And when you're stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks

Slovenia is a very tidy nation; the public areas are generally clean and the houses are well maintained, with neat and colourful gardens. Everyone has productive rows of beans, lettuce, courgettes, tomatoes alongside their gladioli and sunflowers.

The country has taken to out of town shopping with enthusiasm: Every town has a couple of supermarkets, a café and maybe a hardware store on the edge of town. Unlike Poland, where Tesco and others dominated the retail sector, the supermarkets are mostly home grown; Tus and Mercator are the most common, although Spar and Aldi also have outlets. Don't picture these places as soul-less deserts; the cafes at the shopping centres are lively with people having business meetings, friends meeting up and workers having a break. The town centres don’t seem to have suffered because of the lack of shops, the lovely squares in Slovenia’s towns are lively with cafes, restaurants and shoe shops.

If it wasn't for the good souls that make life better

One of the lovely things about travelling is the unexpected kindness strangers’ show. We have met some friendly and helpful Slovenians, but none more so than the Slovenian neighbour at the campsite near Metlika, who came over for a chat and offered us a glass of his home made blueberry schnapps. It was ten in the morning, but it seemed rude to refuse and he assured us we were fine driving on a small glass. After chorusing Na zvravje! And drinking he then insisted on giving us the rest of the bottle as a gift. We were sorry we had nothing typically English to give him in return.

We were able to share the blueberry schnapps with Bert, a lovely cyclist from the Netherlands who has been following us through Slovenia from campsite to campsite. He is the first person who did not say ‘Manchester United!’ when we told him where we lived and instead exclaimed, ‘Factory records!’ A positive sign that we would get along.

We have now visited two shrines to Mithras; a religion popular with Roman soldiers and banned by the Emperor once he had become a Christian. The one near Crnomelj in the photograph was very atmospheric in a woodland setting, whereas the one at Ptuj had been enclosed in a modern building. However, the outdoor carvings are deteriorating quickly since excavation, with little to protect them.

There were plants and birds and rocks and things

Slovenia has a very short 40 kms stretch of coast line: From Piran you can see Croatia to the east and Italy to the west. We pottered down here for some sunshine, after a couple of days of heavy thunderstorms. Piran is a pretty, Italian-looking town which made its money from salt.

It is now the holiday season and the large campsite is busy. Round the headland from the campsite are old saltpans and we walked there in the evening. The setting sun over the Adriatic Sea gave us spectacular streaks of orange and crimson across the sky, reflected in the water. Around the edges of the saltpans were an array of flowers; the Sea Lavender providing lots of colour. Flocks of Egrets flew over-head and as it grew darker, bats swooped below them. We giggled watching a silver fish twist high out of the water and seem to belly-flop back in. All this 10 minutes away from a 500 pitch campsite.

Those of you who know him will not be surprised that Anthony suggested ‘Egrets, I have a few’ as the title for this blog!

Going Underground

The Skocjan Caves are a UNESCO World Heritage site and we spent an interesting morning walking through 3 kms of this cave system, with lots of drip-sticks, as our guide called the Stalactites and Stalacmites and a bridge high over a gushing and noisy river.

The Karst scenery of Slovenia is well known and protected in Slovenia. The geography provides some wonderful places to visit, such as the very small Divje Jezero or Wild Lake, a small, brilliant blue lake fed from an underground river and surrounded by high cliffs and dripping ferns.

Love is like a butterfly

Europe seems to be full of meadows luxuriant with flowers; bright blue cornflowers, yellow daisies, occasional lilies, tall cow parsley and many other. Not surprisingly, making the most of these flowers are butterflies: We generally have no idea what species they are, but love to watch them and try to photograph them.

We have also enjoyed watching many different insects we classify as grasshoppers and crickets; we now wish we had paid more attention to those wildlife programmes. Slovenia has some very large examples of these.

On our walks in the Triglav National Park, on separate occasions, we have come across dead Dormice on the path. A Slovenian might have picked these up and rustled them up in a ragout for dinner, as they as a popular dish here.

People are strange, when you're a stranger

We try to avoid resorting to national stereotypes as much as possible, as it seems unfair to categorise a whole nation. However, while in Slovenia we decided to watch our DVD of ‘No Man’s Land’; a fantastic thoughtful film set during the Serbian-Bosnian war. The film uses stereotypes of different nations that are part of the United Nations Peace-Keeping Force to great comic effect.

We were reminded of this when the Italians, who often live up to expectations, arrived at the campsite in Kobarid, on the edge of the Triglav National Park in Slovenia, in convoy: Six of them! They set up their large vans in a circle, creating an Italian enclave. However, the next morning, as if to squash any ideas you might have that these are stereotypical Italians; by 9.00 am (before we had even started breakfast), they had not only decided where they were going for a walk, but all 20 plus of them were ready and off. If we dare say, organisational skills surely the Germans would be proud of.

We are pleased to see that Slovenia is prepared for walkers and encourages them with footpath signs and way marks: Maps appear to be available easily too. This makes our days enjoyable and easy and we have walked to waterfalls, archeological digs of 6^th Century villages and more World War I trenches, where they fought over mountains.

Middle of a chain reaction

Spending a couple of days in Austria and enjoying cycling along the wide valleys on excellent cycleways. Elves come out and spring clean Austria during the night, it is pristine.

Anthony is demonstrating the tools available at a cycle service station on the cycleway. We were sorry that the masseur and the mechanic to wipe your glasses were not in attendance when we were passing. They may have been busy clearing the cycleway of Adders, although they missed one; fortunately Carol missed it too, but only by centimetres!