Bled (alone pt.1)

Dear loyal and disloyal readers, the part of the trip I was most excited for pre departure is finally upon me. The picturesque, breathtaking, panoramic, spectacular, enchanting and idyllic lake bled - really stretching my thesaurus knowledge there, and whilst I’ll never admit that my competitor can do things better than me. She does have an advantage in the English language department. But, I can do my times tables so it’s even.

4 overnights here alone, with the idea being more of a vacation than a travelling holiday, actually relax and unwind in a nice location.

Majority of these spots will be covered again in greater detail and with actual pictures with me in them. As I will no longer be a solo traveller from the 26th June to 1 July as my lovely little sister joins me. Suffice to say I enjoyed my time.

I mostly went stand up paddle boarding around the lake, and I have to admit as an Australian who grew up around the water and can surf, row, kayak etc. I felt far superior to the European and American tourists who had absolutely no idea how to use stand-up paddle-boards, row a boat, or paddle a kayak. On my third day here my favourite past time was to go on the stand-up paddle board out to the church on the island. Approximately a 1.5 km trip and sit and watch the tourists fail miserably at rowing boats. Watching lovers, married couples, and, honeymooning sweethearts get into trip ending arguments over how to enter a boat and nearly flipping it was to say the least entertaining. These people however, were beyond help. As any attempt to aid them by either myself or the locals was met withdeaf ears. I personally witnessed one local tell a man to row the boat with his back facing the direction of travel five times before he eventually listened. With the resulting argument between him and his sweetheart being heard across the lake.

On my third day here, I did a two hour long drive to get 70 km from bled, to a little town called Soca which was part of the Soca Valley. The drive there was very treacherous, extremely tight roads. I got up to an elevation of 1900 m and there was a 15% average decline on the way back. I remember remarking to my father about how dangerous the roads are in the Kosciuszko National Park for the snowy 2.0 project I’m working on at work. I now update my comments on that as this road is easily doubly as dangerous. The corners were so tight I was hugging the bank doing 20 km an hour. Praying no one came around the corner too fast as you could barely see 2 m in front of you. The corners were so tight with huge steep banks and steep drop-off cliffs with no side protection. Suffice to say on the road back. I opted to take the longer motorway route.

I didn’t really do that much besides a lot of relaxing and watching my iPad. An old British lady twisted her ankle walking down the steep ramp towards the lake. Luckily for her I was walking the opposite direction with my headphones, out and managed to somehow catch her before she fell over and face planted the concrete. The poor lady had hurt her ankle quite badly. With only her 20-year-old granddaughter around to help I had to carry her like a baby to the local fire station 600 m away. Luckily I’m fit enough that it was not difficult, the old lady did remark that there is always something positive that comes out of something negative and gave me a big old kiss on the cheek afterwards. I hope she is doing alright if she reads this 😊.

As I write this I sit in anticipation of my little sister joining me in 1hr. Will fists be thrown, will debates be had, will Rosyth, outnumbered two to one - Be able to hold his own against the formidable laptop blogger combo of Hugh and Luci? Will silence fill the area as we face off? Metaphorical western music playing in the background as we flex our warrior keyboard fingers of who can recount the events of 26 June to 1 July better?

Tune in on 2 July to find out.Read more