When you consider Green Slovenia is just a tiddly country smack in the middle of Europe, with lots of mountains in the top bit and half covered in leaky limestone Karst rock, then it should come as no surprise to you that there are a lot of rivers flowing through to the Mediterranean coast!

There are so many and your best chance to identify a secret one is if you see one of the many blue signs for REKA, (river), particularly if you cross a bridge and then stop somewhere safe and go back to have a bit of a look around & explore..

One of the most beautiful & undiscovered larger rivers here is the uberstunning Vipava river, which runs for 50km directly through one of Green Slovenia's 7 wine regions, the Vipava Valley and finally merges into the most beautiful river of them all, the Soca.. just over the border in Italy!

 

The Vipava river starts it's Mediterranean journey from the 7 mountain springs gushing through the beautiful old town of Vipava and then it curves and wiggles it's way through the centre of the valley, mostly away from the villages and towns that tend to inhabit the steep wine covered slopes that line this picturesque valley..

Most visitors to Green Slovenia will completely miss the Vipava Valley and those few who do often just whizz through on the crisp motorway that whisks visitors from Nanos mountain to Nova Gorica, up to the Gorica Brda wine region and the Soca river.. 

 

But you can't even see the Vipava river from this motorway, so you need to venture into the heart of the valley where there is more than enough of this river for you to explore and enjoy.. IF you go look for it..

Maybe first have a look on a map, google will do for this, find the town of Vipava, then see how it wiggles and slides through the countryside in the middle of the yalley and then sneaks off into Italy from a side door below Nova Gorica!

 

One day there will be a hiking and biking track that follows the entire journey of this stunning green river, maybe not completely next to it the whole way, cos that is impossible in places, but near enough will do and hust a few handy signs please!

It would be amazing to be able to hike or bike along the entire flow of the river from Vipava to Miren where it finally bids farewell to Green Slovenia.. Now wouldn't that be a great idea?!

 

There are several lovely stone tracked stretches along the river, which are also used by the local winegrowers to get around, but they are usually empty and perfect to explore riverside, but not enough..

If you did look at that map to see how this river wiggles through the valley, then it is understandable how tricky it can be to follow the course of this river exactly, but check out how many different bridges there are over it and a plan of action might be starting to come together!

 

Well, our plan on a really hot summers day with temps hitting 35 Degrees in the Valley and water levels quite low at this time of year, was to throw some bikes on the back of the car and drive to a place we know you can always swim in the river and go explore!

We were determined to have an adventure and that was exactly what we got.. We did not see the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building, but we had the most amazing unexpected ride along the river, capped off with a bit of a splash in the water and we are gonna tell you all about it!

 

Vipava River Adventure..

So our mission was simple.. Drive to Rence, near the other end of the Valley, 45 mins from the Lodge and find somewehere to park, then bike along the river, cross a bridge and come back on the other side of the river..

We are huge E Bike fans and use them all the time for all the Green adventure routes we have found from the Lodge, all over the place, but for this trip, we decided to take a couple of regular mountain bikes for a bit of a change..

 

Let's be clear, this was a mistake.. If we had E Bikes, then we could have explored quite a bit further, especially in such hot weather, but our logic was that being near to the river the terrain would be mainly flat and we were dreaming of finding a lovely flat track all the way, next to the river.. but we found out for sure, that doesn't actually exist!

We really, really enjoyed our day by the river and just had to manage the limits of our bodies, with the heat & the regular mountain bikes AND it goes without saying to bring lots of water to drink!

We found a little car park on the edge of Rence where they also store the recycling bins and jumped on the bikes to find the river and see what tracks were available..

 

If you do not know the ap KOMOOT, then we recommend you download and get used to it for exploring Slovenia, cos googlemaps is next to useless for this kind of Green adventure.

Komoot shows all the little tracks and paths that you really need as a hiker or cyclist and we would go as far as to say that without it, this particular trip would not have got started or would we have found our way back!

 

You see it was not as simple as just biking to the river and then following a nice marked trail.. You have to use your noodle a bit and we used Komoot to bike out Rence over the main river bridge to join a track that had us rubbing our hands with glee when we found it!

There were even a few signs at the start of the trail too, but we soon realised we were going up a smaller tributary of the Vipava called the Lijak, (which actually flows from the other side of the valley across to here), but it was lovely, so we continued on a bit in the spirit of exploration until the track abruptly stopped at the main road and we decided to follow another track across country to rejoin the main Vipava river..

 

We always encourage guests to be nosy and explore the extra mile in Green Slovenia, cos you are so often rewarded with something green & unexpected and along this little stretch of tributary, we noticed dozens of fish in the water and found a cute little hut hidden away from the world!

Using Komoot, we found our way back to the main Vipava river and continued upriver on a mix of different types of stone tracks, field tracks and field, but the adventure was to keep as close to the river as we could and that is what we did!

 

It would have been easier to use the quiet Vipava Valley main roads that connect the villages, but then we would not have "hugged" or seen so much of the river..

So to accomplish our mission, we wanted to stay off the main roads wherever possible and we found some really nice stone tracks alongside some vineyards and other large allotment fields and these tracks were really well maintained..

 

A lot of the river side here is tree lined, but you always know where the river is and keep pushing on in the right direction, taking the decision to bike through a field to stay by the river OR go "inland" a bit until you can rejoin the river!

It was a really hot week and the water level was pretty low, but we did meet local kids swimming off little white islands in the river..

 

But the tracks were very dry and we came across a place where water had leaked from a pipe used to irrigate the fruit bushes and had created a large puddle that was absolutely teeming with dragonflies, beautiful..

We noticed a few bridges further ahead on Komoot, so one of these became our target and we also saw a church spire rising from a forested hill on the other side of the river.

Komoot told us this village was called Gradisce nad Prvacino, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it became our new mission to go up this hill, then turn around to cycle back on the other side of the river to Rence..

 

We passed fields full of drooping sunflowers, such was the heat of the day and it is so important to have plenty of water on days like these and to drink regularly..

We found our bridge to cross the river, drank gallons of water and watched from the top as a man threw a stick for his dog to collect in the water..

 

And then the bike ride became a lot harder!!

We mentioned it is extremely advisable to use E Bikes in Green Slovenia and this is where they would have been very handy indeed, cos once we got over the other side of the river, we had to go cross country a bit to find our way to the village..

 

There were tracks, but lots of them and many went steeply up from the river..

We had expected there would be a track directly from the bridge to the river, but there wasn't and it took a bit of exploring, a bit of scrabbling and finally having to push our bikes up a ridiculously steep rocky track, before we made it to the edge of the unpronounceabubble village!

 

Only by scrabbling around like this will you find the little secret spots where locals hang out in their secret forest huts and where they grow their wine and plant their vegetables, so time exploring around here is never wasted!

E bikes would have got us up to the church, but you have to be sensible on hot days and our water was enough to get us back to Rence, so that is what we did from here..

 

We found several tracks where most cars would never go and after checking with a friendly local found our way back on a fantastic stone track to Rence, ..

The route actually brought us back to the same car park on the other side of the village where we had parked..

 

We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves having been in the saddle for a few good hours, but we had seen so much behind the scenes stuff AND survived the heat!

Once the bikes were loaded onto the car, we drove over to the swimming place for our reward.

 

And boy the water was cool and fresh! In Rence they built a dam across the river to make a big swimming area and there is a concrete platform next to the water a bit like a lido.

The place was empty, just a couple of kids walking along the dam, so we had it all to ourselves..

 

You can see from the swimming photos that dark skies were forming in the valley and the heat was finally released in a big rainstorm that we sat in our car to watch eating a well deserved ice cream!

So a job well done and another mini section of the Vipava River mapped, navigated and conquered!

 

There are many wonderful things about the Vipava Valley apart from the wine..

There are a ridiculously large number of fantastic local restaurants here, even what we describe as a Vipava Restaurant Cluster at the Lodge/Nanos/Vipava end of the valley..

But we had heard from a friend of another simply seafood restaurant just outside Vipava old town, so we phoned and dropped in on the way home and boy oh boy, it was absolutely amazing..

 

Wow, all the fish is essentially raw seafood, but the taste and presentation were spectacular.. We know are constantly recommending all the excellent Vipava Valley restaurants to our guests and we were so excited to start recommending this one too..

BUT, the friendly owner told us he was moving to Ljubljana as most of his Slovenian customers travelled down to him from there, which was a little disappointing, but for such niche cuisine we couldn't argue with the logic..

So we are still delighted to strongly recommend this restaurant, (that he renamed to "FISH") and you can find it in Ljubljana! (Now just 10 mins further down the road in the opposite direction for our guests, so tiny are the distances here)!

 

E Biking in the Vipava Valley..

We cannot recommend enough to really explore the Vipava Valley by E Bike. We never got completely lost and we always make sure we can remember our way back if we have to abort an adventure.

However we totally understand that you might just get one day or even half a day to experience this wonderful wine valley, so we always recommend guests rent an E Bike from our bike partner ROCKVELO and you will also get to choose a recommended route to follow on your phone!

 

Not quite the green adventure we described here, but there are several amazing routes to follow and you can ask to take one as close to the river as possible too!

We even have an epic E Bike adventure guests can do directly from the Lodge over Mt Nanos and down into the Vipava Valley, which is so long you need to be picked up and driven back.. After you have maybe done some wine tasting, had a meal or even swum in the river too.. that will be your choice!

 

 

We mentioned the Lijac river, one of the tribitaries feeding the Vipava river, but we will also mention our article on the Vipava Valley Huberlj River in Adjective, cos there is another fantastic secret oasis to swim there.

There are no end of bike rides along rivers you can do in Green Slovenia, we recommend anothe rone that would be really easy to find going along Slovenia's longest Sava river between Sevnica and Brestanica castles.. 

 

We also cannot wait to try the bike path that runs from Nova Gorica along an old train line right next to the Soca river and we will tell you all about it when we do!

In the meantime we sincerely hope you find a day in your schedule to really get to know the Vipava Valley and might be now encouraged to go explore one of the longest, least known rivers here!