It has probably taken you quite a while to discover Green Slovenia and even longer to actually book your first Green adventure to find out exactly what everybody is shouting about..

Well if you had come to Ljubljana 7,000 years ago, this is what it might have looked like, with pretty thatched houses built on stilts above the wet marshlands, dominating one of the few flatter areas of an otherwise wibbly wobbly, hilly, mountaineous Green paradise with a Mediterranean coast..

Even today the rest of Slovenia nicknames the residents of Ljubljana as "Frogs" and if you shuffle around Ljubljana castle with all the other phone monkeys, oblivious to the soooo many other much better castles, you can look out on the horizon towards the flat green marshes and see where it all began!

It was in the late 1800's when these prehistoric settlements were discovered and excavated, joining only another 110 or so other sites around the European Alps and nowadays providing a most unexpected half day adventure opportunity to go discover them for yourself!

Watch the signs carefully, cos it looks like the path goes left here, but it is the grass one straight ahead..

We always planned to visit this historic site, having seen just a photo, but never really knew where exactly it was..

Luckily for you and for our guests, we absolutely love to spend the amount of time required messing about on the internet, checking locations, phoning the local tourist people to find out opening times, parking places, etc and then going to discover that particular Secret Place for ourselves..

Then we write these Secret Places to Visit articles to give you a fighting chance of getting to see one of the hundreds of really special, unique, hidden Secret Places you could find ALL OVER Green Slovenia.. if you only knew!

They were not kidding when they described these as pile dwellings and check out the log boat below..

The Ljubljana Marsh Prehistoric Pile Dwelling Houses..

Well that is a real mouthful of a title for a bunch of really old houses, recreated next to a pond in the middle of the marshes on the outskirts of Ljubblyjana.. so we will lovingly describe this site as Bog Island!

(Anyone hanging around late into the weekends in Bath, Somerset in the 90's might remember a tiny nightclub, incredibly, built into a set of public toilets on a traffic island, with steam running down the mirrored walls.. Well it isn't that)!!

It actually took us two visits to work out exactly how to visit this fab outdoor museum, discovering a walking trail from a sparkly new museum building in the little town of IG on our first trip and then returning a second time to park nearer the bog houses and get on a scheduled guided tour of them.

Perfect signage AND you can download the info and read it on your phone if you need to look more at your phone than the lovely nature here..

Yes, we did say IG.. There is a town in Slovenia called IG and it is a very cute, lovely little town too, but having lived here a dozen years, we had never heard of it, until we needed to find out where the Bog houses were..

Sadly, the cheeky toilet humour continues here for a while as the word IG is just too much comedy gold to turn down.. "What do you call an Eskimo's house without an indoor toilet?" Yep, an Ig.. (An Igloo without a loo!!)

We were not joking, it really is called IG..

So huge apologies to the people of Ig for the little joke, cos it has absolutely nothing to do with the Slovenian name, but now and then folks, the Slovenian language gives a little gift to the poor unfortunate souls trying desperately to learn it and pops out a funny word for us students to cling on to and have a bit of a chuckle!

(By the way, when you tune your rental car radio, check it out for a classical radio station here called ARS and if you watch the TV adverts now and then, you might get lucky when they start shouting all about "BUM", which means sale)!!

OK, we promise, that is finally the end of the British toilet humour, how about we go visit some really interesting, fantastically created prehistoric houses sitting in a stunning Green environment near a very attractive little town.. called IG..

Not brilliantly clear here, but there is a long boat moored under the houses, no detail is missed here..

How to get to Bog Island..

First check out where IG is and you will realise, we were not joking when you could see it from Ljub castle, cos it is just outside Ljubljana to the south, say 5 O Clock..

It is a simple 45 min drive from the Lodge up the motorway to the Ljubljana ring road, jumping off to leave the city smoke surprisingly quickly behind and arrive in what can feel like the middle of nowhere, within minutes of leaving the city boundary as you bounce into IG!

Handy car park on the edge of Ig, halfway on the walk from the town to the Pile Dwellings..

You now have two main options to go visit the open air Prehistoric Houses museum.. 

Either turn left down a tiny side road just before the petrol station as soon as you pass the IG sign and park up in a little stone car park for a 15-20 walk to the open air museum site..

Or we recommend going into the centre of IG, parking up, having a coffee and then strolling out about 30-45 mins to Bog island following a marked path to do the tour and then visiting the lovely new indoor museum in the centre of town on your return..

Upstairs at the really excellent, modern, cute Ig Pile Dwelling Museum..

Whichever way you do it, you need to know there are regular visits available, several per day in the summer, so you just need to note what time you have to be standing outside the gates for your tour and give yourself 45 mins to walk there from the centre..

Here is a link to the IG Museum Tour Timetable page (for as long as this link works) and if you thought it might be a bit tricky building a spaceship to go to Jupiter, then try understanding a Slovenian timetable!!

Perhaps an even better representation of how it might have all looked, back at the museum..

Timetables in Slovenia are like an art formed plate of spaghetti on a page, seemingly deliberately designed to confuse, so take our strong tip here and WHENEVER you go visit a new Secret Place in Green Slovenia, PHONE ahead and check your time for tomorrow..

Seriously, it can save your day and we cannot tell you the number of times we have done this and found out that even if we could have deciphered the timetable, then tomorrow, the day we are gonna go, there is some kooky change to the times, like a wedding, a state visit or special holiday or something completely unpredictable!!

We also noticed that when you do phone, you always seem to end up with some useful EXTRA local advice, like there is a beautiful river nearby, where to eat or something like that.. which the phone monkey googlers will never find!

The first info station and start of the boardwalk..

Hiking to the Prehistroic Pile Dwellings (and also where that little car park is)..

There is plenty of parking in the centre of town, near that big church and next to the post office, opposite the new indoor museum building.

We also noticed a concrete palyground is opened as an extra car park, but we never advise parking under the basketball net..

It is still not as common as you might think to be able to get a really decent slice of cake with your coffee here, so, as you are on holiday, we will make a special mention for the lovely little town centre cafe, nestled next to the museum, where you can sit around lovely rectangular antique wooden tables with a cappucino and a very nice slice of cake!

Seriously good Pistachio cake and coffee at the Ig cafe..

Maybe start your Ig adventure here with a coffee and visit the museum first, then go hike out or drive to the prehistoric houses after..

There are signs from the museum to go walk out into the marshes and this is a really fun way to do it, cos it feels a bit like a treasure hunt!

Deffo walk there if you can make time..

Easy to park in Ig, here just opposite the museum..

For most of you the issue will NOT be the physicality of the half hour or so walk out into the marshes to see Bog Island and then walk back.. It will be your lack of time!

So hopefully you will find and read this article BEFORE you make the biggest mistake visitors to Green Slovenia make and that is to book way too little time to visit the most beautiful Green country in Europe per SQ KM, only finding out toooooo late when you get here that there are Green treasures EVERYWHERE to find..just like this one!

OK, so this hike is not the hike to Predjama Castle along a secret forest path from the Lodge or a stroll along the Adriatic seafront promenade from Portoroz to Piran or hiking up to Nanos mountain, but nevertheless, it is a really nice little walk!

Handy little maps along the way..

It might be the only time in your hols you get to really see the little side streets in a cute Slovenian town the size of one of your villages back home..

You might hear the school kids playing in the school field, jump out the way of a tractor heading for the allotment, almost certainly see a beautiful church and maybe the bell will do a little bong for you and maybe spot some sweetcorn stacks hung up to dry for animal feed..

This is just part of the real magic of Green Slovenia, a country where more people live in villages than towns and if you just blast round Bled, Ljubblyjana, Postojna cave and Piran you might end up just seeing a load of other tourists and still have a great holiday, but totally miss out on actually SENSING GREEN SLOVENIA..

If you drove to the Island, you would miss local sights like these sweetcorn stacks, only visibubble on the hike out..

So this walk is a free hit to go do just that and here is an extra cheat for this little hike from IG, cos the signs can be a little confusing, but you are basically heading for that first petrol station on the main road into IG and then from the town, you will be turning RIGHT down a side street next to the petrol station and walking out into the marshes on a fab stone track to get to the outdoor Bog museum..

Just about 50m along this road is the little car park, (which don't forget, you reach by turning LEFT at the petrol station if you drive from Ljub direction).

Car park with emergency toilet near the petrol station at the edge of Ig..

From this car park the hike changes from village to wide open fields and this will be your first feeling of the marsh area where thousands of years of history awaits..

When we say "sense" Slovenia, we really mean it, cos here you will be glad you brought a jacket as the wind whistles through the reeds and they bob about like soldiers standing on parade..

And look left now as you walk into the marshes where the first inhabitants chose to live, cos those hills in the near distance are the capital city baby! If you look hard you can make out the castle on the hill and realise how small Ljubljana really is, but also get the connection to this very spot and understand how much sense it made to the prehistoric farmers to build little villages out here on the fertile flat marshes, with fishing on the menu too!

The photo doesn't show what the eye could see here, but Ljubljana city centre is clear to see over there, with the castle on top of the hill..

The Prehistoric Marsh House tour..

You start feeling part of the tour when you hit the long boardwalk built over the marshes with two info sites explaining how important these prehistoric sites actually are and all the important little touches, like a thick wooden post with a peephole to look through, which shows the spot where the real 7000 year houses were actually dug up.

The boggy mud is, of course, perfect for preserving really old items and this is the same area where the oldest wooden wheel ever found in the world was dug up.

Wheely wheely old..

It is wheely wheely old at over 5,000 years old, (how could we resist that joke) and you can actually go see it if you prefer to lose a spectacular Green day out visiting a waterfall or a gorge and instead go to a museum in Ljubljana!

There is a little bridge over to Bog Island and the bridge gate is locked, which is exactly why you must make sure there is a tour scheduled for the time you show up here.. or this is as far as the show goes..

Make sure you do not hike oit the the island and find a closed gate.. Check the tour times..

The tour ticket also gets you into the indoor museum in Ig town centre..

We got a lovely local student guide, really interested in the history of it all and kind enough to answer our questions as we strolled around the stunning yellow houses, noticing all the little details and transporting ourselves back to the times when people lived out here on wooden stilts..

We deliberately won't tell you any more so you can enjoy the short tour for yourselves and then learn more about it all in the very modern, but extremely well done little museum in town!

Easy to imagine them either fishing or playing football with this big net or set of goals..

Lots of other stuff to do around here..

It wouldn't make sense to drive out here just for the Ig indoor & outdoor museums unless it was your real passion project, so today might be the day you come here and then "do" Ljubljana.. honestly, a long afternoon and a meal by the river in the evening are probubbly enough time for the tiny capital city, when you consider how many other amazing secret places to visit there are to see here in Green Slovenia in your all too limited time..

The reason we ended up making two trips to Ig and got the luxury of time to properly understand how to "do" the Bog houses, was cos we found another really beautiful walk along the Iski Vintgar Gorge, just down the road form IG AND an epic far more demanding, almost vertical hike up a mountain to go find a secret Partisan WW2 hospital into the bargain too!

This photo alone should persuafe you to come visit the Prehistoric Marsh Pile Dwellings..

We then did a wonderful off grid country road drive back from Ig on very good local tarmacked forest roads, cutting thorough to Cerknica, the home of the Biggest Disappearing Lake in Europe and an easy hop back to the Lodge.

But there are so many things you could combine into a day trip visiting these fantastic Bog houses.. If you do not live in a central European Alpine region, then you will probubbly not get another chance to see this kinda outdoor museum, so we really hope you have a fantastic visit and also pop into IG to have a little walk around and try to get under the skin of Green Slovenia!