Hiking the Alpe Adria Trail: Day 35

The day didn’t start well. Just as I was leaving the hotel I found a cockroach in the washbasin. Then I just missed a bus. After waiting half an hour for another, I missed the stop for Prosecco and ended up in Trieste, and had to wait for the bus to come back again. So I didn’t start walking until gone 10:00, which I think is my latest start so far.

The beginning in Prosecco wasn’t auspicious either. I spent about twenty minutes trying to find which direction I should be going and which was the right street before I really got the walk under way.

But once out of Prosecco and going in the right direction, I soon found myself at the start of the Strada Vicentina, a grand promenade built high above Trieste in the 1820s. It’s sometimes called the Strada Napoleonica, but to me it makes more sense to call it after the engineer who designed it rather than a certain Corsican who I suspect had little to do with its actual construction.

It must have cost a fortune to build at the time as it’s relatively gentle in its gradient, and apparently involved blasting solid rock to construct. The route is several km long and takes at least an hour to walk. Thankfully it’s reserved for pedestrians and cyclists only. There were quite a few people having a Sunday morning stroll along it today.

The views of Trieste and the Adriatic are amazing from here, and the city gets closer as you walk towards the Strada’s eastern end. Here there used to be a tram going up to Opicina (it only closed about three or four years ago) and if that had been working I could have walked the Strada Vicentina yesterday at the end of the day, and simply got the tram up and down the hill to my hotel (without my unwanted detour to Trieste this morning). Hopefully at some point they will get the tram going again- they were somewhat antique, a bit like the ones in Lisbon, (there’s a stationary one on display in Opicina). In the end it probably all comes down to money, or lack of it.

At the end of the Strada I arrived at a busy road, by an large Obelisk. Helpfully here there was a subway to the other side of the road, where a quiet road uphill led to a camp site before a less grand, but almost as beautiful, continuation of the promenade took me further along the coast, again with views high above the bay. Here there was a perfect spot for my lunch.

The track then descended quite steeply, still in the same direction, before climbing again and eventually turning inland. I crossed back over the motorway and through a couple of villages, Trebiciano and Gropada, before a long stretch of quite pleasant road walking back towards the coast again.

It was a bit of a zigzag route this part, because once I reached Basovizza, I promptly headed north again crossing the Italian/Slovenian border once more (I think this is the fourth time now) on a track, named after another engineer, Josef Ressel.

The reason for all of these border crossings is quite evident. Trieste is on a little strip of Italy only a few miles wide, with the hinterland beyond in present day Slovenia. Now I can’t claim to know the full history, but suffice it to say that Trieste has a various times been a ‘free’ city (as recently as the early 1950s), part of the (Austrian) Habsburg empire and now in modern day Italy. Geographically the borders look a bit peculiar, but there are always good reasons why things end up as they are.

Luckily, with open Schengen borders, it doesn’t matter too much. But probably only 35 years ago, a route such as the Alpe Adria Trail, with all of its border crossings, would have been if not impossible, administratively difficult, I would imagine. I’m sure border officials would have wanted to know why I wanted to keep crisscrossing from one side to another. As it was, today, I saw a guy happily crossing the border, marked by an innocuous road sign, just to walk his dog.

The last few km was a pleasant shaded woodland walk, with frequent signs in various languages, including English, along the way. Then emerging from the wood I arrived at the Lipica Stud farm complex.

Not being knowledgeable about horses, I hadn’t appreciated until recently that Lipica is famous worldwide, and as my hotel, casino and golf complex illustrates, a big moneyspinner. Evidently Queen Elizabeth II has visited at least once as photographs of her are prominently displayed around the hotel. The rooms have doors designed to look a bit like stable doors and there’s a horse theme everywhere. However, as yet, I have not seen one horse. Maybe tomorrow I will.