“An area of outstanding beauty”, according to some travel website on Slovenia. So I decided to drive over to Solčava to have a look.
It was a long way away: two hours, a good section of which was up narrow winding roads. It was also cloudy and I thought I was going to repeat my disappointment of a year ago in Montenegro: sensational views from high vantage points rendered completely invisible by the clouds.
I was lucky. The clouds were higher than the mountain tops and blocked out the sun which would otherwise render impossible most good pictures of the mountainous backdrop.
The valley is about 7 km long, and may be covered by car or by entering a walking trail. I couldn’t dare go the whole way and back on foot. In any case the trail was iced over and quite impossible to negotiate, a fact that I was about to discover the hard way. Clearly, the valley is more of a summer attraction. When I visited it was frozen over and almost deserted.
But…
… the frozen waterfalls were spectacular indeed. This was my first stop. I walked up close to one on an extremely treacherous, slippery, icy path. Coming back I slipped and almost fell on my backside. I stayed upright, somehow, straining various thigh muscles in the process, and managed to save the following pictures. My phone was in my back pocket and I might easily have smashed it if I hadn’t kept my balance. Not to mention my poor old damaged hip joints…
I drove further into the valley. There was a sign indicating obligatory chains on tyres, which I didn’t have. I was far away from everywhere and didn’t want to risk being stranded on ice. But I saw cars coming back down the road, so I reckoned that the road was accessible. I pressed on, the road became completely covered in hard snow, but the winter tyres did their job very well. I drove all the way up to a hut, from where one needed to walk the rest of the way to the waterfall at the end of the valley, about 10 minutes away. I stopped twice to take pictures. It’s hard to believe that the following photo is in full colour:
Then I had to walk the last bit, up a steep path covered in snow. The silence was impressive.
And finally I arrived at the Rinka waterfall. What an anticlimax. There’s a lodge from where you can look at the falls from up close. It was quite inaccessible. I turned around and very carefully slip-trudged down back to the car.
I chose a different route back to Kranjska Gora, this time crossing the border into Austria. Again, this was a slightly scary experience as the narrow road wound high up and was quite literally deserted. At several points I could park on the side and take some fabulous pictures. I have to say, it was a pity I had to concentrate carefully on my driving because the surroundings were spectacular. What a drive.
The Wanderer 