Lake Bled

27 June

We headed off from Plitvice following the GPS "shortest" route.  This meant we got up close and personal with the North Croatian  and Slovenian countryside and villages.  To start with we skirted through the top of the national park in woods of spindly conifers, then descended into lush pasture, all cut for hay, and some horticulture.  No livestock was visible and few of the houses seemed to have barns nearby so we wondered where the animals were kept. Gillian developed a thing for the drying rack they use for the hay. We deduced that it must take too long for re hay to dry where it is cut so they hang it on these wooden rack ) with a simple V shaped roof over it - to dry it off before storing it. Storing is sometimes in the cylindrical  bales we see in NZ - some times wrapped in clear wrapping material - open at the end as we saw in Southern Italy - some times completely wrapped . I wish we had a photo of the constructions used for storing the fodder - hard to explain but basically it is a large X with a roof. the top half is used to store fodder and below the small tractors and other farming equipment is garaged.

In amongst the hay there is cropping. There are also often large tracts of pasture left to the wild flowers - wow! they are magnificent. they come in every hue - red, pink, lavender, blue ( corn flowers), yellow, white - lots of cow parsley. Vineyards appear everywhere until it gets to high for them to survive.

Crossing into Slovenia we found the quality of the roads was still great and the villages were little different from Croatia, which is logical as they were the same country until 1991.  As we moved north the houses became more "alpine" with Austrian style chalets high on the steep slopes.  At one point the GPS put us on an unsealed logging road over a range of hills, but after 15km we descended into the next valley and regained the tar seal.

Lake Bled is a nice small lake with an island, containing a church, and a castle high above the lake on a sheer rock.  There were boats to take visitors to the island propelled by the boatman standing on the rear of the boat rowing with long oars.  The water was clear, but the lake bottom around the town was unappealing with cutoff piles and tree branches overlaid with silt.

We drove around the lake and then explored an area where there was lots of seating. In the lake that Stephen mentioned there was evidently a prized tree stump which was situated in front of us and just below the surface of the water.  The ducks vied for possession thereof and moved each other off to gain a perch. Thereupon a frenzy of preening followed until the next usurper arrived. Very funny to watch.

It was a lovely warm sunny afternoon - our contemplation of the beauty of it was was disturbed by the realisation that one , or both, of the couple who lay recumbent on the grass behind us,where about to break the sound barrier with his/ her snoring! Also very funny