Up at 7am, we wandered down to prepare our muesli breakfast, which we were supplementing with bananas (for me) and orange juice. We add these things when we’re able to - bananas give me at least a piece of fruit and also helps keep me full for longer, and the juice is a nice vitamin addition too. We do this when we have access to a fridge, mainly.
We made sure our cameras were all primed and charged, donned our walking shoes and headed for the lake. We were told the day before that “THE” viewpoint will be about half an hour around, at the camp ground, and then it would take us 10 minutes to walk up to the viewing platform.
Not quite.
From ground level lake is fairly ordinary, especially on the side of the lake we started on. There wasn’t a lot to note, except we could see dots all on the lake for rowing lanes. As we were walking, we passed more and more people who were out for a stroll or a jog on a Sunday morning. Bells started to toll.
The view got prettier as we grew closer to the little church on the island. About halfway around, we found a toilet, which was a good thing it turns out as the walk up was a lot longer than the 10 min advertised…Our instructions had been that there was a path in the camping ground, and then it would take 10 minutes to go up. We simply could not find a path IN the camp grounds, or any path we did find ended in fences, and people in bathrobes outside their tents looking at us strangely.
So we doubled back and found a proper sign for viewpoint Ojstrica. We started up and I regretted it. It was very muddy and very slippery. I had to take it very very slowly. It eventually evened out a little bit and I could walk a bit faster, or I stuck to the very edges of the path to stop from slipping. We reached a sign which pointed to Ojstrica - straight up, and over rocks! No proper path anymore. This has already taken us about 20 minutes, and then probably another 10 minutes up over the rocks. So much for a 10 min ascent! Halfway up, we met a girl coming down, and waited for her. She was shortly followed by another two which we had to wait for too. All good though - these were the only people we’d seen on the path all morning! At least we were in the right place.
When we popped out at the top, the view was incredible. All I could think of though was, How did they get the bench up here? Dan and I took a lot of photos here, including going out on the rock ledge. It was magnificent. Just when we were almost done, but were going to take a couple of self timer shots, two people showed up. They waited patiently for us, but it meant that we were rushing. Dan set up the pics as it was a little intrepid for me, and he hurt his hip a bit on the landing one time. No lasting damage though, thankfully.
Now it was time to descent the rocks - this was much better than I anticipated and I took it a lot faster than I thought I Could too. Still, it was slow work and somehow I didn’t fall over! We continued on to the next viewpoint, called Mala Osojnica. More mud and sludge, although it petered out because more of this path had been in the sun and had dried.
This viewpoint was behind a fence so not as good for shots of each other, but an astounding viewsof the entire lake. The scene was also now front lit, and it was truly beautiful. There were 3 benches here and we managed to get one. We would sit for a few minutes then one of us would jump up for a photo, sit again, jump up. I was trying to take a video for Instagram and my phone kept dying - I had to have it plugged into the charger to stop it from randomly turning off.
We stayed here for some time - it had been a bit of effort getting there, we needed to appreciate it! While here we had our snacks as it was about 11am by now. So much for 10 minutes up! I was also pausing because I was dreading the walk down.
But eventually we had to and it involved a fair bit of clambering. On the way down, we found another little viewpoint but the sun had gone behind a big cloud now, and it wasn’t as good as the views we had already seen. There was a big group of men here, and it turns out they were waiting on one of their party who was a bit slow. Once he finally arrived, they asked if Dan could take a photo of them with the lake and the island in the background.
“I’ll just sit here and read my book,” the slow one said to his friends. “No,” they insisted, “you have to keep going.” He turns to us and sighs, saying “I just want to sit by the side of the lake and read my book. I’ve been hiking around here for 4 days! These guys are slave drivers.” And he hauled himself off the bench and trailed after them.
Turns out there was a reason he was so slow coming up to meet his friends. To our right, and the path we had to take, was an EXTREMELY steep and long set of stairs. It was so steep it was almost like a ladder. I had to hold on with both hands and make sure I didn’t look around too much otherwise my legs would have turned to jelly with my fear of heights.
At the bottom, a lady was waiting for me so she could ascend. There was no way I could go any faster, so she just had to wait! The path continued and it was very, very twisty and windy. Some places even had rope for a handhold because there was only rock to clamber over.
We eventually made it to the bottom - it really did feel like it took forever and my knees were pretty unhappy. They’re not too bad going up, but I really feel them going down! Both of us had super shaky legs, and we were feeling really weary by now. And we still had halfway to get around the lake!
Because we were pretty tired, we took it pretty slowly. I was hungry, Dan was just tired - I think he was a bit low on blood sugar. We continued on, stopping for photos at lots of different angles as this is the side of the lake closest to the island with the church. We saw a lot of boats going over - both row boats and the “traditional” boats, both of which were expensive to hire.
On our route, we kept looking out for the apparently elusive €12 row boat per hour - we couldn’t find it. Every boat spot we saw was €20 and this was a bit steep! We were trying to decide if we would do the row boat today or tomorrow (too tired for today, by now, so it would have to be tomorrow if we did it at all), but the price was simply too expensive.
On the way around, we also found some ducks and ducklings, very cute! There were only 2 little ducklings, which seemed a small number for the two mumma ducks who were there.
We finally make it close to the town. We were so weary, and struggled to decide if we went back to accom to eat our salad (boring) or go for lunch and have the salad for tea. We ended up going back to accom via the shop and got a soft drink and wine for dinner that night. Then we collapsed for a bit, then went to lunch at the Pizza place, Pizzeria Rusticana.
Because of our accommodation and the wrist band we’d been given on arrival, we were entitled to 10% off at this place. It was delicious! We got 2 pizzas to share, and a beer each. Then I noticed a price list for some Kommjunism beers, and Dan ordered a TITO beer which was totally tasty! It rained while we were here, and we were happy with our timing.
We had perked up a bit more by now, so we wanted to get another beer at the Red and Black bar, which was also included on our wristband. First to the ATM in the main part of town, where we also grabbed magnets and postcards. On the walk back, we struggled to find the Red and Black bar - we went up to a bar that was in the right place and apparently this is the replacement. They no longer honoured the wrist bands so we left and went back to the accommodation. We weren’t that desperate for drinks!
I lay down because I was rooted, and while I did that, Dan was a superstar and ran our dirty clothes across the road to the laundry! He even came back with cheap beer. We took it super easy for the rest of the arvo, napping and blogging and so forth. In the evening we made a salad, grabbed our L of wine that we had purchased earlier in the day, and walked the 5 minutes back to the lake side to watch the sun set. It was quite cold by now, and all of the bench seats were wet from the earlier rain. We dried it mostly, and the rest from sitting on it! We had our cameras set up, although the sunset wasn’t particularly great. It was lovely though to sit here, drinking our wine and giggling, listening to a pretty bad busker across the lake (as Dan pointed out, if we could hear him singing, he could hear me complaining about how badly out of tune he was…this probably forced him to stop! Oops).
And with that - we called it a day. A beautiful day all around the Lake!
Til next time,
xx
We made sure our cameras were all primed and charged, donned our walking shoes and headed for the lake. We were told the day before that “THE” viewpoint will be about half an hour around, at the camp ground, and then it would take us 10 minutes to walk up to the viewing platform.
Not quite.
From ground level lake is fairly ordinary, especially on the side of the lake we started on. There wasn’t a lot to note, except we could see dots all on the lake for rowing lanes. As we were walking, we passed more and more people who were out for a stroll or a jog on a Sunday morning. Bells started to toll.
The view got prettier as we grew closer to the little church on the island. About halfway around, we found a toilet, which was a good thing it turns out as the walk up was a lot longer than the 10 min advertised…Our instructions had been that there was a path in the camping ground, and then it would take 10 minutes to go up. We simply could not find a path IN the camp grounds, or any path we did find ended in fences, and people in bathrobes outside their tents looking at us strangely.
So we doubled back and found a proper sign for viewpoint Ojstrica. We started up and I regretted it. It was very muddy and very slippery. I had to take it very very slowly. It eventually evened out a little bit and I could walk a bit faster, or I stuck to the very edges of the path to stop from slipping. We reached a sign which pointed to Ojstrica - straight up, and over rocks! No proper path anymore. This has already taken us about 20 minutes, and then probably another 10 minutes up over the rocks. So much for a 10 min ascent! Halfway up, we met a girl coming down, and waited for her. She was shortly followed by another two which we had to wait for too. All good though - these were the only people we’d seen on the path all morning! At least we were in the right place.
When we popped out at the top, the view was incredible. All I could think of though was, How did they get the bench up here? Dan and I took a lot of photos here, including going out on the rock ledge. It was magnificent. Just when we were almost done, but were going to take a couple of self timer shots, two people showed up. They waited patiently for us, but it meant that we were rushing. Dan set up the pics as it was a little intrepid for me, and he hurt his hip a bit on the landing one time. No lasting damage though, thankfully.
Now it was time to descent the rocks - this was much better than I anticipated and I took it a lot faster than I thought I Could too. Still, it was slow work and somehow I didn’t fall over! We continued on to the next viewpoint, called Mala Osojnica. More mud and sludge, although it petered out because more of this path had been in the sun and had dried.
This viewpoint was behind a fence so not as good for shots of each other, but an astounding viewsof the entire lake. The scene was also now front lit, and it was truly beautiful. There were 3 benches here and we managed to get one. We would sit for a few minutes then one of us would jump up for a photo, sit again, jump up. I was trying to take a video for Instagram and my phone kept dying - I had to have it plugged into the charger to stop it from randomly turning off.
We stayed here for some time - it had been a bit of effort getting there, we needed to appreciate it! While here we had our snacks as it was about 11am by now. So much for 10 minutes up! I was also pausing because I was dreading the walk down.
But eventually we had to and it involved a fair bit of clambering. On the way down, we found another little viewpoint but the sun had gone behind a big cloud now, and it wasn’t as good as the views we had already seen. There was a big group of men here, and it turns out they were waiting on one of their party who was a bit slow. Once he finally arrived, they asked if Dan could take a photo of them with the lake and the island in the background.
“I’ll just sit here and read my book,” the slow one said to his friends. “No,” they insisted, “you have to keep going.” He turns to us and sighs, saying “I just want to sit by the side of the lake and read my book. I’ve been hiking around here for 4 days! These guys are slave drivers.” And he hauled himself off the bench and trailed after them.
Turns out there was a reason he was so slow coming up to meet his friends. To our right, and the path we had to take, was an EXTREMELY steep and long set of stairs. It was so steep it was almost like a ladder. I had to hold on with both hands and make sure I didn’t look around too much otherwise my legs would have turned to jelly with my fear of heights.
At the bottom, a lady was waiting for me so she could ascend. There was no way I could go any faster, so she just had to wait! The path continued and it was very, very twisty and windy. Some places even had rope for a handhold because there was only rock to clamber over.
We eventually made it to the bottom - it really did feel like it took forever and my knees were pretty unhappy. They’re not too bad going up, but I really feel them going down! Both of us had super shaky legs, and we were feeling really weary by now. And we still had halfway to get around the lake!
Because we were pretty tired, we took it pretty slowly. I was hungry, Dan was just tired - I think he was a bit low on blood sugar. We continued on, stopping for photos at lots of different angles as this is the side of the lake closest to the island with the church. We saw a lot of boats going over - both row boats and the “traditional” boats, both of which were expensive to hire.
On our route, we kept looking out for the apparently elusive €12 row boat per hour - we couldn’t find it. Every boat spot we saw was €20 and this was a bit steep! We were trying to decide if we would do the row boat today or tomorrow (too tired for today, by now, so it would have to be tomorrow if we did it at all), but the price was simply too expensive.
On the way around, we also found some ducks and ducklings, very cute! There were only 2 little ducklings, which seemed a small number for the two mumma ducks who were there.
We finally make it close to the town. We were so weary, and struggled to decide if we went back to accom to eat our salad (boring) or go for lunch and have the salad for tea. We ended up going back to accom via the shop and got a soft drink and wine for dinner that night. Then we collapsed for a bit, then went to lunch at the Pizza place, Pizzeria Rusticana.
Because of our accommodation and the wrist band we’d been given on arrival, we were entitled to 10% off at this place. It was delicious! We got 2 pizzas to share, and a beer each. Then I noticed a price list for some Kommjunism beers, and Dan ordered a TITO beer which was totally tasty! It rained while we were here, and we were happy with our timing.
We had perked up a bit more by now, so we wanted to get another beer at the Red and Black bar, which was also included on our wristband. First to the ATM in the main part of town, where we also grabbed magnets and postcards. On the walk back, we struggled to find the Red and Black bar - we went up to a bar that was in the right place and apparently this is the replacement. They no longer honoured the wrist bands so we left and went back to the accommodation. We weren’t that desperate for drinks!
I lay down because I was rooted, and while I did that, Dan was a superstar and ran our dirty clothes across the road to the laundry! He even came back with cheap beer. We took it super easy for the rest of the arvo, napping and blogging and so forth. In the evening we made a salad, grabbed our L of wine that we had purchased earlier in the day, and walked the 5 minutes back to the lake side to watch the sun set. It was quite cold by now, and all of the bench seats were wet from the earlier rain. We dried it mostly, and the rest from sitting on it! We had our cameras set up, although the sunset wasn’t particularly great. It was lovely though to sit here, drinking our wine and giggling, listening to a pretty bad busker across the lake (as Dan pointed out, if we could hear him singing, he could hear me complaining about how badly out of tune he was…this probably forced him to stop! Oops).
And with that - we called it a day. A beautiful day all around the Lake!
Til next time,
xx
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