You should arrive in Ljubljana the day before your tour start date, to allow for any travel of luggage delays and to give yourself time to relax before your adventure begins.
We recommend staying at B&B Slamič, since this is where your guides will meet you on the morning of day 1.
Your local guides will meet you at B&B Slamič in Ljubljana in the morning, then we will grab your morning coffee and they’ll run through the all-important pre-trip briefing.
Your guides will then help you build your bikes and set up rental bikes, ready for your first warm-up ride in Slovenia. Ljubljana is surrounded by a huge network of fabulous local trails, and you’ll only have to pedal for 15 minutes from the city centre to reach the start of your ride.
We’ll break you into your trip gently with some lovely wooded double track and singletrack, with a few rooty sections to wake you up after your travels!
After a couple of hours of really enjoyable trails, we’ll drop back to our start point and have lunch, before making the hour-long drive to our hotel in Bohinj, not far from the beautiful lake, where we’ll spend the next two nights.
We’ll enjoy dinner in a local restaurant which specialises in traditional Slovenian dishes made from seasonal, organic produce including: venison, asparagus, trout, porcini mushrooms, wild berries and buckwheat dumplings.
On your first full day on your mountain bike tour Slovenia we’ll embark on a truly breathtaking mountain bike ride on Vrh Bace mountain. You will start the day directly from your hotel, with a 700m warm up ascent!
This trail consists of World War I mule tracks that have a fantastic gradient for mountain biking, with a relatively easy ascent (for the Alps!).
After taking in the view and having lunch you will descend on a mixture of mule and gravel tracks, and pristine Slovenian singletrack to the opposite side of Vrh Bace.
After a refreshing beer at a local cafe, we’ll load our bikes onto the train to travel back through the mountain we’ve just ridden over to our little village, where we’ll saddle up again to ride back to our accommodation.
Dinner this evening will be in a fantastic typical mountain village restaurant, where we’ll enjoy delicious local meats from the grill, accompanied by vegetables and some of the local schnapps (which is something of an acquired taste!).
Today we first drive towards the western edge of Slovenia, and will start riding up the Vršič Pass.
The road to the Vršič Pass is considered to be one of the most beautiful mountain roads in the whole of Europe. You will be surrounded by Dolomite-style peaks reaching high above you to a height of around 2,500m, and we’ll be watched over by the rock face of a Pagan lady that is emblazoned on the sheer rock of Prisank mountain.
Slowly, with lots of ‘photo stops’, we climb to the pass at 1,611m on an old road with cobbled stones which rewards us with some of the best mountain views on the trip. You will have lunch on the pass in a typical alpine mountain hut, before an incredible descent back down valley to Kranjska Gora.
Today you will start in Kranjska gora, at the Slovenian world cup ski centre. We pedal to the Austrian border where you will start the real climb towards Tromeja, which literary means ‘three borders’ or trig point between Slovenia, Italy and Austria. You can actually stand with one foot in Austria, one in Italy and your bike in Slovenia!
This will take around two hours, but don’t worry, there is a fabulous mountain hut on the Austrian side of the three borders trig point where you can have a well-earned coffee!
From there you will ride along the Karavanke mountain ridge, on the border between Slovenia and Italy, to get the best views over the Julian Alps. This unforgettable day will culminate with a grin-inducing descent into Italy, where we’ll reward ourselves with pizzas all round.
Your friends won’t fail to be impressed when you tell them you had breakfast in Slovenia, coffee in Austria and pizza in Italy!
We’ll finish our ride at our comfortable accommodation in Bovec, where we’ll spend the next two nights.
You will start this incredible ride from just within the Italian border, with a climb up an old Italian road leading us to the high alpine pastures where we will have amazing views over the whole of the Julian Alps, the Soca river below us and the mountain ridge of Kanin, and even as far as the Dolomites on a clear day!
For lunch we will join some local shepherds at planina Bosca for some fresh local cheese specialities that they will be delighted to share with you.
After lunch you buckle up and embark on another 15km descent that will have you laughing, whooping and grinning all the way to the valley floor and beyond – a day to remember for the rest of your life! But the day is not over – we will have another refreshment on the banks of the emerald Soca river before we transfer back to our accommodation and dinner in Bovec.
We’ll round off our day at the Thirsty River pub, where you’ll enjoy some great local beers and Slovenian atmosphere.
After a hearty breakfast we will continue to the small village of Livek, where we will start biking up to the summit and mountain hut of Monte Maggiore.
Monte Maggiore is located on the border with Italy and was one of the places where the harshest fights during the WWI Isonzo front took place. From the top you will ride a breathtaking 12km downhill on the Italian side of the mountain.
You will get to see the change between the rough Alpine environment and the lush green hills of the south and wine growing region. Your hotel this evening sits high above the vineyards, and you’ll even get to soak your muscles in the stunning pool with views across the valley.
You’ll walk to your restaurant in the village which makes its own organic wine from local grapes to accompany the delicious menu of meat, cheeses, vegetables and scrumptious desserts.
We’ll start today with a breakfast of local ham, cheese and home made yogurt, then leave the wine growing region behind and head for the coast. First we’ll have a short transfer to the foot of the coastal mountain of Slavnik.
We’ll climb to the summit hut at 1,028m where you can catch the first glimpses of the sea and look back over the wine growing region and on to the mountains where you have been riding all week. From the summit you will embark on the final descent of the week.
This descent starts as a flow-trail feast, then the trail turns away from the ridge onto the coastal facing slope, and becomes a little more rocky, but still has great flow. At the foot of the mountain we’ll weave through the village to finish our ride at a local craft brewery for lunch and tasting, before our transfer to Piran and the completion of your week’s mountain biking adventure.
We’ll check into a stunning hotel with views over the ocean, 10 minutes walk along the coast from the old town where you will have dinner watching the sun setting over the Adriatic sea. Life is good!
Sadly this is the end of our tri-country mountain biking adventure.
We will return you to Ljubljana airport by 12 noon to catch your flights home.