Friday 26 June 2026 - A walk from Magura

 

A lovely walk today from Villa Hermani, shown above from the start of our walk with a backdrop of places through which we have passed. 

Here's another view from the same spot. 

After a bit of faffing arising from differences between Collett's route and Katerina's route, we chose the latter, as Katerina (who appears to be the boss here) was on hand to point us in the right direction past some nice flowers.

Peach-leaved Bellflowers

Lesser Butterfly Orchid 

All paths lead to the valley bottom, where the river is crossed by either a shallow paddle or the remnants of a corrugated roof. 

We turned left up the track and ascended gently for several kilometres in a magnificent limestone canyon. Elevenses were taken on a bench near a rock face that a couple were preparing to climb.

There are numerous information boards including several showing the named climbs up the faces that hem in ordinary pedestrians such as ourselves. 

A signpost indicated our preferred route to Cabane Curmatura, following yellow circles painted on rocks and trees.

A nutcracker hopped around nearby, seemingly oblivious to our presence. 

Continuing in and out of the welcome shade of the trees, we reached the cabane after rather more ascent than I'd expected.

This was a regular Alpine hut, much like those found elsewhere in Europe. It had a resident fox.

Sue nipped up to a nearby saddle whilst I chilled for 40 minutes at the hut.

Descent was on a yellow stripe route. After contouring through woodland for half an hour we crossed a pretty meadow before going steeply down through the forest past several piles of bear poo.

Somehow Sue and I managed to escape from some whistle happy (supposedly to scare the bears but more likely to wake them up) Americans by accidentally switching to a steeper red stripe path that proved to be a short cut.

A final ascent drew us back to Villa Hermani via a good view of the church next to which we lunched yesterday. 

We got back at 5pm after a good seven hour's walk, and later enjoyed a lovely meal with several German speaking groups. One solo lady with a poor command of English chose to move to our table rather than join Stuttgart hiking club.

I'd hoped for an easy day today but it turned out to be about 20km with 1300 metres ascent, thankfully all at a very gentle pace.

Now enjoying a last evening in the hills, with whistling swifts and alpenrose clad mountains turning pink in the distance.