Hiking the Alpe Adria Trail: Day 36

After five weeks, I’d finally reached my penultimate day’s hiking. But some have overtaken me! Edwin and Gerjanne, who I met on the trail near Ossiach, and who started after me, arrived in Muggia last night – congratulations to them. And thanks to you both for all your useful advice on the way.

I meanwhile woke in the night with a migraine, and in the morning had my usual post migraine nausea and light sensitivity. Not ideal for walking, but it mostly cleared up after a couple of hours, thankfully.

The hike started with a long walk on the road round the Lipica stud farm. Maybe because it was still early, but I never did manage to see a single horse there.

Leaving the grounds there was a glut of advertising hoardings for casinos, slightly bizarre, as it wasn’t exactly Las Vegas. Once I crossed the road I was back in the countryside. It started with a climb to near the peak of Kokos.

This was nothing like the climbs of past days and weeks and was in the shade, but because I was still feeling a bit sick from the migraine, I had to take it slowly. I knew though that this was the only major climb of the day, and I prefer, when it’s hot, as it was beginning to be again, that the bits of uphill were earlier when it was cooler and I was less tired. All the climbing was done by about 10:30 which was ideal.

Once at the top there were some views of the wooded hillsides and the path started to descend again. I went through a couple of villages, before joining a wide cycle track. This was the trackbed of the former Trieste to Hrpelje railway, which closed in 1958. I followed this for quite a while, eventually crossing back into Italy yet again, for the final time, I think. I found a picnic bench to eat my surreptitiously hidden ham rolls that I’d made up at breakfast.

One thing about tracks along former railway lines, and why they make such good cycle tracks, is that they are almost entirely level. Often though they’re not the most interesting walks, but this one became more interesting as it progressed. First it started to tower over the landscape below, which dropped away to my left. Then there were some little tunnels that the path passed through, and the views opened out around.

The Alpe Adria trail then took a turn off to the left down a sharp zigzag path to what was now a deep valley. And as it did so I started to be able appreciate the Val Rosandra, which I had now entered. This was a real treat, and though I’d been aware that the trail had something special like this at the end To look forward to I didn’t know quite how nice it would be. And so close to Trieste too.

At the bottom I took a path parallel to the valley with marvellous views backward and forward. It was, though modest in scale, the first bit of mountain scenery I’d encountered in the trail for over a week, yet different to other mountainous stretches and a lovely end to the day’s walk.

As I arrived at our bed and breakfast for the night the host explained to me it was Ferragosto, a public holiday, sort of equivalent to our August bank holiday Monday. Which explained why there had been so many people and families out today and why I could hear people having a barbecue outside.

As I write my wife, Jeni, is in the hands of Ryanair, hopefully finally winging her way towards Trieste after some delays. We should be reunited later today after our longest time apart in over 27 years. I’m really looking forward to seeing her again, after all this time on my own. While I haven’t felt as lonely as might- with the people I’ve met and folks back home staying in touch – it’s a very different thing to see you partner again after such a long gap. Tomorrow should be a double celebration with our 25th wedding anniversary and my final day on the Alpe Adria Trail. And I’ve told Jeni not to bring any walking boots. She is getting the taxi with the bags to meet me at the end.

I really have to thank everyone so much for your amazing support for the blog and my charity page over the last few weeks. It means a lot to me. As I write, after a flurry of very generous donations in the last week, including in the last hour, and including one anonymous donor who I will thank here, whoever you are, you have got me to have my revised £1000 fundraising target. That’s absolutely fantastic, so thoughtful and kind, and should really help Fauna and Flora international in their work to protect pangolins.

I hope it has also raised some awareness of their plight and helped a little bit to spread the word that more needs to be done to protect these and other endangered species. It’s given some meaning to my personal challenge but it’s you I have to thank for being the ones who have contributed. I’ve just been putting one foot in front of another.