Life’s a bowl of cherries

 Day 32 Breg to Smartno

Hours walked: 8:15 - 3:00

Kilometres walked: 20

Jesuses seen: 1

Quote of the day: “We’re completely full! I can’t work miracles! I don’t know what you want me to do!” - Flustered woman in Smartno’s only restaurant 

We started our day with a beautiful breakfast of views, toast, jam and cheese at the guesthouse. It was early enough that the girls were still drowsy and quiet, so we all munched peacefully and enjoyed looking out over the vineyards. 

Our walk started with a long climb up onto a ridge with even more views of the lines of vines that carpet this area. After a hilltop church, we headed downhill. The trail was rerouted for reasons unknown to us; when we looked at the map and the direction of the reroute, we decided to take smaller roads instead of circling around to the bitumen road. We were happy to stay on the ridge line which afforded lovely views. 

We were also happy to walk past an untended house as we figured we could eat the cherries on the abandoned estate. The trees were heavy with fruit, dark purple and juicy, hanging low enough for even Zadie to reach in places. We ate to our heart’s content, and eventually kept walking with full bellies and purple flecks everywhere. 

We continued along the ridge after rejoining the Alpe Adria trail. This area is made up of long ridgetops along low, smooth hills. We had heard from another hiker that some parts of today’s route were on roads and could be cut out. Bolstered by that conversation, and the cherries, we decided to blaze our own way through the hills. This was probably our favourite part of the day’s walking, as we rolled up and down the dusty roads between rows of grape vines and fruit trees. It was such a nice detour; we feel lucky to have seen the countryside up close, rather than the highway and casino that we missed. 

We had lunch at a large and new grocery store playing loud Slovenian pop music. Fortified with bread, cheese, juicy nectarines and Black Forest ice cream cones, we set out on the last 8 km of the day. It was incredibly hot, and walking on roads means there’s no shade and little breeze. Despite the ice creams, Tova’s mood inexorably slid downhill as we worked our way uphill; we got into the pattern where she drags along behind, then gets mad when we’ve already rested and want to start walking again. So she and Jakob sat in sullen silence for an hour while the others hiked out to a lookout tower that was like a standalone spiral staircase up on a hill. 

Our evening’s experiences were all about making the best of things. Our room was really cute, but suffocatingly hot and airless with mosquitoes lurking just outside the window. The only open restaurant didn’t have room to serve us, so we ended up eating tomorrow’s lunch of corn cakes with neon pistachio spread for dinner tonight. But the town of Smartno is quite cute - just a few streets of ancient brick and stone houses overlooking the valley - and we ended up having a pretty good time all in all.