Another day of walking through great mountain scenery, alongside the Soca river.
We knew that much of the trail was closed due to electricity work and had therefore decided to aim for Kobarid, in the valley, rather than Dreznica, up in the hills. (This also gives us an easy day tomorrow, following the low-level Juliana trail to get to Tolmin)
We left Bovec on a small path, which soon got extremely muddy. After a few kms of this the track joined a road. We looked at the map and decided to continue down the road, as the trail on the map appeared to be next to a stream, which we thought would be back to mud underfoot. We joined up with the Alpe-Adria trail, and had a nice walk alongside the river Soca. In this section there were areas where every tree had been blown down; later on the taxi driver told us this happened about a month ago. It was incredible to see such damage. We did a short section along the road rather than following the trail, saving some distance, and allowing us to walk faster. Most of the cars were going in the same direction as us, with few coming towards us. We joined the trail again, this time on the “deviation” due to the engineering works. It was a pleasant walk alongside the river and through fields, before ending at Srpenica. We found our German friends and their dog, who assured us we could join them in their taxi transport (they were going to Dreznica and Kobarid was at the river crossing). The taxi arrived and we all got in. About 5kms down the road, the taxi stopped and the driver declared that we had arrived. This wasn’t a concern to us as the route to Kobarid was downhill, but for the Germans it meant about another 10kms and 500m uphill. There was a bit of discussion, before he agreed to drive them the whole way to Dreznica. We were dropped off in Kobarid (no charge!) and walked to the hotel. Kobarid is only 7km from the border with Italy, but we’ve got another couple of days before we cross over. After cleaning up we visited the WWI museum, describing the fighting between the Austro-Hungarians and the Italians. This was a brutal conflict, with men on mountain tops, with the lines only 20m apart in places. Many died from avalanches during the winter. The Germans provided reinforcements to the Austro-Hungarians, and finally inflicted a huge defeat on the Italians. Subsequently, the British and French provided troops to stop the Germans invading more of Italy. The area, and battle, are immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”. The museum has a great collection of photos from the war, and is well laid out, giving one a feeling of how dreadful the fighting was in this area; there were several photos of Italians with facial injuries so bad that you wondered how people could have survived or would even want to continue living in that state.
We had an excellent meal, and are now looking forward to another short, easy day tomorrow.
Max elevation: 475 m
Total climbing: 288 m
” A Farewell to Arms ” is my favourite Hemingway book. It is a powerful comment on that war and very poignant.
Great photos.