A day following rivers as they wound their ways through the pretty valleys – which they had probably created in the first place. I wonder if they had planned for humans to build bridges?
This trip two years ago had to be rerouted as flooding had just taken out the bridges and roads. Today’s cool in the shade and toasty in the sun/
We crossed a number of interesting structures: from an 1895 “enter at your own risk” to a wooden covered 1935. The latter opened up opportunities for the folks on the opposite side to the railway line.
The lines were happily busy with huge cargo trains with pedestrian ones taking theit chances in between.
Two great highlights and a negative. The latter was the amount of Japanese knotweed along the river bank adjacent the railway. Maybe it had been brought in originally to stabilise the embankment. That didn’t distract from the main show: the gorgeous Alpine looking scenery and the chimney stack.
360m of it – the tallest in Europe. Which of course gets you to think what is the tallest in the world – 419.6m in Kazackstan. Britain’s tallest is at Drax, some paltry 258m. Right said Fred.
The Trbovlje Chimney (Trboveljski dimnik) of the power station, built in 1976, is the tallest flue-gas stack in Europe. The 360-metre (1,180 ft) high flue-gas stack was poured in 210 days, and required 11,866 cubic metres (419,000 cu ft) of concrete and 1,079 tons of reinforcing steel. A high chimney was required for the site to ensure that emissions were removed from the deep, narrow valley under all weather conditions.
The power station shut in 2016. Of course it’s been climbed and there’s a YouTube video of two of the juggling standing on the rim. Not for me!
There’s quite a lot of old (coal) industry hidden in the valley sides, and new – including a huge and immaculate glass bottle factory dating from 1860.
Then into city heat as we enter Ljubljana and our “rest” day tomorrow.
Travelling reflections 