Since a very mean mosquito (it was obviously very hungry! 😬) shared our room sleep was rather fitful tonight although it was so very quiet here.
At 7 a.m. we had breakfast although we didn’t have to hurry today. But we were hungry… 😂 There was a good breakfast selection at the hotel Maestoso, I especially liked the homemade yogurts, and there were only two other people here that early. Quite likely golf player. 😉
We left the hotel shortly after 8 a.m. and walked at first on the street all around the stud farm. It was rather quiet that early in the morning and there was nothing to be seen from the herd of tourists from yesterday.
On one pasture there were even some horses that came to us begging for food. 😂
After about 2km walking alongside the stud farm we crossed a street and headed into the forest. Then it was just nicely uphill for 2km and 250m in the cool forest before we emerged at the “mountain” hut “Koča na Kokoši”. Mountain, though, is relative, it’s just on an altitude of 674m. 😉 The view was therefore not as spectacular as from the mountains we’ve been on in Austria. The hut was closed (only open from Friday to Sunday) and it was very quiet up here. Only after 15 minutes or so some bikers came along another path.
Afterwards we headed along a pasture-like path lined with trees, first 3km more or less even and than down to Mihele, a very small village. From there we hiked on a comfortable, very pretty 4×4 road (where we were the only hikers among quite some bikers) for 3km with some nice views and highlights on the way.
Then we went down to Botazzo, a village even smaller than the one before where we found the only “restaurant” on the way today, the Trattoria Botazzo.
Our guidebook described as “rustic”, and yeah, well, that’s a nice way to put it. 😉 The only vegetarian food they offered was polenta with cheese and it was rather tasteless. At least the Apfelstrudel afterwards was ok. But it was definitely much too expensive for what little we ate and drank!
On continuing we came onto a very interesting rocky path along the Val Rosandra, a rocky Karst valley.
Somewhere in the middle we made little detour to the old church Santa Maria in Siaris where we had a nice view over the Val Rosandra.
Then we went back to the original path again and headed down the last few kilometres to Bagnoli della Rosandra.
And there Google Maps played a very mean trick on us. When we entered the address of our accomodation, the Air B&B Sotto il Volto, we saw that we still had 1,5km left to go although we were already at the main square in Bagnoli.
Since we had announced that we would be there at 3 p.m. time was running out and we had to hurry up. Farther and farther we walked outside the village and suddenly came to some industrial quarter. Totally confused we asked a security guy standing at the gate there and he told us we were wrong here. Go figure!
Back again. On the way back to the main square we ran across a DPD driver who told us the exact place and we sped up. Sweaty, tired and out of breath we arrived at 3.15 p.m. Our host was awesome and didn’t bother at all. He even took us to the only supermarket open today with his car because it was a good 10 minutes drive out of town. We bought some stuff and then were glad just to sit down. This sprint at the end was totally unnecessary. 😉 But the room is worth it, very tasty equipped and incredibly quiet!
Some figures for today:
- 22km (including our sprint 😉)
- 390m up
- 755m down
- Hiking time: 4h 32m