Weekend on blooming Velika Planina – Exploring Slovenia
As we drive near the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, heavy raindrops slowly dwindle and thick black clouds tear aside providing a peek of the mountains. Velika Planina, a excessive Alpine plateau on the Alps’ southern rim simply 30 kilometers from Ljubljana, had simply began to point out some greenish hues in its huge brown fields after an extended winter, but in lower than two months cows from the neighboring villages will probably be already grazing in these highland pastures. In April, nevertheless, because the snow melts away, Velika Planina is well-known for one thing else. Carpets of purple crocuses get away yearly, turning Velika Planina right into a blooming place straight out of a fairy story!
We had booked a picket hut with Alpine Resorts and had been exhilarated to spend the following three days within the mountains. Though it didn’t look like it, the timing couldn’t be extra good. Three weeks earlier than the fields had been nonetheless underneath snow, then the nice and cozy spring solar lastly arrived melting it rapidly. Not even every week later an enormous snowfall lined Planina with yet one more half a meter. At this level I had given up all hopes of seeing crocuses! As a substitute, out of serendipity, the temperatures rose above 20 levels every week earlier than our departure and the primary photographs of crocuses began to seem on Instagram simply as we had been packing! (hey, try Exploring Slovenia’s Instagram account!)
We drove to the best car parking zone, Mačkin Kot, placed on heavy backpacks loaded with water, meals and garments for 3 days, and headed in direction of our hut. The mists had been dancing within the wind and darkish clouds often sprinkled the land with fluffy snowflakes. Closed up, shielded from the chilly, the crocuses adorned the fields, humbly including some coloration to an in any other case grey day.
Alongside the best way I considered our ancestors and the infinite effort they put into shifting the cows from decrease within the valley to the excessive Alpine meadows. As soon as up there, they wanted to guard them from wild animals comparable to bears and wolves, provide water, which was a tough process on this karst limestone land the place the rain normally sips proper by way of the earth into the underground, and supply the essential consolation for themselves. Locals, in any case, have been utilizing these highland pastures and their nutritious grass for hundreds of years. Archeological proof exhibits indicators of people, likely herdsmen, on Velika Planina as early because the prehistoric occasions!
Immediately, Velika Planina is taken into account an enormous Alpine pasture with one in all Europe’s final remaining excessive mountain shepherds’ villages nonetheless producing dairy merchandise by following the outdated custom.
The widespread observe these days is to rent a particular shepherd and milkman for all of the cows of the realm, on Velika Planina as an alternative every shepherd nonetheless manages their very own cows and prepares their very own dairy merchandise. Due to this fact, each summer season, from June to September, shepherds from the encircling villages return to their mountain properties to steer a easy life taking their herds to a pasture each morning and getting ready dairy merchandise for the remainder of the day.
Whereas there are literally three settlements on Velika Planina – Gojška Planina, Mala Planina and Velika Planina, the realm bought its identify after the largest and most developed one. The shepherds’ settlement of Velika Planina consists of 64 enchanting oval picket huts, which have stored a singular Alpine structure following an entire reconstruction after the entire settlement burnt to the bottom in WWII. Each hut additionally has a picket fence, inside which the cows relaxation after they’re not out grazing. There are a number of ponds for the animals alongside the pastures and one effectively for the shepherds. Again within the days in the course of the dry intervals when water was scarce, the shepherds needed to climb into the colder Veternica Cave close by, recognized for preserving the snow even within the hottest summer season months, and accumulate sufficient snow for water for the animals and themselves.
Snowflakes gathered calmly on our jackets as we marveled on the outdated shepherds’ settlement and the dense patches of crocuses all wrapped up and looking out small. The chilly slowly crept up making us decide up our tempo to the newer a part of Velika Planina with picket huts principally meant for guests like ourselves. We lastly reached our cozy little hut named Koča Tisa: our residence for the following three days with two bedrooms, a kitchen, lavatory and a eating room with a sofa and TV. On high of all the pieces this place additionally had a sauna and an outside jacuzzi! We lit the hearth and loved a superb home-cooked dinner because the dance of tiny snowflakes continued exterior the home windows.
The next morning we woke as much as a surprisingly sunny day. The solar lured us all exterior and shortly my son and I had been each absorbed into delicate trying crocuses in entrance of the home, which opened as much as the heat of the brand new day.
It’s straightforward to neglect which century you’re in whenever you stroll by way of these open meadows, the purple wild flowers shimmering within the morning breeze and conventional picket huts scattered alongside the path. After a loop hike to the highest of Velika Planina at 1,666 m and its pastures, we watched because the eerie clouds, which had fashioned across the highest peaks of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, began approaching us quick with the rising wind. A snowstorm despatched us again into the hut, the place we lit the hearth, ready the sauna and jacuzzi, and loved the remainder of the afternoon cozily inside. (A touch for the clever: the close by restaurant Zeleni Rob additionally prepares take-aways which you’ll eat within the consolation of your personal hut!)
The climate for our third day was forecasted sunny however chilly and windy. Not ultimate however nice for seeing the dawn in Velika Planina throughout crocus season.
My alarm went off at 5.30, when everybody else was nonetheless sleeping. I crept out of the home, put our excited canine on the leash and raced in direction of the outdated shepherds’ settlement.
A couple of photographers had been already gathered on the Kapelica Marije Snežne (Chapel of Our Girl of the Snows) in heat winter jackets, gloves and their hoodies pulled over the hats. It was -4 levels and ferociously windy. Having ran into my pal Jaka, I made a decision to hitch him on his visits to the beautiful viewpoints for the dawn images on Velika Planina. The clouds obscured the primary daylight, however when the solar lastly did peek out, we gasped on the otherworldly views of the sunlit purple carpets of untamed flowers amongst small picket huts, scattered across the brilliant inexperienced pastures. All arrange in opposition to a picturesque backdrop of the awakening Kamnik-Savinja Alps.
An hour and a half later I used to be already again within the heat mattress comforting my half-frozen limbs and pondering of the dreamy sights I had simply witnessed. Positive, Velika Planina is attractive at any time of the day, but there’s nothing like watching the solar peek over the horizon to announce a brand new day, particularly with the bottom lined with infinite fields of crocuses.
We left within the afternoon that day after having stated goodbye to our cozy hut and with a sizeable portion of cottage cheese štruklji safely packed within the backpack as a candy reminder of the beautiful mountain life. Whereas these are already gone, we’re all positive we’ll be coming again for extra magic and candy moments many occasions sooner or later.
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