biking across istrian peaks

Welcome to the track that, showing all the splendour of the surrounding landscape, traverses the legendary istrian mountain, welcome to the peaks where the earth joins the sky. We start not far from Lanišće – the main village of the Ćićarija Mountain, overlooked by the church of St. Canzian, built in the year 1927 at the site of a previous one from the XVII century. Situated at the edge of a wide karst field, at the feet of the peaks Orljak, even 1106 metres high, and a slightly lower one – Stražica of 964 metres, Lanišće is the ideal place for the lovers of the nature, of the mountain landscapes and of the alpinism.

So walk freely and enjoy before riding further along the track towards Brest. Once a well known place for the coalman masters, whose earnings came mostly from the forest which wood, apart for the heating, was used for the production of coal, which was respectively sold in the surrounding coastal places. Today Brest is a village with 56 civic numbers in all and of just about fifty inhabitants, prevalently older persons. Ride through it and you’ll discover that, except for the old school in which for long time there aren’t pupils and that lays abandoned, most of the buildings are residential.

We proceed and reach the natural park Učka in which there are not so many inhabited places, and most of all there are no towns or villages. With the 1396 metres high main peak – Vojak, on his eastern side Učka is entirely rural, so its hamlets, like Brest and Vela Učka, have sprout in isolated, although protected parts, and nearby pasture-grounds like Mala Učka, or on slopes like Lovranska Draga and parts of the village Kožljak. With its prominent position, and with the richness and the variety of the natural peculiarities, especially of the vegetation and of the geological structure, Učka has always attracted the attention of researchers, scientists, and travel writers amongst which, in the year 1838 here came the Saxon king Friedrich August, passionate botanist accompanied by Tommasino and Biasoletto, as well as by the colonel Jelačić, later drawn to the renamed Croatian civil governor (ban). If we ride further along the track, we reach Ćićarija – the vast mountain area always connected to the cattle breeding, and particularly of sheep. The sparse villages of Ćićarija, once numerous and full of life and of shepherds, today are almost completely desert, making in that way an almost archaically green and untouched ambience.

Ride through it and in Brest, at the feet of Žbevnica, discover the smallest belfry, and in Slum discover the largest and the oldest lime-tree of Istria, along with the picturesque villages of Jelovice, Prapoće, Podgaće, Rašpor, Trstenik and Brgudac which, with its 747 metres over the sea level, at the same time represents the highest populated place of the entire Istria, so it’s a compulsory stop during the mountaineering expeditions to Ćićarija and Učka. Refreshed by the water the rises from the natural source in the middle of the village Račja Vas, proceed slowly on the way of return towards Lanišće and then to Lupoglav, where your adventure has began.