Getting pegged.

In addition to skinning my knee, I set a new personal record on Sunday. Yesterday, I managed just 3,756 steps, which is kind of a lot considering how much my knee swelled up on Sunday night. I’d underestimated how much damage my knee took when I went down and have since been splitting my time between icing my knee and hobbling around. Today was a 6,400-limp kinda day that involved getting buns from the supermarket.

Leave it up to me to blog about buns:

Great for sandwiches and burgers? As opposed to what? Knee protection?

Exponentially–and optimistically–speaking, should I continue to improve at this rate, I’ll be ready for another half-marathon by Wednesday.

Realistically, I’ll take Zoée’s suggestion to plunge into the trove of my arts-and-crafts supplies and inch my way towards the completion of my Slovenia trip recap. I last left off at the end of Day 4: the group’s reunion with Fatema in Bovec.

As in Bled, the nearest campground to town, Camp Bovec, was also full. With Bovec being Slovenia’s adventure capital, there were plenty of other options. From what I’ve experienced when I first camped in Europe in 2008 (Switzerland) and a decade later in France and Catalonia, as well as what I encountered in Slovenia, camping in Europe is less a way to immerse oneself in nature than a way to save some money.

Many of these campgrounds have electricity, flush toilets, running water, showers, laundry, wifi, and sometimes even a restaurant. I would trade any of that for an assigned campsite, like in Canada, rather than a big lot where campers are free to pitch their tent wherever they please. Oh, are we really banking on common decency?

It was the staff at Camp Vodenca, not the fellow campers, that I had an issue with. As everyone else in the group had been paying for accommodations, I volunteered to cover the fee with my credit card. The receptionist–and I hate that this image has been seared into my mind–gave me the sassiest look, as if to say, “Are you fucking stupid? We take cash only.”

My bad for thinking a campground with wifi would be modern enough to accept credit cards. Fatema and Hannah split the sugar momma role and covered the group’s camping fee that night.

So, of course I checked the lowest scoring Google reviews on this place for validation:

“The receptionist was not kind at all.“

“I don’t know if it’s the owner of this place, but the women at the entry just gave us the worst welcome ever…”

“…the lady at reception was so unfriendly that I won’t be visiting this campsite again.“

And so on.

After setting up my tent, I realized that I had forgotten the tent pegs. I sometimes keep them separate because many camping spots on the island have tent pads or gravel that is so densely packed that it’s impossible to drive a peg into the ground. In these instances, the solution is to wrap the tent guy lines around large rocks. Unfortunately, those Camp Vodenca clowns had been stingy with their stones. Without saying a word, a fellow camper recognized my plight and joined me in prospecting for rocks. Together, we found enough to securely stake out my tent fly.

The next morning, the same guy gave Hannah a bag of tent pegs to pass on to me: he was leaving and had no need for them. I’d been content with our stony improvisation, but was touched nonetheless. I don’t know where the good Samaritan was from, but all signs point away from Slovenia.

While I felt a tiny bit better about humanity, I felt so much worse physically. The previous day’s cycling had been spectacular, and I was now paying the price for having demanded so much of my infirm body. Now, I was actually grateful for the camp’s wifi connection because it was time for me to make alternative plans. There was no way, I thought, I could continue to ride.

Along with subpar camping, I had also grown accustomed to the convenience of travelling by rail in Western Europe. However, that morning, I discovered that my preconceived notions did not fully hold true for Slovenia. While there are approximately 150 rail stations across Slovenia (Canada has 410 and England 2,300), the closest one to Bovec was Most na Soči, about 30 kilometres to the south. This was a little more cycling than I thought I could handle.

The original route would have had us ride 47km with 1,170m of elevation gain, mostly on gravel. To my relief, the group was no longer as keen on doing another big day of climbing. Instead, Ed quickly redrew the route and had us ride 26km along the Soča River: them to Kobarid and me to Idrsko.

And that’s where my next post is headed.