The Julian Alps of Slovenia - A Walker's and Trekker's Guide

Over 60 walks which bring the best of Slovenia’s Julian Alps to the English-speaking walker. The walks are organized around five bases – Kranjska Gora, Bovec, Kobarid, Bled and Bohinj. The routes range from easy valley walks and rougher forest trails to high-mountain protected routes and multi-day treks.

'Slovenia is a beautiful little country about the size of Wales, and one gets the impression that the Slovenes were very reluctant Communists: they wasted no time assimilating western European culture and democracy and fully capitalising on the tourist potential of their homeland, particularly their 7,000 km of walking and climbing trails.
    I find Cicerone guides are generally top class. This one, dealing with mountain walks and short treks in Slovenia’s Julian Alps, is an up-to-date replacement of their previous publication about walking in Slovenia written by Simon Brown and published in 1993. Comparing the two publications shows how design and photographic reproduction have advanced in the past dozen years. The new guide, written by a couple who have been resident in Slovenia for the last three years, uses excellent layout to make it easier to consult, the plastic cover ensures the book will take a lot of punishment and the quality of the colour photography is fabulous and makes you want to get up and leave immediately!
    The route descriptions are uncomplicated and leave little room for misinterpretation, even for a serial misinterpreter like myself. The 61 routes covered, varying from easy walks taking a few hours to four-day climbing treks, are graded, and the grades are well explained. Relevant useful contact details and websites are given, together with a simple list of ordinary social words and phrases so that one can do Slovenes, most of whom speak a little English, the courtesy of at least trying their language. A fine production all round, and highly recommended for anyone planning to walk in Slovenia.

(Michael Fewer, Walking World Ireland December 2005)

'I don’t know anyone who has come back from Slovenia, particularly from the Julian Alps, who hasn’t been entranced. Enjoyment of magnificent limestone landscape is enhanced by an excellent network of trails, some via ferrata, and many good huts. Access has become very easy by direct flight from Dublin. So, a new plastic-bound Cicerone guide with up-to-date information, good route sketches and many colour photographs is very welcome.
A quotation from the great mountaineer, TG Longstaff, heads the introduction:
          “Triglav reigns over a dreamworld… surely there is no other mountain world like this….”'

(Joss Lynam, Irish Mountain Log Autumn 2005)

'A couple of Sundays back, I came home from the Forest of Bowland: less than a hundred miles by train. It was slightly more expensive than my return by Ryanair from the Julian Alps of Slovenia: it also took me two hours longer.
    Simple to get to, inexpensive once you’re there, and with paths and ridges that make Striding Edge on Helvellyn seem like an easy bit the mountains of Slovenia are typical of the fine fun to be had doing hut-to hut in the less celebrated corners of Europe. The mountains rise to only about 2,500m, but they’re limestone, which means spectacular. The huts stand on the rims of vast pine-tree valleys, or beside little green lakes, or in between vertical mountain towers. Inside them people eat garlic soup off red chequered tablecloths, meanwhile singing Austrian yodelling songs and asking you about the Lake District in slightly accented English. Between them are paths where you choose between the pretty route, a flowery forest, a shelf across a crag or the spectacular, perched on a pinnacle with a reassuring iron chain to hang on to. Hot sunshine is interrupted by the occasional spectacular thunderstorm, during which primordial salamanders, like bakelite lizards with orange stripes, come out and stare at you from the stones.
    For me, such hut-to-hut fun is what the fitness acquired in the Forest of Bowland is for. It is, of course, a foreign country: so a good guidebook is useful to work out how to do it. Will the path be terrifying, or merely somewhat scary? Do I need a sleeping bag, do I need an ice-axe, do I need to book ahead, which are the really good bits? When heading for hot, rocky Europe, I order the Cicerone guide even before I order the map (the book will tell me which is the right map to buy). The Julian Alps is not only an unusually good hut-to-hut venue; it has an unusually good Cicerone guide. Normally the book’s either written by a slick and competent professional based in the UK, or by a totally knowledgeable local. Either is ok, though I prefer the mildly eccentric output of the all-knowing local. But Roy Clark and Justi Carey fall into both categories at once. They live there and romp about all over it, all the time; but they also know how to write it all down clear and crisp. The book wanders round the lakeside and claws its way up the highest exposed scrambles. Take it to Slovenia, allow ten days or so, and be sure to take in Triglav.
    Then again, the Tatras of Slovenia/Poland, the White Mountains of Crete, the Picos de Europa all also have Ryanair, limestone, and a Cicerone guide. Or, of course, you could go for a plod across the Forest of Bowland.'

(Ronald Turnbull, Strider Spring 2006)