Greetings from Fort Collins. We are planning a Slovenia cycle tour and your videos have been super fun to watch and great planning resource. Thanks for sharing your trip!
fun fact - you were much closer to the adriatic sea a day prior. i saw you visited pliskovica, which is situated no more than 3 or 4 miles from the actual coast… there’s a very narrow stretch of italy there with some beautiful scenery and views of the adriatic, also absolutely stunning bike paths that take you down to triest and then from there just a short ride to koper. i would totally recommend it if you visit these parts in the future again
Here's another fun fact: We didn't know about that bike trail (we were just following the self-guided tour on this trip) until yesterday, when someone mentioned the very same path. So I checked it out on the map, dropped the Google Man in and it looks like such a great trail. I don't know why they took us straight to Muggia. Next time!
@ and with proper bikes hah. i was surprised to see you ride those before i heard you say you rented them from a tour operator. it’s uncanny they thought those bikes would be a good idea for a trip like that… i recently moved to these parts and that bora can be a problem. when it hits hard (some times it can blow for a week non stop) they often close roads even for motorized traffic. i remember the first time i got caught in it on my bike. had to pedal downhill just to keep moving hah
There are many reasons why this bike trail is not as widely known and/or used as much as Parenzana. To go biking on Parenzana in most cases people park their cars close to the Adriatic sea, stay relatively close to the sea all the time, decide how many kilometers they will ride on that day...leave the bike trail at any point and go for a meal, do some sightseeing, discover new places. On the other hand...Kozina lies quite high above the sea level - 500 meters/1600 feet...which means it makes much more sense for those who live in Triest to "suffer on the way up" and than enjoy the views on the way back...than the other way around.@@TheBicycleTourists
"Most Slovenians" don't want to stay close to where they live on Saturdays and/or Sundays if the weather is nice. So riding, hiking or simply walking from Kozina to Triest in most cases you will meet locals from Triest who will greet you in Italian, there will be buses with tourist from Austria, Germany...@@TheBicycleTourists
Same here, I love how quickly everything changes once you cross the border. I think especially on this day with the Bora blowing us sideways, the rail trail would've made for a much nicer ride.
What type of food “poisoning” ? Should you refer to that food poisoning Locals are immune to, their local food only “poisoning” tourists, try to train before you leave, if you can. No, I am not making that up, that’s what some elite ultra distance cyclists racers do. Sofiane, 🇺🇸Tour Divide 2022 winner, multiple Silk Road Mountain Race winner, Atlas MTB race winner.... the list goes on, who is one of the most competitive 🚲 ultra racer, long story short, trains his gastrointestinal system more or less all year long. Training as in sustaining himself on food [wrongly] labeled as unhygienic by [st*pid] standards. For the record, that “unhygienic” food has kept my own ancestors (white-Europeans) in perfect good health for centuries, if not thousands of years. One other German racer ( awfully sorry his name escapes me, right now) is openly transparent about his training against food “poisoning”, he spends as much time as poss before the race in the country and makes a point on sustaining himself on local food, the only food racers will have access to in remote [enter country name]. It works, trained racers, immune to food “poisoning” make it to the finish line and win, other racers, who’ve sustained themselves on the exact same local food, race result reads DNF (Did Not Finish) reason : food poisoning. Hand hygiene and use of cutlery is another conversation...
Not recommended on a bike tour, french [former] colonial troops training and recommendations work miracle against food poisoning. Rule #1 : Never ever drink water (No ice cubes, either, never). Veterans lived all their life immune to tropical diseases..... liver cirrhosis killed them.
Unfortunately nobody told you that apart from Parenzana that connected Triest with the Istrian peninsula there was also another rail line that connected Kozina to Triest. So you could have turned right in Kozina and enjoyed one of the most spectactacular descents from the Karst platou directly into the center of Trieste. The valley is called "dolina Glinscice" in Slovenian and Val Rosandra in Italian....There are some beatiful pictures available on Google maps - "Giordano Cottur cycle and pedestrian path"/pista ciclopedonale. The rail line was gradually discontinued after the war at first because of the border which never existed before and later because there were too few passangers on the Italian side...
Wow! you're right! This was an unusual trip; we were following the route of our "self-guided" tour. I would've much preferred this route. Thanks for sharing! Looks amazing.
I believe that was October. I get spoiled by doing a lot of rides in autumn when the crowds, bugs, temps are low. Much easier to book a room or excursion.
Salut Roland & Girls, A ray of sunshine is definitely a game changer. A kind reminder (for next week installment) careful about history in places where said history could still be a tad “loaded”, I don’t think it is the case in Trieste, though. Well, I genuinely hope the young generation has moved on, and that this forced “italianization” under a totalitarian regime is about to be forgotten.
As an American I sometimes just blunder into things. But I'm protected by my naïveté and my good intentions. :-) This whole area saw an amazing amount of change in the last century, it occupies a position which sees a lot of back and forth. It must make it tough on the people and their culture.
Salut Roland, Quelle surprise, Not, you’ve perfectly understood the point I rose as diplomatically as I could. Sometimes, I do intuition too, in this instance I intuitively figured out that betting on your intelligence was a safe bet. Thank you for proving me right, genuinely appreciate. As always, context is everything, harmless old news (as in history) in a given context can become not so harmless in another. We have this ongoing situation, in the East, as you know, with somebody who has reached for old dusty maps and has weaponized them in order to justify an unprovoked agression. As for this charming naïveté of yours (collectively), the old continent can blame itself for it, not your fault. Have a nice day Roland!
I would have to add that when I mention something like Yugoslavian communism, I'm well aware that this might raise some eyebrows. There are still hard left political agendas, along with hard right political agendas, that will mow you down under any pretext they choose, including false historical narratives. The relative freedoms that western Europeans (or Americans) enjoy, are not guaranteed in a world of oppressors. The last people to take this for granted should be the eastern Europeans. What they (and we) enjoy is precious and fragile.
Few of us, in the West and also in the East are taking anything for granted anymore. Starting North, clockwise, 🇸🇪, the swedish flag has been hoisted, *today* for the first time at NATO HQ Brussels. A several hundreds years 🇸🇪 historical tradition of neutrality ended today. 🇫🇮 the geopolitical concept of « finlandization » invented by the Finns is no more. 🇪🇪 🇱🇻 🇱🇹 rang the alarm for 10 solid years, nobody listened to them. 🇵🇱 Army (ground force) is about to become the largest in Europe. 🇺🇦 can’t take it’s very own existence for granted. Little defenseless 🇲🇩 President Maia Sandu can hear the boom of missiles hitting Odessa from her presidential office. 🇷🇴 has, at its request, NATO forces stationed by the Black Sea and at its border with Moldavia. Bulgaria is a mystery, not much news from🇧🇬. 🇬🇷 Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on an official visit to Odesa (historically a Greek city) experienced first hand the landing of a Russian missile, yards away from his car, last week. Down South, the Mediterranean floor bed is crisscrossed by critical infrastructure (pipelines, high voltage connectors, fiber optics), not much awareness, AFAIK, in🇮🇹 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 of their vulnerability. 🇫🇷 is about to contribute mine disposal and paramedics military personnel to 🇺🇦 war effort. 🇬🇧have a General Election coming, domestic affairs likely to concentrate british brains ? 🇱🇺 One Dutch military top brass expressed positive views i.e. 🇫🇷second line (behind frontline) military support to 🇺🇦. 🇩🇰 & 🇳🇴, the later sharing a border with 🇷🇺 unlike Mediterranean countries, always were well aware of the vulnerability of the critical infrastructure carpeting the Baltic Seabed as well as in the North Sea, from danish offshore wind turbines farms to Norwegian gaz and oil rigs. Then, there’s cold feet pacific Germany, but that’s worth another long conversation.
My mother was born in Germany, and watch the rise of Nazism, talked about the street riots in her town between Communists and Nazis. Remembered the bombings on her home town, hiding in bomb shelters, losing her brother to war, saw the devastation of a continent after so many years of horror. I'm sure your parents and everyone from that generation can speak to this, those who are left to tell the stories. I always felt so removed from my mother's time, as if that could've only happened in the past. Now I wonder. How could we be returning to this world? Absolute insanity.
Another great video…variety in landscapes is always nice when touring…
So true!
Oh the history there, beautiful architecture and landscape. Many thanks for sharing.😉
There's a lot to love about this place!
Nice once again. Slovenia is small but very diverse .
Amazing how much there is to see! I loved it!
Greetings from Fort Collins. We are planning a Slovenia cycle tour and your videos have been super fun to watch and great planning resource. Thanks for sharing your trip!
Greetings from Denver! So glad these are helpful.
Another pretty cool video, I'm enjoying these more and more, ty Roland
Thank you Dennis!
Illy.....Mmmmm, good coffee.
So good.
Continues to be an incredible tour. Hope you will summarize your itinerary /daily mileage for us at some point.
Thanks! Yes, I'm thinking I'll do some kind of summary.
Enjoyed watching.
Thank you!
Thanks Gary!
Beautiful
Thanks Don.
I was binge-watching this series. Is there more to come, Roland? 😊😁💚✌🎖
Yes, one more this Friday, then I will put together some kind of summary video as well.
fun fact - you were much closer to the adriatic sea a day prior. i saw you visited pliskovica, which is situated no more than 3 or 4 miles from the actual coast… there’s a very narrow stretch of italy there with some beautiful scenery and views of the adriatic, also absolutely stunning bike paths that take you down to triest and then from there just a short ride to koper. i would totally recommend it if you visit these parts in the future again
Here's another fun fact: We didn't know about that bike trail (we were just following the self-guided tour on this trip) until yesterday, when someone mentioned the very same path. So I checked it out on the map, dropped the Google Man in and it looks like such a great trail. I don't know why they took us straight to Muggia. Next time!
@ and with proper bikes hah. i was surprised to see you ride those before i heard you say you rented them from a tour operator. it’s uncanny they thought those bikes would be a good idea for a trip like that…
i recently moved to these parts and that bora can be a problem. when it hits hard (some times it can blow for a week non stop) they often close roads even for motorized traffic. i remember the first time i got caught in it on my bike. had to pedal downhill just to keep moving hah
There are many reasons why this bike trail is not as widely known and/or used as much as Parenzana. To go biking on Parenzana in most cases people park their cars close to the Adriatic sea, stay relatively close to the sea all the time, decide how many kilometers they will ride on that day...leave the bike trail at any point and go for a meal, do some sightseeing, discover new places. On the other hand...Kozina lies quite high above the sea level - 500 meters/1600 feet...which means it makes much more sense for those who live in Triest to "suffer on the way up" and than enjoy the views on the way back...than the other way around.@@TheBicycleTourists
"Most Slovenians" don't want to stay close to where they live on Saturdays and/or Sundays if the weather is nice. So riding, hiking or simply walking from Kozina to Triest in most cases you will meet locals from Triest who will greet you in Italian, there will be buses with tourist from Austria, Germany...@@TheBicycleTourists
Same here, I love how quickly everything changes once you cross the border. I think especially on this day with the Bora blowing us sideways, the rail trail would've made for a much nicer ride.
Lovely narration as i remember it from my first ever visist to your channel.❤🎉
Thank you!
I never knew how beautiful Slovenia is! In your travels, have you ever had food poisoning?
It is gorgeous. I've had food poisoning, but never on a bike ride.
What type of food “poisoning” ?
Should you refer to that food poisoning Locals are immune to, their local food only “poisoning” tourists, try to train before you leave, if you can.
No, I am not making that up, that’s what some elite ultra distance cyclists racers do.
Sofiane, 🇺🇸Tour Divide 2022 winner, multiple Silk Road Mountain Race winner, Atlas MTB race winner.... the list goes on, who is one of the most competitive 🚲 ultra racer, long story short, trains his gastrointestinal system more or less all year long.
Training as in sustaining himself on food [wrongly] labeled as unhygienic by [st*pid] standards.
For the record, that “unhygienic” food has kept my own ancestors (white-Europeans) in perfect good health for centuries, if not thousands of years.
One other German racer ( awfully sorry his name escapes me, right now) is openly transparent about his training against food “poisoning”, he spends as much time as poss before the race in the country and makes a point on sustaining himself on local food, the only food racers will have access to in remote [enter country name].
It works, trained racers, immune to food “poisoning” make it to the finish line and win, other racers, who’ve sustained themselves on the exact same local food, race result reads DNF (Did Not Finish) reason : food poisoning.
Hand hygiene and use of cutlery is another conversation...
Not recommended on a bike tour, french [former] colonial troops training and recommendations work miracle against food poisoning.
Rule #1 : Never ever drink water (No ice cubes, either, never).
Veterans lived all their life immune to tropical diseases..... liver cirrhosis killed them.
Unfortunately nobody told you that apart from Parenzana that connected Triest with the Istrian peninsula there was also another rail line that connected Kozina to Triest. So you could have turned right in Kozina and enjoyed one of the most spectactacular descents from the Karst platou directly into the center of Trieste. The valley is called "dolina Glinscice" in Slovenian and Val Rosandra in Italian....There are some beatiful pictures available on Google maps - "Giordano Cottur cycle and pedestrian path"/pista ciclopedonale. The rail line was gradually discontinued after the war at first because of the border which never existed before and later because there were too few passangers on the Italian side...
Wow! you're right! This was an unusual trip; we were following the route of our "self-guided" tour. I would've much preferred this route. Thanks for sharing! Looks amazing.
Makes md want to
Go now! 😂
Early March... snow on the ground here in Colorado...I'm definitely getting antsy for some adventure as well!
when was that? september? you may got ticket for škocjan cave in september but in summer you need to buy it few days in advance anyway.
I believe that was October. I get spoiled by doing a lot of rides in autumn when the crowds, bugs, temps are low. Much easier to book a room or excursion.
Salut Roland & Girls,
A ray of sunshine is definitely a game changer.
A kind reminder (for next week installment) careful about history in places where said history could still be a tad “loaded”, I don’t think it is the case in Trieste, though.
Well, I genuinely hope the young generation has moved on, and that this forced “italianization” under a totalitarian regime is about to be forgotten.
As an American I sometimes just blunder into things. But I'm protected by my naïveté and my good intentions. :-) This whole area saw an amazing amount of change in the last century, it occupies a position which sees a lot of back and forth. It must make it tough on the people and their culture.
Salut Roland,
Quelle surprise, Not, you’ve perfectly understood the point I rose as diplomatically as I could.
Sometimes, I do intuition too, in this instance I intuitively figured out that betting on your intelligence was a safe bet.
Thank you for proving me right, genuinely appreciate.
As always, context is everything, harmless old news (as in history) in a given context can become not so harmless in another.
We have this ongoing situation, in the East, as you know, with somebody who has reached for old dusty maps and has weaponized them in order to justify an unprovoked agression.
As for this charming naïveté of yours (collectively), the old continent can blame itself for it, not your fault.
Have a nice day Roland!
I would have to add that when I mention something like Yugoslavian communism, I'm well aware that this might raise some eyebrows. There are still hard left political agendas, along with hard right political agendas, that will mow you down under any pretext they choose, including false historical narratives. The relative freedoms that western Europeans (or Americans) enjoy, are not guaranteed in a world of oppressors. The last people to take this for granted should be the eastern Europeans. What they (and we) enjoy is precious and fragile.
Few of us, in the West and also in the East are taking anything for granted anymore.
Starting North, clockwise, 🇸🇪, the swedish flag has been hoisted, *today* for the first time at NATO HQ Brussels.
A several hundreds years 🇸🇪 historical tradition of neutrality ended today.
🇫🇮 the geopolitical concept of « finlandization » invented by the Finns is no more.
🇪🇪 🇱🇻 🇱🇹 rang the alarm for 10 solid years, nobody listened to them.
🇵🇱 Army (ground force) is about to become the largest in Europe.
🇺🇦 can’t take it’s very own existence for granted.
Little defenseless 🇲🇩 President Maia Sandu can hear the boom of missiles hitting Odessa from her presidential office.
🇷🇴 has, at its request, NATO forces stationed by the Black Sea and at its border with Moldavia.
Bulgaria is a mystery, not much news from🇧🇬.
🇬🇷 Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on an official visit to Odesa (historically a Greek city) experienced first hand the landing of a Russian missile, yards away from his car, last week.
Down South, the Mediterranean floor bed is crisscrossed by critical infrastructure (pipelines, high voltage connectors, fiber optics), not much awareness, AFAIK, in🇮🇹 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 of their vulnerability.
🇫🇷 is about to contribute mine disposal and paramedics military personnel to 🇺🇦 war effort.
🇬🇧have a General Election coming, domestic affairs likely to concentrate british brains ?
🇱🇺 One Dutch military top brass expressed positive views i.e. 🇫🇷second line (behind frontline) military support to 🇺🇦.
🇩🇰 & 🇳🇴, the later sharing a border with 🇷🇺 unlike Mediterranean countries, always were well aware of the vulnerability of the critical infrastructure carpeting the Baltic Seabed as well as in the North Sea, from danish offshore wind turbines farms to Norwegian gaz and oil rigs.
Then, there’s cold feet pacific Germany, but that’s worth another long conversation.
My mother was born in Germany, and watch the rise of Nazism, talked about the street riots in her town between Communists and Nazis. Remembered the bombings on her home town, hiding in bomb shelters, losing her brother to war, saw the devastation of a continent after so many years of horror. I'm sure your parents and everyone from that generation can speak to this, those who are left to tell the stories. I always felt so removed from my mother's time, as if that could've only happened in the past. Now I wonder. How could we be returning to this world? Absolute insanity.
Beau pays l'Italie et en famille c'est encore mieux 😊
Avec de la chance, j'y passerai plus de temps cette année avec Julianna.