TET de la course – a Solo Slovenian Adventure

I have been planning a small solo trip for a while now, you know that kind of long weekend trip to get away from it all. After waiting almost all my summer holiday for a nice window of weather, it finally arrived with just a week to spare.

Day 1 – Saturday

I packed my kit and loaded it onto Vera, and after a couple of hours we were ready to go, perfect! I had the loose idea to ride the Slovenian leg of the TET (Trans Euro Trail). I headed away south from home just on lunchtime in about 35°C, at that temp anything under 80km/h in your riding gear is just a personal sauna.

At some point I decided that I would start at the Croatian end and ride the Slovenian TET towards Italy. This is backwards to how the GPX track runs. I rode about four hours in a baking afternoon sun to reach the border town of Patrina at about 16.00.

The first thing that happened when I started the TET was I took a wrong turn and was stopped by a Slovenian man who told me in broken German that I would have to pay a fine for riding on his land. He cooled down after a bit of a rant 🙁 . I tried to explain what I was doing with a lot of finger pointing at the GPS on my phone. Gratefully no fines were paid and I went back to take the correct turn 🙂 . After a short distance the track turned into a series of rock gardens, full of tennis ball sized rocks, it got pretty hairy on the bike trying to keep her moving and balanced while fishtailing up the track. I had definitely found the adventure I was looking for.

I missed the next turn and spent 20 minutes riding around the forest in circles looking for it, happily I did find the right way again. It was a very steep deeply rutted track that I’m not sure I would make it up on my 950 Adventure. Hmmmm, maybe its time for a lighter bike!

Back out into the open flowing tracks and gravel roads was great fun and I covered about another 100km before stopping to camp in a valley, I rode up to the top of the ridge to find a nice secluded campsite. The campsite was perfect but all the large stones has been rolled over on the grass like someone was looking under each one for something, this struck me as odd. Ah – bears, hmmm….

So I chose to camp down in the valley hidden from the road. I didn’t have any food with me so I guessed that I would be ok, nonetheless I marked my territory by pissing around the perimeter of the camp site to be sure, and put a wooden club in the tent just in case I needed to forcefully explain myself. I’m happy I had a peaceful night!

Day 2 – Sunday

Having not really had any dinner the night before I was pretty hungry for some brekkie. The first town I came across I found everything was closed except for a café that only had coffee and pizza, random! But food is food and I needed the energy so I ordered what I thought was a slice, but I received a whole pizza, yummo!

Over brekkie Steve and Amand and I caught up via WhatsApp, you know one of those random catch ups about stuff. We chatted about a couple that I had meet the previous day that were planning to ride around the Black Sea in two weeks on a road bike. After doing a similar trip in 2017 over 6 weeks I thought their plan was optimistic, still each to the own, and I hope they make it and have heaps of fun, like we did 🙂

I had a great day exploring the TET trail working my way towards Italy. About three in the afternoon I was still up in the mountains and had almost run out of fuel and my phone, which I was using for GPX tracking, had below 10% battery left and had stopped charging.

I meet two ladies and a bunch of kids out for a Sunday walk and asked if they knew of a fuel station nearby. After a quick search they said about 30km away, hmmmm this is going to be tight… As I took off the kids decided that I should do a rally start as they raised the starting gate.

On every downhill section I turned the motor off and coasted down it. Thankfully I made it with about half a liter to spare, I was counting my lucky stars. I also managed to buy a phone charger, this was trip saver as without it I couldn’t continue the TET. After an ice cream to celebrate it was back to business.

Part of the Slovenian TET looks down over Trieste from hills behind, I arrived here late afternoon, what a magic view looking out towards the Mediterranean Sea.

Pushing on into the evening I headed back inland and found a secluded spot to camp just off a side road. While setting up camp I heard wolves howling, hmmm ok. Just to be safe I marked out my territory again. As I got into bed I heard lots of wolves howling again, fingers crossed, and another club in the tent. The night passed with no dramas, yay.

Day 3 – Monday                

I woke up to the most pleasant riding gear smell you can imagine.

I packed up camp and got back on the road again. Yep, you guessed it brekkie time, this time I found a bakery and a supermarket which made for the perfect brekkie of yoghurt drink, bananas and fresh bread. Perfect, also I stocked up on snacks, water, etc.

The checkout chick at the supermarket spoke very good English and we chatted about some random stuff. She seemed keen to chat some more, which made me wonder how bad I really smelt in all my fruity riding gear?

I was now headed for the mountains in the corner between Slovenia, Italy and Austria, this should be good!

As I was winding my way up a mountain road, my Navi said turn off the road and go up what looked like a gravel track while the TET GPX track said to stay on the main road. I took the road less traveled and head up the gravel track, this turned into a fun little side adventure.

I found my way through and after a couple of dead ends and some steep climbs up rough gravel tracks, I was back out on the road again – what a blast, perfect.

The road then turned into gravel and was perfect for a bit of blasting on a big adventure bike. Riding down the other side was quite steep and windy and close to the bottom my rear brake faded and stopped working. I carried on knowing that they would just need to cool down.

Along the next valley there was a traffic jam, I just made my way along the traffic as you do on a bike to see why things were held up.

This traffic jam took about 15 mins to solve with a lot of hand waving. The upside was I had a clear road in front of me and it was a blast along this nice stretch of winding road. Go baby go!

Somewhere on the next pass I crossed over into Italy and as I headed into the valley the first rain drops started. Bugger.

At the next crossroads, I met an Austrian lady on her street bike, we chewed the fat for five mins or so and I was on my way again. This next pass was mostly a one lane road and very slow to ride, but also insanely beautiful at the same time.

The next mountain pass I took crossed back over into Austria and on this one it pissed down for about 15 mins on the way up, it was like a wet sloppy kiss goodbye from Italy, but not of the nice kind.

Knowing that the weather would be closing in from the west the next day I chose to ride back to Graz that night. I took some backroads and got home just on 10pm after 14 hours plus in the saddle, the last hour was agony on my back side.

I guess that means I need to ride my bike more often eh… 😉

As always the GAS team would love hear your comments 😉