After doing my longest tour to date this year from Marseille to Near Swindon via Ouistreham over three weeks in June i've started thinking about my 2024 tour. I was thinking to cross the Balkans from Burgas, Bulgaria to Ljubljana, Slovenia (locations chosen due to flights availability and what I thought would make an interesting trip).
I was wondering if anybody had done anything similar or had any experience of cycling off the main routes in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia?
Any help would be appreciated.
My late SO was Slovenian and I have spent a considerable amount of time there, some of it on a bike. The roads are good, the traffic off the main roads is light and the people are friendly. In the main, and outside of the city centres, tourist areas, and major through highways, drivers are considerate.
Older people in rural areas will likely not speak English - although they may know some German - but most younger ones will know some, at least. As always, knowing just a few words in such a minority language can open many doors. The health service is good and efficient although I hope you won't need it.
Of course in places it is seriously mountainous so there's that ... but cycling of all sorts is popular. There are lots of small roads and tracks you can follow and the mapping system is pretty good - not quite up to OS or IGN standards, but very little is. Many routes that in in other parts of Alpine Europe would probably be gravel or cart tracks, are often nicely surfaced in Slovenia. If you are riding along a route that seems to be going in the right direction, but you end up in someone's farmyard at a dead- end, it's very unlikely that you'll get a hostile reception - more likely an invitation to sample wine or schnapps, followed by an explanation about how to cut across Josip's land to reach Bruno's farm from where you can take the track past Alek's place to get back onto the road you need ...
There are heaps of themed, planned and signed routes which can be followed, if that's the sort of thing you like - my late SO was involved with setting some of them up in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Here's the
Drava cycling route and in the Karavanke region there's a 5km cycling route underground from one valley to the next one along the tunnels of old lead mines under a mountain. Not sure that one's open to the public, though - possibly only on guided tours! The only drawback of Slovenia is that it's considerably more expensive than many of its eastern and southern neighbours.
Croatia on the back roads is - at least in its northern parts - quite similar to Slovenia.
If you want more information, I'll try to help.
