It’s funny, I emigrated 1300 kilometres to the south to a completely different country but I still live next to wetlands. The Zaanstreek, the Dutch region where I am from is surrounded by wetlands. It’s protected nature that I know very well because I always used to ride my bike through and around it. Here next to Ljubljana there is the Barje region, 160 square kilometres of wetland and just like the wetlands in the Zaanstreek a Natura 2000 protected area.
Almost every time I ride my bike now, I go round Barje. Not because it makes me feel so at home but because of the time of year. Any other direction would have me do a climb. That won’t really be a problem but descending will. The temperatures got down to around ten degrees Celsius on the ground and colder the higher you get, making the way back again very chilly. Flying down a mountain is neither nice nor safe when you are shivering. Especially in this time of year when the road surface is full of wet leafs and mud.
So with just two really small climbs, in the Netherlands they still would be categorized as mountains though, I enjoy the smoothness of riding on the plain these days. Today I made a round again and it was as grey outside as it also was in the Netherlands. The roads were for the most part as flat as they are in the Netherlands, I rode the same bike as I rode in the Netherlands, the goats I met spoke the same language as the goats in the Netherlands but as you can see in the pictures I took on the way the views in the Slovenian wetlands are different from the as-far-as you-can-see-view you have on the plains in the Zaanstreek.
ljubljanees.com 