Sea, salt, Soča and sozzled!

After finishing Predjama Castle on Monday, April 8th and getting the shuttle bus back to the car park, we left our parking spot at 15.30 and continued down to Piran on the west coast of Slovenia. This whole area used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of the First World War when it was given to Italy. It is also the only part of Slovenia that has a coastline. The park up was in a field (P4N#346834) with electricity, next to the beach with the rest of the facilities in the adjacent campsite, Camp Fiesa. It was a tad expensive at €38 per night (including tourist tax) but there were very few options available and we had been told that Piran had some fine Venetian architecture. It also had boats so that was a draw too!

We sorted ourselves out quickly as we wanted to walk into town along the coastal path about a mile or so away whilst it was still light. One of the main monuments in Piran is the Bell Tower of the Cathedral of St George but sadly it was covered in scaffolding (there seems to be a theme for our trip!). We wandered around the back alleyways and ended up at a bar overlooking the Adriatic. We hadn’t been back to this part of the Med for about 7 years so it was lovely to look across to Croatia and reminisce.

We just made it back to the van before it was dark and we were greeted by our Austrian neighbours with a glass of schnapps! It would have been rude not to accept. Dinner in the van and a relatively early night for us.

Next morning, Tuesday, we were ready to explore Piran properly and set off back into town via the coastal path. The town itself is quite lovely with a large open square (that used to be the inner harbour), cobbled alleyways and a quaint harbour. We spent a good couple of hours wandering around and stopped for a coffee in the main square before heading back to Dora.

We left Piran around 13.30, drove through Pontorose (which was lovely) and stopped for lunch at the nearby salt pans which are now a nature reserve (P4N#57784).

After that brief stop, we made our way up to the NW of the country and the Soča River Valley. We had intended to stop at the Solkan Bridge for the night (P4N#177464). It was a lovely spot but it was also by a busy road and a railway line so we decided to see if we could find a better alternative, figuring that there would be space later once the hikers had gone home if we changed our minds.

The Soča river is naturally this colour!

The Soča valley is famous for its wineries and we wondered if we could find one that was doing a wine tasting that evening. Not only did we find one but, more importantly, it also allowed campervans to park there overnight for a nominal fee (P4N#90585). Result! We arrived at the winery, Lepa Vida, at 17.00 and rang the owner to book ourselves into their wine tasting at 18.00. It was glorious setting overlooking the vines down a very quiet country road. The wine tasting cost €25pp and lasted two hours with fabulous snacks to accompany some very nice wine. Irena, one of the owners, gave us so much history on the wines and Slovenia in general. The name, Lepa Vida, is in honour of the 6,000 local Slovenian women who went to work in Egypt from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 until WWII as nannies and wet nurses to rich Europeans so that they could send money home. There were only four of us for the wine tasting so it made for a wonderful, exclusive evening. Of course, we ended up buying a case of wine so it wasn’t that cheap a stopover. It was just as well that after trying seven different wines we didn’t need to go far for our accommodation!