Notranjska: Cerknica lake, Snežnik and the roads through the forest

Notranjska is the limestone country south of Ljubljana, between the motorway to the coast and the Croatian border. It has a lake that is there for eight months of the year and gone for four, a plateau that its own tourist board calls the Slovenian Tibet, and a forested mountain, Snežnik, that at 1,796 m is the highest thing in the country outside the Alps. Almost nobody rides here who is not Slovenian. The roads are quiet enough that this is not going to change soon, and the riding is better than the region's reputation.

This is what it consists of: one flat loop, one high plateau, one long forest climb, and a set of caveats about surfaces and bears.

The lake that disappears

Lake Cerknica is an intermittent karst lake. Notranjska Regional Park, which manages it, says the water normally covers about 20 km² and about 26 km² when full, which makes it the largest lake in Slovenia when it is there, and that it stays on the Cerknica plain for about eight months a year before draining into the limestone. It is a Ramsar wetland and a Natura 2000 site, and it appears on European maps from the fifteenth century onwards because nobody could quite explain it.

For a cyclist, the plain around it is the flat day. The park's own Jezerko trail starts from the car park at Dolenje Jezero, runs 29 km with 320 m of climbing through Otok, the Rakov Škocjan valley, Zelše and Dolenja vas, and is graded medium, mostly because of the sections through Rakov Škocjan rather than any real climb. Rakov Škocjan is a collapsed cave system with two natural rock bridges, and the road through it is narrow and partly unsurfaced, so on a road bike take the tarmac loop of the lake and walk in to the bridges. In a wet spring the lake is on the road in places, which is part of the point.

Bloke, the cold plateau

East of the lake the ground rises on to the Bloke plateau, a broad, open upland of meadows and small villages, Nova vas at its centre. The Notranjska tourism portal describes it, with local honesty, as having six months of winter and six that are just plain cold, and notes that the villages are connected by asphalt roads which see very little motor traffic. That last line is the whole appeal. It is the cradle of Slovenian skiing, there is a ski museum, and in summer it is the quietest tarmac in the region: rolling rather than mountainous, with long sightlines and almost no cars.

The loop from Cerknica up on to Bloke, across to Nova vas and the Bloke lake, and back down to the Lož valley and Snežnik castle is, in our experience, a 60–70 km day with something like 800 m of climbing, and it is the best single road ride in Notranjska. That is an estimate from riding it, not a published figure; check it in a planner. The descent from the plateau is the only part with any traffic.

Snežnik: the forest climb to Sviščaki

Snežnik, "the snowy one", is the high point of the Dinaric plateau that fills the south of the region, and its summit has been a protected botanical reserve since 1964. You cannot ride to the top, but you can ride to Sviščaki, the mountain lodge and clearing at 1,242 m from which the two-hour walk to the summit starts. The Zeleni kras regional tourist board gives the access as a local road from Ilirska Bistrica, and that is the climb: from the town in the valley up through continuous beech and fir forest to the meadows at Sviščaki, something like 800 m of ascent by our reckoning, on a narrow, surfaced road with no through traffic, because it ends at a car park.

Several things make it unusual. There are no views until the top, and then there are views to the sea. The road is wooded from bottom to top, which means shade in July and standing water in April. And it is bear country in a way that is not a marketing line: the Slovenian government's large-carnivore page puts the brown bear population at 700–900 animals living across just under half the country's territory, and these southern forests are the heart of it. Encounters on a bike are rare, and the government's advice is essentially about not surprising an animal and not letting a dog off the lead; ride with a bell or talk on the quiet sections, and do not stop for a picnic by the bins at the lodge.

From Sviščaki a forest road continues across the plateau to Mašun and down towards the Lož valley, which would make a superb loop, but it is a forest road, not a public tarmac road, and it is gravel. That is a gravel-bike day; choose the bike for the surface rather than the other way round.

What the weather does

ARSO's station at Postojna, at 533 m on the western edge of the region, is the reference. Cerknica and the lake are at about the same height; Bloke and Sviščaki are considerably higher and colder.

The practical reading is that the lake loop is rideable from March to November, Bloke from late April, and Sviščaki from May, with the caveat that the forest road holds snow in shaded bends well after the valley is clear. Autumn is wet: October and November together bring over 320 mm at Postojna, and that is when the lake refills, which is spectacular to see and miserable to ride in. May, June and September are the months.

The honest caveats

• Surfaces. The national tourist board's summary of the Notranjska bike park talks about over 500 km of routes on dirt roads, gravel paths and forest routes, and that is the honest description of most of what is signposted. The tarmac network is the lake plain, the Bloke villages, the valley roads and the Sviščaki climb. Check a route's surface before you trust it; our guide to reading surfaces in a route planner covers how.
• Distances between shops. Cerknica, Stari trg and Ilirska Bistrica have everything; between them, very little. Carry food for the plateau.
• The main road. The road from Cerknica towards the motorway at Unec and the one down the Lož valley towards the coast carry the region's traffic. Everything else is quiet.
• Bears. See above. Not a reason to stay away; a reason not to ride the forest at dusk with headphones in.

Where to base, and how to build it

Cerknica for the lake and Bloke, Ilirska Bistrica or the Lož valley for Snežnik, Postojna if you want the train and the cave. Ljubljana is under an hour by car, so this also works as a day out from the capital, which is how most Slovenian riders use it. Build the loops with the climbing visible, because the plateau roads are deceptively rolling; Moveee's route builder will show the profile, and a route saved there can be ridden indoors in Moveee Indoor in the months when the lake is full and the plateau is under snow. For the rest of the country, start with our overview of cycling in Slovenia.