Day 100 – 12th August, Wednesday – Hiblej Spring and Otlica Window, Slovenia

2 nights in Slovenia and we love it already – it’s beautiful, it’s friendly and it’s calm.
We got going fairly early walking up to see the Hublej Spring and back. The brochure said it was a one hour circular walk taking in the river, the ruins of the old power station, the stone dam and the spring itself which was half way round and had a café next to it for refreshments. We planned to be back by lunchtime in-order to get back on the road in good time.
We got to the spring ok, and yes it was a stunner, as was the river all the way up – plenty of pools and waterfalls. There was a sign pointing up another trail to the Otlisko Okno (Otlica Window) which the tourist office had said was very famous in Slovenia and not to be missed. The sign said one hour, so we decided to give it a go as we were so close. Turns out we weren’t close at all, and it wasn’t the steady one-hour walk through the wood we had hoped. The window was right at the top of the mountain! We made it up eventually and arrived back at the café by 2pm to find it closed…argh. Thankfully the Hublej river is fed by the mountain spring, so there wasn’t a shortage of water available.

We saw a large-ish black/purple snake on the way back too – moving fairly rapidly through the undergrowth in front of us. I think we disturbed it from its cool hiding place in between the rocks.