so close and sheer they bring to mind a Truman Show backdrop. “When the sky is clear it looks like you could touch them,” says Luka.

Slovenia’s mountains are riddled with thousands of caves and from one flows the Soča River, considered Slovenia’s most beautiful. Following it through the Soča Valley makes another heart-soaring walk. The water is the kind of crazy blue-green we’ve become accustomed to, topped with an ethereal surface mist thanks to its icy temperature. Surrounding mossy forest looks like goblin land. It’s magic. “There must be a lot of fairies here, Luka,” I say. He nods solemnly. “Yes.”

Read Laura's full article for Escape here. 

Image credits: Laura Waters