Pedal further.
“Where are you going?” asks the wife to the pudgy husband clad in cycling gear. “I’m taking my inner child out for a stroll” is the answer. It might be a cartoon from an Italian newspaper in the early 2000s, but the message is as true then as it is now: prima facie, there’s nothing less productive than bikepacking. To cycle for hours on end, exposed to rain and sun and wind and dust, only to do it again the next day, feels absurd. A train is faster, a car comfier. But the reality is that on a saddle is more fun.
As luck would have it, my old friend Tiziano thought the same too.
Day 1.
It’s easy to miss Slovenia. Sandwiched between Italy, Austria, the Balkans and the plains of Hungary, Slovenia is smaller than New Jersey and has a population about half that of Rome. Usually ignored, sometimes confused with Slovakia, this country has thousands of reasons not to deserve to lurk in the shadows. Starting from some top-notch gravel roads.
It doesn’t take long for Ljubljana, the capital, to thin out into the countryside. We ride through thickets of pines and fields of mustard, the warm summer air filled with the scents of resin, flowers and herbs. The road is crushed limestone and it’s smoother than many tarmac streets in London.
Tizzi and I pedal at a leisurely pace, savouring the ride. We’ve got about 106 km on the menu today, and the bikes feel heavier than usual – bags do tend to have that effect. We’ve known each other since high school and, together, we’ve been from Japan to Kazakhstan on trains, planes and automobiles; lately, it’s been bikes. I ask him if we aren’t experiencing the early onset of a mid-life crisis. “Usually people get a Porsche when that happens” is the reply.
Indeed there isn’t much of mid-life-ish in what comes next. The Garmin bike computer blurts out an alarmed beep – imagine a startled R2-D2 – and a chart that would be the joy of a stockbroker comes up on the tiny screen. It’s a climb, and a heavy one.
The picture-perfect gravel road rockets up the side of a hill at the angle of the arm of a gladiator saying ‘morituri te salutant’ to Caesar and, indeed, we’ll feel like dying soon enough. There’s a first ramp and, once that is done, another. Then another. Then I lose the count.
Ribnica offers a moment of respite, and we stocked up on fruit and drinks in the airconditioned bliss of a Lidl. There, not for the first time, my sticker of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski is mistaken for a Jesus. And, as soon as we clear the town, the climbs restart.
Then, at last, we cork out of the woods and into a valley fit for a chocolate commercial. Neat pastures, rolling hills and tiny marzipan villages fill the views: among them was Veliko Bloke, our stop for the night. The hamlet, huddled around the church and the local fire station, had no shops or restaurants so, while Tizzi handle the check-in, I rush back to Nova Vas to stock up on the essentials (beer). It is on the way back, with the sun setting and the herons casting long shadows in the meadows, that I realise that the two bananas I’d purchased in Ribnica, which I was planning on eating for dessert, had fallen off my saddle bag.
Day 2.
Here and there are reminders of a recent past when these lands weren’t as picture-perfect as they are today. Stone steles, often adorned by a red star, remind the passer-by of the death of young partisans at the hands of the Nazi-Fascist occupiers. During the trip we would also coast a war cemetery, legacy of the other catastrophe that hit these lands: not far from where we are, in the deep gorges dug by the Isonzo/Soča river, Italy and the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian empire chose to bleed each other to death during World War I. Twelve major battles were fought in a landscape more suitable to free climbing than warfare, with Italy alone losing more than 300,000 men to a strategy so senseless that commanders introduced the Roman practice of decimation to “encourage” the troops to march to their deaths.
Things, and this isn’t something we get to say every day, have improved a lot since then. Cerknica, where we stop for a quick coffee, is a mecca for cyclists of all kinds, and there’s an air of camaraderie among us bike enthusiasts. The Vuelta is on, and giant billboards remind the populace of which channel they can get up to speed with the exploits of local legend Primož Roglič (Matej Mohorič and Tadej Pogačar have, instead, given it a miss this year).
The views past Cerknica remind me of a Kusturica film – wooden barns, a crane standing on its intricate nest, farmers making hay and a placid river full of silt. We lull our minds with thoughts of Balkan food and fast brass music, but it’s not long before Slovenia returns to the more familiar business of relentless climbs.
Today’s route is shorter, a mere 87 km, and as it’s nearing to a close we find ourselves on a maintenance access road running parallel to the motorway. On our left are shoals of lorries and cars and caravans diving towards the Adriatic Sea; where we are, instead, there’s no one. Tizzi and I ride two abreast, chatting about work, friends back home and the sort of nonsense we always seem to fall back on when we’re together. It’s almost a disappointment when, suddenly, our hotel comes into view.
Day 3.
Our third and last day on the saddle starts in the most bourgeois way possible, with a scrumptious breakfast on the terrace of our posh hotel in Sežana. As we told ourselves at check-in, we no longer are young and penniless and, besides, we had more than 100 km ahead of us before reaching the starting point in Ljubljana. Some comforts are deserved.
At some point, the day before, we crossed an invisible divide, the boundary between Mitteleuropa and the Mediterranean. Yesterday we were in the land of wooden barns, Austrian-styled churches and fields of mustard; today, instead, we coast lush vineyards ready for the harvest, whitewashed houses and bell towers styled after the one towering above San Marco’s basilica. Even the window blinds are what we call veneziane.
The wind carries the smell of the sea and there’s a whiff of Venice in the air, so to speak. Even the gravel has changed, morphing into chunkier rubble and rocks that makes me glad of mounting 45mm tyres. Eventually, buffeted by a strong crosswind, we arrive at the first stop of the day, a supermarket in the outskirts of Ajdovščina.
There’s a long, drawn-out climb between the town and Logatec, says the cashier of the Lidl. “Beautiful, but uff” she adds. A pensioner right behind me adds two words that explain everything: “Cima Coppi”, the title given at the year’s highest peak in the Giro d’Italia. A tall, wooded hill looms in front of us.
This time over tarmac, Tizzi and I sink in our separate pain caves. This climb mightn’t have the gradient of the previous ones, but what it lacks in steepness it more than makes up with its length. And it’s hot, 35 Celsius, and the summer in London has been decidedly damp. Still, I find myself enjoying this. Worries are forgotten, emails and Teams are as if they’d never existed. There’s only me and the bike, the slow turning of the crank and the views. People wave, cows look on, a bird of prey ascends the thermals. Life is simple and wholly satisfactory: I started at point A, I’m going to point B, I’ve got two peaches and a can of Coke Zero in my saddle bag. Then the Garmin emits a beep of exultation, and the climb’s over. Tizzi and I reunite and descend into Logatec as a two-people peloton.
Roads start getting busier the closer we get to Ljubljana. Bike lanes, roadworks, traffic lights. My shoulders are stiff, legs sore, I can see salt decorating my bib like tiger stripes. Thirty km to go, then twenty-five, then twenty. I’m constantly checking the Garmin, eager for it to end. But then, out of nowhere, the road has one last present to give.
Our track turns away from the main throughfares, away from the traffic, the car dealerships and big box retailers. We pass under the motorway and emerge back on smooth, white gravel roads running between corn fields. Suddenly, I feel a surge of energy running through my whole body: I say to Tizzi that I’ll meet him at the end and start one last sprint. I slide through corners, push on the pedals and ride as hard as I can as the sun sets and the farmers go home. Eventually, the gravel thins out and the hotel appears at the end of a boulevard.
Tizzi arrives soon after. We shake hands, drink the first beer and, still in our cycling gear, start disassembling our bikes. They’re far from the pristine steeds we rode out of here just three days ago; now they’re dirty, coated in dust, chain lube and drips of sweat. As I put mine back in its cardboard box, ready for the flight back to London, I notice a vinyl decal I clumsily placed on the chainstay, trying to cover one of the many paint scuffs suffered during one fall a while back. It depicts a snake and two words. An invite, an exhortation, a promise:
Pedal Further.
