Bicycle Touring in Slovenia – Film from my bike tour in Slovenia cycling through the countryside

Slovenia is a great destination for bicycle touring, as I found out during my 2016 cycling trip from Greece to England.
Cycling through the countryside in Slovenia was a real highlight of my bike tour. Everything was so neat, tidy, clean and green. This is what bike touring is all about!
This film and commentary from my experiences bicycle touring in Slovenia was made over several days. Quite often, I was editing the video and creating commentary in a tent at the end of each cycling day. I hope I hope you enjoy the video of cycle touring in Slovenia as much as I enjoyed being there!

All in all as you can see the bike is packed and ready to go and I’m just gonna enjoy my cappuccino before I hit the road 60 kilometer day today across the border into Slovenia and staying at the big berry campsite a small uphill section and then mainly flat afterwards

Or so I think anyway I’ll show you some videos on the road and I’ll catch you later cheers for now so as I left I followed the GPS and this should have been a nice 60 kilometer day and the road should have been nice and easy

However the GPS decided to take me on its mystery route once more so I ended up going on this quiet country lane like this which I thought yep this is fine this is what I’ve come to do bicycle tour and a belt that’s cool and then it starts become a little bit more

Overgrown and at this point I thought I think the GPS is going to do its normal thing which is lead me either to a dead end through a grass field or up a rough track so you can take your pick now as to which one that was but it was the

Rough track so sometimes this GPS is good it’s not the fault of the GPS it’s just a fault of the mapping system because the the road would have been set to sealed apparently and to start off with it is sealed but eventually it becomes unsealed so the GPS is something

To be used as a guide but not something to be relied on as it has I’ve only got a short day in mind I thought where doesn’t matter let’s see it through see where it goes and where it went was of this very very rough track which eventually I couldn’t cycle because it

Was too steep so then I had to grind to a halt and get off and push but I suppose it’s all part of the adventure and it’s not like yeah it was it wasn’t that far that I had to push it so I pushed it for about 250 metres although

That was all the way up hill unfortunately and I don’t normally agree with pushing bicycles by the way I should say you should always cycle when you can but it was at this point impossible for me to cycle the rut the road was too and thus the steepness of the angle was

Just too much to to move the bike but there we go what you know I had nothing else nothing better to do that day did I so once I left this rough track eventually I hit a sealed road again and this is this was a nice road to follow actually so I’m now

Cycling through Croatia and heading towards a selenium border and this road was a very nice one to follow it was sealed all the way very quiet just the occasional traffic one way or the other but nothing like the main roads and as you can see there was trees on both

Sides and the I passed through countryside and yeah yeah it’s very serene and I’ve been led to believe that Slovenia is a very beautiful country and at this stage I wondered if Slovenian Dazz I’m doing the commentary a couple of days later Oh Sean reveal yet watch

Davina’s like you’ll have to watch the next videos haha so it’s going to be another border cross and eventually and but until then there was just a few kilometers to go at times my currency quite well as well so at this point I had three gunas left in my pocket three

is worth about 50 euro cents by the way so and I tend to do that I tend to plan to the the last day and I work out what I can spend my final currency on just to get rid of it because obviously you know Kunar is no good

Anywhere else other than in Croatia and yeah so there we go and if you remember yesterday I said the nature of the houses was changing the design of the houses and they looked almost Austrian or Germanic in a way and it was the same on for this little ride coming up to the

Border as well so yeah it’s all very pretty and very nice and with the the memory of that rough track behind me this was a good day cycle in the end it works out to be about 72 kilometers I think in total but yeah that was all

Good and obviously I was heading towards big very campsites so I had my destination in mind as so everything is cool so what else should I talk about then thoughts on Croatia I unlike cycling through Croatia I was a little bit disappointed with abroad Dubrovnik as I mentioned in a

Couple of videos one of which has not got the greatest feedback from Croatian people but sorry you know if that’s the way I feel it’s it’s the way I feel I can’t pretend otherwise but the rest of the country from northwards from Smith onwards I saw what the people were great

I thought views were great the coasts the countryside yeah so I think Croatia is definitely a country I would like to discover more about I’d like to do some more bicycle touring I’ve I’ve stuck to the coast mainly but it would be nice to look at the inland section a little bit

More and it was actually at this point on the tour I realized that I’d left the coast behind me now and I’ll probably won’t be seeing the sea until I get on the ferry from France to England at some point so I’ve probably missed my little

Swims unless there’s a river to swim in maybe there’s one in the big berry campsite you never know again you’d have to check some other videos out won’t you so as you can see there’s some very pretty looking buildings here and at this point I thought yeah we’re slowly

Transitioning into Slovenia so to me it’s always curious where borders are and why there’s a border there and our people completely different one side of the border than the other side it’s always an interesting question to answer the part of the border that I was

Heading to is separated by a river so it is obvious why the borders there it’s like a natural border and you find that with some countries there’s a natural border of mountains or a river it’s the countries which don’t have a natural border you know it which type

Put in place after a war or something they’re normally the countries where it’s yeah the local bit stranger but this is more of a natural border that I’m heading towards so again with border controls all fairly straightforward I cycled up and through one border section

And he kind of waved me through and then at the Slovenian entrance to the border he took my passport and had a look in it in more detail after scanning it I think it was more interesting just where I travel to than anything else but each of

Their own not a very interesting trouble I imagine being in charge of the checkpoint on a border crossing and I think we get in to the border crossing section in a little bit so I’m probably pre-empting the excitement that you’re gonna feel when you see the actual video itself sorry about that

So yeah just cycling through cycling on here we go so one day I’ll probably run out of things to say on these videos won’t either so I don’t think that day is coming anytime soon I can always find something to talk about at some point so

Here we go this is me leaving Croatia and I thought okay do I have to show my passport to anyone and there was no one in the little box so I okay you obviously don’t need to be checked out of Croatia so yep just carried on through and then cross the bridge which

Is obviously over the river that was on about and this must be the River culpa and over the other side of the bridge that’s the the checkpoint or the border crossing to enter into this is Lavinia and as I mentioned once I got to the checkpoint I just handed my passport

Over and the guy just sat there and looked at it for a while and and then away I went and that was it I was into another new country so the new countries on this trip for me so far of being Albania or what was the other ones

Croatia Montenegro and a small palm Bosnia and Herzegovina and now we’re in Slovenia or another new country and I think I’m here for about a total of ten days and the big berry camps are hosting me for three nights which is very kind of them thank you very much and this is

Me now in Slovenia now to you it might not seem very different than the country odd that just left behind but immediately I could sense that there was it’s very different there’s that everything seems to be beautiful or neat or it’s it’s designed with the aesthetic quality in mind it’s hard

To explain that the the houses in the churches are all different there’s lots of flowers in in flowerpots in the windows in and there’s more attention to detail Matt the grass is mowed and it’s yeah and so it’s I could tell that always in a different country so there

Was a small transition period as I said between the border but this is now a new country and yeah and a very pretty country is and from the very little light I saw on the sidewalk to the campground I could you know I could tell that it was it’s gonna be a beautiful

Country and one that I think I’m going to enjoy a lot so what else is there to say really I headed towards the campground oh yeah I came across a cycle path which was good Slovenia is tried to make a push for bicycle tour and attracting cyclists said Slovenia is

Trying to develop tourism but I think it’s going about it in the right way it’s not it doesn’t want mass tourism it wants to specialize in certain areas because the Savina is famous for its countryside and the open space is it’s got a low population there the last

Thing they need are you know 10 million tourists a year you know they don’t need that and I don’t think they want that I think what they want to do is maintain the lives the quality of life they’ve got but invite more people into the country and I don’t know I think little

Things like the bicycle path so I mean this is only one that I’ve I’ve been on but if these are throughout the cities and something it’s a major step up from the countries I’ve been to I mean a bicycle part in Greece is just a joke and how actually Albania had

Better bicycle paths for Greece I didn’t really see many at all in Croatia there were a couple as I mentioned where they ended abruptly it’s a supermarket but it wasn’t like a part of the infrastructure and I got the feeling just from that little section that they built the road

And saw ok we’re gonna have a bicycle path not just like a little tiny section for bicycles which was again very nice so I’m just cycling through a couple of towns I’ve stopped off in the supermarket buy some supplies local currencies the euro so backs are using

The euro now which I’ll use all the way through till France I said I cross to the UK are apart from hungry I’m Jewish about the hungry at some stage that’s about all I’ve got to say I rolled into a big berry campground at about 3:00 in the

Afternoon and as I said they’re gonna put me up for three nights while it’s also stay there and I’m gonna just explore the area they’re gonna take you around and show you some things or visit some local businesses find out a little bit that’s Lavinia and that’s all I’ve

Got to say for this one so take it easy guys and I will speak to you on the next video cheers for now [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Good morning everyone how’s it going so I’ve had a nice few days rest here at the beet berry campground in premise tech thank you very much for hosting me and it’s time to hit the road again so I am heading to a place called brisk Tunisia it’s about a 70 kilometer cycle

Ride small uphill to start off with a 250 meter ascent and then after that it’s downhill and flats or supper the GPS tells me but we’ll see it is raining today unfortunately the weather forecast says it will ease off at about 10 o’clock so I’m going to wait until then

To load the bike up then hit the road and get on with it so I’ll give you some videos for the road and speak to you all later cheers for now oh yeah the rain it makes you wet no what a me Sorry I lost myself there so as you can see it was raining as I left so I waited till 10:00 but the rain didn’t ease on so I just put the wet weather gear on and hit the road not not to worry it’s all part of the fun apparently actually

I don’t mind side then the right it’s sometimes just just get on with it and don’t really think about it once yeah it’s the thought of starting which is actually harder than cycling in the rain if that makes any sense anyway so I carried on I’ve done some of this

Route a couple of days earlier if you check out my video about the half day bicycle tour of the area that I’ve been staying in you can see some of the places I went and obviously then the Sun was a little bit brighter as it was even

Though it’s raining and passing by some beautiful rural scenes you get these houses and they have like a long sloped roof on one side some of them and also there’s a like little bounds where they dry hay as well everything’s like kept really needs and tidy and I was thinking

As I was cycling what makes Slovenia different than the other countries I’ve cycled through and I think there’s two or three things which are immediately apparent so the first one is that there’s no rubbish so in the other countries I’ve cycled through Greece Albania Montenegro blah blah there’s always

Rubbish floating around the countryside it’s a plastic bottles or plastic or empty tins or cans and in Slovenia there just really isn’t that and on the roadside there’s plenty of places where you can do recycling so you can see there’s a little bit on the side here

And you’re places to recycle so that so Slovenia is a very very neat and tidy country the other thing that’s missing is the graffiti which plagued some countries Greece in particular or Athens in particular in Greece but I’ve not really seen any graffiti here I mean there’s bound to be some in Ljubljana

It’s that’s how you pronounce the capital or Sabine yeah not that I could visit there but but yeah there’s just none here so just left with the impression of things looking neat tidy orderly and it’s like people take pride in things so so I feel along came across

Into the cycle name there was a few of these today it seems that when there’s a new road being developed or a road resurfaced that adding a cycle lane so this is a great thing on the one hand because obviously there’s a cycle named brilliant but on the other hand it does

Give it a like an this connected network of cycle lanes so this might only last for a kilometer and then all finish but you know can I attend for effort I’d like to see more of these I think it should be a law that if you’re gonna

Resurface or make a new road there should have to be a cycle lane there and it only makes sense to get people out of cars and cycling and that’s you know just it makes sense doesn’t it of course it does so obviously as you can see now

It stopped raining so it was offered the wet weather gear and dry out a little bit in the Sun and pedaling along is you never really know what you’re gonna see next year there’s lots of churches in the background and open field and then I came down to this little Valley and the

River running by the side of it and then I followed this along and this mastered until I got to breasts Tunisia which is where I’m staying and this is totally different than the hilly rural Aerostar saw so this was a behind me it’s a very busy town or city had a huge shopping

Mall and then I come to this idyllic sort of entrance to the town itself and you’ve got all these paints houses there’s a church in the background even the sky cleared up perfectly to give me this this great image here so Bristow Nisha what’s bris Tanisha famous for them

Well it’s famous for its castle and this is a picture of the castle there it’s a very sort of Germanic castle rather than a British castle with its moat and Bailey and it’s also famous for its churches there there’s one church there and I’m literally just opposite the road

From this very very impressive Church here so that’s all the cycling done for today it was about 75 kilometres tomorrow’s 90 kilometres and I’ll talk to you about it then cheers for now good morning everyone starve another beautiful day this is the first night I’d spent in a hostel and I

Paid 20 euros for the bed-and-breakfast and I ended up in a private room so that’s fine by me and even better than that when I went down for breakfast there appeared to be a Slovenian or female college basketball team staying here as well so that wasn’t the worst

Breakfast I’ve ever had excellent anyway moving on it’s time to think about cycling for the day and I’m gonna be doing 90 kilometres through a national park forest area heading to a place called Mary bore and that’s about it I’ve used some videos from the road and speak to you guys later

Cheers for now so sorry clean that up rest Anisha then I noticed today that there was quite a lot of families out on bikes and people take in general exercise and yeah it’s a good sight to see that it’s not something I’ve noticed in that other countries are travelled

Through in the UK obviously you sometimes get people go out as families and they’ll go for a bike ride within in Northampton where I live there’s a picture of reservoir and people go for bike ride around there in the countries of cycle through so far I’ve not seen

That so this is the first country are seeing families doing outdoor activities and the great parties so the thing that you just saw that was outside the school and that was like a mosaic on the outside wasn’t actually street power and I thought I’d film this because this is

The closest of seeing in Slovenia so far of my idea of what a communist country apartments look like because Lavina is just not like that at all I mean obviously I’m in the rural part and today actually cycle through a national park as well which was quite good so

That was even more raw than normal and I’ve been noticing and I’ve mentioned it before the noble bounds and I’m really fascinated by these barns now so I’ve got quite a few photos and videos of them and in this video you’ll you’ll see a few so you can see how it’s I don’t

Know what it is about only I just find them really sort of like attractive in the Ennis old rustic kind of way the more you look at the more detail you realise they have like there’ll be intricately carved themes and on the outside there we sort of like little

Personal details yeah I really like anyway cycling through the National Park area today was a little bit it felt a bit of a slog to be honest Tyler sent for the day was a thousand metres which compared to the big day that I did a few

Days ago 1,600 metres is nothing but it just seems that every hill was very very steep uphill and there was no real flat section to speak of but there’s no denying that Slovenia is a beautiful country in terms of countryside so far on this trip this is the most beautiful

Countryside that I’ve seen it’s yeah no matter where you look its pristine it’s green it looks amazing so I mean I really want to come back to slip in here and work out some bicycle to learn routes if anyone was think asked me or was thinking of planning a

Bicycle trip in Europe I would definitely suggest Lavinia now it is ears hilly so you do need a certain level of fitness but it’s an easy country to cycle around but it’s also incredibly beautiful and untouched as well so yeah it definite smiley commend ation so this gives you an idea

Of the steepness of the hill I’m going down with him on this section but this rook is coming up and yes there are some steep it’s another band this one was really fascinating yeah I just I just love them I really think of them so I have a boring building where you can

Have like a cool building yeah and I like all the buildings in Slovenia so far it’s just like a touch of personality and about them all and it’s yes it’s what makes the Venus stand out I think in in the countries that I’ve cycled through and like I said before

There’s this pride in appearance and things are well kept and you know there’s no rubbish in the countryside it’s just a great country for cycling around I should stop going on about it really but it really is that good when I was cycling and I just veered off and

Went into a little town section because this church caught my eye there is also a castle in this town as well but I didn’t get a chance to go and see it that one thing when you’re on a bike tour you really do have to judge what

You can see and when you can see it for me it’s seen the countryside that’s the thing that I like doing it’s there yeah guys I’m about halfway into today’s journey and looking for somewhere to stop maybe have a cup of coffee and you see the name of that café yeah get it

Give that one a Miss so not too sure what’s going on there I might be in hillbilly country catch you later but I didn’t go into that cafe just in case cuz you’ll never know so yep cycling cycling cycling and I was mentioned the steepness and that gives

You an idea of just how steep it is which is great if you going downhill but I was just about to go uphill on there but again the churches in the towns really stand out and I even found a couple of small cycle paths they weren’t particularly well signposted so I had to

Keep my eye on where the road was the road was up and to my right at this point if the cycle path got too far off off track of the road then I needed to go and check out you know and get off the so-called path and back to the road

Again but it was all good using those Psychopaths and again I saw lots of families outside clean on their trips so my destination for the day was a campsite in a place called Mary bore and the campsite cost me 10 euros which is fine and I’ve been dodging rain all day

I didn’t get rained on when I was cycling and not been rained on when I’ve been camping but it is raining now and I’m doing this commentary on my tent so if you hear any noise that’s the pitter-patter of rain on my tent and it

Looks like I’m in for rain for most of the nights and I think I’ve got a two window a two-hour window in the morning between 9:00 and 10:00 which is probably when I’ll pack the tent up and leave then it’s going to rain all day and I’ve

Got 108 kilometres a so I’m really looking forward to that oh yeah look at those solar panel field another good touch so that’s the end of this vlog for today I’ll leave you with some signs of graffiti cos I said I haven’t seen any in Slovenia so far but it did find some

Getting to the campsite so thanks very much for watching the video subscribe if you liked it and I speak to you next time Cheers good morning everyone so as you can see I have my rain jacket on which means yes it’s raining it’s not actually raining at the minute but it rained all

Night last night as you can see the tents there behind me still set up at the moment the 10th perfectly waterproof the insides fine I mean what else would you expect for a bridge May 10 really come on but obviously the outside of it is got

Water on it so I need to knock the water off get the outside as dry as I can pack the tent up so I can get out on the bike and start the day again and the bike the rest of the bike that was clever on me wasn’t it put my

Finger in the way the rest of the bike is already packed up and ready to go almost that’s perfectly dry so everything’s cool so it’s just a matter of trying to get the tent as dry as I can before packing it because obviously what will happen even though it’s dry on

The inside now if I roll it up with the wet outside eventually it’s going to make the inside damp as well so it’s always one of those things of what you do do you leave it I could stay here if the weather’s going to turn nice and dry

The tent out but it could rain again in five minutes so it’s always one of those things what you do so I just no I think in this case I’m just going to knock the water off and roll it up and I think it’ll be good so I have got a big day

Today as well which is great so I have got 110 kilometres to go to Austria it’s a bit of a miscalculation on my part I think but I’ll have to do it now and I think I’m going to get rain from about two o’clock onwards as well and I think

Rain will be a future now until I get to Bratislava I think I’m in for a bad week of weather so at some point no doubt I’m going to get soaked but there we go all part of the fun apparently I will speak to later guys take it easy

Cheers so we hit the road and it wasn’t raining as I left the campground and the campground by the way in Maribor is definitely worth visiting so if you’re gonna do a bicycle tour in Slovenia and you passing through merry boy I recommend you stay there it’s really

Well organized and well-run obviously it was not peak season when I was there so it’s just slightly off peak but yeah very good and there’s a cycle through merry boy I realised that the city itself probably deserved a day or two days of my time which unfortunately I

Didn’t have to give on this particular tour but it’s there for the next time and as I said I think Slovenia is a great little bicycle touring destination and I would definitely like to come back for a month or six weeks just to to check the country out in more detail on

The bike I think there should be some great bicycle tour and routes through through the country and it’s yeah lovely place to cycle inevitably the rain that did hit me just a matter of putting the waterproof gear on and getting on with it really it was

A bit of a shame because it would have been nice to enjoy the you know the views with a clear blue sky day as my last day in Slovenia but you know if it rains it rains what else can you do and I started heading towards the

Austrian border and in front of me the look like there was a cycling club who not road cyclists they’re kind of on hybrid bikes and it must have been a Slovenian Club so they were it looked like they were going to psych them out was Lavinia into Austria do some sort of

Loop and come back so I ended up following these guys over the border and the border crossing was very informal the guy just waved me on and then basically said hurry up hurry up you can catch him up so you must have thought I was with their group so should I have

Shown the passport or not I don’t know it’s really difficult in Europe to know if you should be showing it or not because there is this thing called the Schengen area where once you’re inside technically you don’t need to show your passport but as recent news events have

Probably showed with the migrant crisis etc etc it’s those rules can be sidelined somewhat depending on circumstances anyway I’m in Austria now and Austria is a country that I visited before when I did my cycle ride from England to Cape Town and I followed the river Danube mainly at that point but

This is just some random countryside right now I thought I’d stop off on that River just to show you how full it was with all the water that was falling down so at this point as you can see these houses in Austria they just lacked the I don’t know the distinctive prettiness or

The Slovenian touch not too sure what the Savini InTouch is I think is a lot of windowsill boxes with flowers in an Austria didn’t seem to have that but before I talk about Austria it’s probably worthwhile to do a recap of Slovenia so as I’ve mentioned brilliant bicycle

Tour in destination I would if somebody was asking me which country in Europe they should do a bicycle tour in I would definitely say Slovenia and it’s yeah it’s come as a nice pleasant surprise to me and it’s always good to add another country into your favourites you know

Your top five favorites list which it definitely is so yeah I’d like to return and see a bit more of it and now then so we were in Austria and cycling towards a campground that I’m going to be staying in for the night the aim for the next few days really is

Just to go through Austria almost as quickly as I can because I’ve got an appointment to meet the missus in Bratislava within a couple of days time so it would just be a matter of doing 80 kilometres each day 100 kilometres camping and then going on to the next

Next place until I get to British lava but in the meantime there’s some wonderful views as well of course and the Austrian countryside is very beautiful and rolling hills which I’m sure I’ll come to appreciate much more later on so I’ll leave you as I get to the campground Cheers

Hi everyone so the end of the day’s ride that was quite a long one in the end it was about 110 kilometers I haven’t got the exact score because my GPS ran out of power towards the end which may find him where I was going very interesting because obviously you had quite an

Application then but I’m here in the end Amin staying in a camping place in a place called bad waters Dorf yes excellent name so this is my first night in Austria and in the camping shop I said uh if you’ve got any food here and they said no just beer welcome to

Austria so what I’ve ended up with is tonight some met Dover tortilla chip things I have a bag of chips I have my salsa dip from yesterday point of milk and some whatever that is so that’s gonna be dinner tonight until I get to a shop tomorrow because the other thing is

It’s Sunday and all the shops closed in Austria on a shunt Sunday obviously apart from cafes and restaurants which I can’t go out to because it’s now pissing down with rain but anyway who cares the tent setup and I’m inside in the dry in here so I’m gonna eat my food and make

This video for you guys plan the road ahead and then get some sleep later on take it easy and I’ll speak to you later cheers now