UKC

I'm following up a previous thread I posted asking for summer objectives I could attempt with kids, who will be 7&8 this summer.  I read in Leo Holdings autobiography how when his kids were tiny, they hiked up Triglav, staying in a few huts.  It sounds like a great objective, to do in around 3-4 days, walking 15km'ish per day.  I'm looking to book the huts asap, and then book some other campsites around it to make the trip up to about 5 weeks in total.

Has anyone else here been to Slovenia and pottered about in the mountains?  Are there any easy VF's?  Which campsites would give some easy climbing accessible?  Any suggestions for other trips, to rivers, beaches, etc?

I realise I'm asking someone to do some of the holiday planning for me, and that is part of the fun, but I find it's easier to get some view points from people who have been to get a foothold in the logistics.

Many thanks for any advice or suggestions.

Make sure you visit Slovenian Karst caves in the south. Great for kids. There are guided Tourist caves (Skocian, Postoina) and 1000s of others some of which are ok for Kids.

In the Alps, you might want to have a look at the Okno Via ferrata on Prisojnik.

If you can do 15km/day, Triglav will take you two days, not 3-4, FYI. 

We went last year with ours (10 & 8) and went to:

- Logar Valley, three lovely valleys with walks and cycling, much quieter than Bohinj/Bled 

- Lake Bohinj, did various walks, including Vogel and some other lower stuff, swimming/paddle boarding in lake and day trip to Bled etc, stayed in Stara Fuzina 

- Bovec for white water rafting via the Vrsic pass, doing some walking on the way from the saddle point of the pass

- Then did the gorges and potojna caves as others have posted above 

All in all was a really good holiday, was very hot/heat wave when we were there so that restricted some of our activities 

We spent a couple of weeks In Slovenia when our kids were 8 and 10.  It was a long while ago so some things may have changed but I think the basics will be about the same. 

Triglav - we started up this with the kids but turned back fairly soon because it was still very snowy in June and we didn't have the gear for an alpine ascent.  These days it will be much easier to check conditions online and decide whether your gear / kids' experience is suitable.

Lake Bled - this is a very touristy area but very beautiful. We stayed at an expensive but very well run campsite a few mins from swimming beach, which the kids loved. 

Lake Bohinj - this has more of a focus on activity tourism - for example canoe and cycle hire. There is also some climbing though nowhere near as good as Osp. 

Osp - The climbers campsite is basic but very pretty and will probably be quite quiet in high summer which is not the peak climbing season. Access to the climbing is very easy  - you can just walk from the campsite. You will probably need find shade, and be prepared for tough grades.  Other crags nearby include Misca pec (hard) and krni kale (polished!). A day trip to Buzetski canyon in Croatia is well recommended. 

Piran - Slovenia has a very short coastline so this resort gets very busy. Not our cup of tea at all but for our kids it was the highlight of the trip! 

We did a holiday a few years ago with the kids, did a multiday hike around triglav, but as a storm was coming in we didn't continue on up to the summit but went to some other huts and spent a few days walking in the Julian alps. Also stayed in Ljubljana and Piran, We all liked both of them as well. Ljubljana was lively and full of students, swimming in the sea at Piran was nice, a lot warmer than the lakes! 

We've been to slovenia a couple of times now, it's a very beautiful country and is so small you can get around pretty quickly.

regarding Via Ferata, we found that the harder grades were often not much harder and much better protected. This was especially important to us the one time as despite it being summer there was still significant amounts of snow across unprotected areas where a slip would be bad news. Obviously this can be compensated for by taking a rope to protect these areas. We did some nice routes around Prisojnik. We didn't get up Triglav because of the snow.

Unfortunately Slovenia is becoming expensive, especially around Bled which is nice but very touristy.

Slovenia is cave country par excellence. It's where the scientific study of them first started. As others have said already, Postojna is good (you get to ride on a toy train) but there are lots of others. Scocjanske Jama is big (I haven't been) but if you can get a tour at Krizna Jama that is stunning
https://krizna-jama.si/en/

I remember going there in the early eighties and paddling on the lakes to see the forest of stalagmites.

My thoughts from 3 - 4 weeks in Slovenia in Aug/Sept last year.

- it was hot!

- and crowded in the towns and campsites, less so on the VF routes and the tops.  I did not find Lake Bled worth the massive traffic jams, and spent most of my time in the Kranjska Gora area.  The only VF route on which I found any crowds was the one through the Prisank window and a little bit of the Mangart [presumably because it is so accessible]

- it was easy to sometimes stay in Italy and hop and back and forth across the border.  Italy was cheaper.  Probably stopped at the border fewer than one in four crossings.  No stop lasted longer than 15 seconds.

- it seemed to me on a couple of the ball bearing scree - strewn routes down from the tops that a pair of skis would have been useful for the descent [rentals, of course].  Here's you looking at you, Spik.

- I was a VF novice, so do not have much to go on.  But I noticed the Italian VFs I did were all shiny and new and massively protected.  So were some of the Slovenian ones.  But some had missing and frayed equipment.  There was the occasional section I looked at and tried to figure out why it was even protected [probably for winter] and other gear-free sections that were not massively difficult but a slip and it was all over.   If I was bringing my child along, i would have a short rope and some slings with me. 

- great cycling infrastructure, lots of rental places, cars give cyclists room.

- make sure you are not in the country on 15 Aug this year.  That was inadvertently our first day in the country and it turns out to be a holiday that grid locked the place and took up all the hotels, campsites, gites, b&b [we checked...].  No wild camping allowed and that includes campervans.  Italy was far more relaxed on that front.

- I echo the comment above about the caves.  Other worldly and the stories of the early explorers were fascinating.

You'll get absolutely baked in Osp/Mišja Peč in summer. Peč means stove/oven in Slovenian and Osp has the same aspect. It's hot there when the sun is out in the middle of winter. Really not recommended unless you enjoy sun stroke or climbing at 5am (and even then...)

Totally agree it's not the best time to visit Osp. But we have climbed there in summer when tied, like the OP,  to school holidays  or I wouldn't have suggested it. Admittedly early morning in the shade, but as a consolation we had the campsite almost to ourselves.

If its the OP's first visit to Slovenia, particularly if the family is touring the country, it seems a shame not to pay a brief visit to these iconic crags. 

Triglav is a great objective.  The route from the Kredarici hut is cabled all the way to the top, with a few minor breaks.  Its easy going with competent kids, though stamina is required.  We did it from the Aljazev Hut on the north side and it was a huge climb up to the Krederici Hut (1000m to 2322m) but short in distance.  The south route  is v popular and maybe easier, though much longer in distance and booked up very early as it is v popular.

The other VFs we did in the area tended to be less protected than you'd expect from a VF in say Austria or France.  A cable on the worst bits and no staples to stand on.  They also had a habit of running out near the top  on a really scary bit, so a scramble rope for ensuring family safety is a good call. (We used ours on Triglav as it snowed heavily and we had an Aussie guy we'd met at the hut with us.)

We did the cabled "grebenska pot" route here 46.421701, 13.756632 past the "window" to Prisank from the huts here 46.43304, 13.74347 - a 1000m climb so the kids may not have the stamina, and a very narrow ridge at the top with no cables, but doable.  Again a rope is a good idea.  Descend the "Slovenska Pot" path on the south side of the mountain.  The associated "window route" is almost certainly too hard for the kiddies.  

We started VFs with ours aged 8 and 10 and they loved it, so much so it competed with skiing!

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/46.41999/13.76274&layers=P

I love Slovenia. You could do a hut to hut hike around Triglav. The southern approach from Bohinj is worth doing as well as the north. The Erjaceva Hut is a very high standard is a a great place to stay - more like a hotel.The normal route up Jalovec is easy and worth doing. In the words of the locals, Triglav is the highest, but Jalovec is 'The God' to them. I did the Walkers Haute route with my son when aged 7 so what you propose sounds eminently reasonable.Have fun.

If you’re driving a vehicle round the national park take care parking. It seems it is illegal anywhere except designated car parks. We had a fine slapped on us parking on what looked like a lay-by, which coloured our view somewhat. We weren’t impressed with shopping for food - shops almost devoid of fruit and vegetables. On arriving in Italy as we departed Slovenia we went into a small border town to find a modest supermarket with an Aladdin’s Cave of every fresh food imaginable. This is two-speed Europe in action.

We weren’t impressed with shopping for food - shops almost devoid of fruit and vegetables.

I don't recognise this but I was shocked by how expensive it's got these days.

How long ago was this? Admittedly the range of fruit and veg is quite limited outside of Nova Gorica and Ljubljana (actually, the spar in Bovec is quite well stocked), but that's because so many people have their own, or access to a veg plot so people just don't buy much.

There ara a lot of things more functional and modern in Slovenia that Italy in my experience!