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Published: August 9th 2007
Dougals
The village entry for the Magic Roundabout look-a-like haystack competition was coming on well.Sunday 10th June - Moved away from the flat lands of the East towards the city of Maribor. The hills were welcome and the scenery much nicer - back to the small holdings and attractive villages. Had a trip through Austria and back into Slovenia via a very pretty, and highly manicured, walled town called Radkersberg. Must have some claim to fame with regard to the penny farthing as there is a sculpture of one and an inscription on a house regarding some penny farthing related event that took place there. By some miracle of navigation managed to get out of Maribor on the right road, and called in a the botanical gardens for a bottle of excellent apple juice and a kilo of cherries. Camp site at Radizel failed to materialize, but an excellent guest house in Slivnica fitted the bill. Had a pretty good meal there and now wondering what to do with a kilo of cherries.
Monday 11th June - rode along to the nearby town of Slovina Bistrica, where Richard tried to get hold of a compatible bottom bracket tool at the bike shop, to no avail. Tried again at the next town, but available tools
Winner
Judged best entry in the biggest woodpile competition (Northern Slovenia category). won't fit our bikes. Continued on to Velenje on hilly but traffic-free roads. Velenje is uninspiring, but has a beautiful lake on the outskirts. The campsite there is good and very cheap, but there is an intermittent worrying industrial odour wafting about the place. One of the largest coal mines in Slovenia is situated just near the campsite, and may have been responsible for the odour - it was certainly responsible for the beautiful lake, which was a result of land collapse following extraction of a gignormous seam of coal. (Had a look around the excellent mining museum on the Tuesday morning.) It seems that the history of mining is the same the world over.
Tuesday - after the trip to the mining museum, cycled along to Črna, which was an excellent ride, as usual for this region involving an enormous hill, then a fantastic downhill to the town. Camping on the back lawn at the Krnes Hotel, which is also a mountain biking centre. Very cheap, great food and lots of good riding around here. Richard beside himself with joy, as they also have the required tool to tighten his bottom bracket. Chatted with an Australian couple who
were doing a six month bicycle tour of Eastern Europe. Hope to see them later in Sydney or Ockbrook. On the Wednesday took a ride across to the Savinje valley, which, you ve guessed, involved a blooming great climb on gravel roads followed by a big descent and then we had to do it all again to get back. Had lunch at an excellent restaurant as a reward. However good the chef, there's only so much you can do to disguise a dumpling - and there's nothing you can do to disguise six of the little blighters. They were hidden under mushroom sauce, redcurrant sauce, vegetables, disguised with cheese and walnuts - everywhere dumplings. I had to remind Richard that he had ordered sweet cheese dumplings for pudding tonight - finally bringing his tally today to a gut busting nine.
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Dad an Nora
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Still laughing about the snake
Keep the reviews coming, they are interesting, informative and funny, and we enjoy reading them. Thanks for your birthday wishes, to which I did reply, but my phone won`t let you use ordinary text, its this predictive stuff and at my age its too damn complicated. Any way keep enjoying yourselves. Love from us to you.