Day 1 - Maribor to Mariborska koča

Reaching the start of the trail on Day 1 was not trivial.  An early start was needed to catch flight from Glasgow to Paris, then another flight to Ljubljana, then a taxi to Ljubljana railway station to make the 4pm train to Maribor.  I then had 2 and a quarter hours on the train to relax, and get roughly sorted out to hit the trail, albeit it was going to be fairly late when I finally started.

On arriving at Maribor, I caught another taxi up to the start of the Slovenska Planinska Pot trail at Spodnje Radvanje.  Luckily the taxi driver could understand my map, and knew where to drop me off.

It took me a few minutes of faffing, and working how how to stamp the žig at the first checkpoint, before I finally started moving at about 18:45, so pretty late to be heading 8km uphill into the woods.

I managed to grab some water from a tap in the garden of holiday home, before being properly underway.

The trail was pretty straightforward, although got muddled up with ski areas higher up, and trickier to follow once it was fully dark.  Just as I arrived at the Mariborska koča a most fantastic orangey full moon crept into the sky.

The hut had only one other guest, a girl from Maribor. I drank Slovenian Laško beer, and had a wonderful bowl of soup.  This would be the staple diet for the next 2 weeks.