Hi all - my wife has a conference in early September in Graz, Austria and we are planning to tack on some cycling days in the Dolomites and Slovenia. We’d love to hit as much great road riding as possible with as few hotel transfers as possible and would love to hear your suggestions for where to stay, what to ride, and (most importantly?) where to eat. Plans are quite loose at the moment but we’re looking at Corvara in Italy and Kranjska Gora in Slovenia as places to ride out of. In terms of rides, we love 6ish hour rides with a nice cafe stop or two, which for us is 70-100km, maybe 2000m of climbing. Happy to stack days like that or do a bigger one and then an easy recovery day. Prefer local charm to luxury or chains when it comes to lodging and food. Thanks in advance!
Hi Matt, here are some rides from Kranjska Gora covering the best there is:
https://www.strava.com/activities/5615757083 - this is a must!
SI: Wurzenpass 🇸🇮🇮🇹🇦🇹 | Strava - covers a supersteep ascent and a cyclepath built on an old railway
I would also suggest to go to Bled - bautiful lake, castle and a tasty local cake, ask for Kremšnita
For Dolomites your Corvana assumption is spot on and there are plenty of bike friendly hotel options. There’s an annual event (Maratona dles Dolomites) that draws 8000+ that has established excellent cycling base.
Route-wise one of the most famous is Sella Ronda loop, which is near the higher end of your range and covers some of the most popular climbs. There are, though, roughly 15 “epic” Dolomites climbs so depending on how long you’d be there you can really flexibly choose your own adventure. They’re all close to that Corvana base and can be grouped and looped. “Epic” in Dolomites typically means climbs of 300-1000m and summits around 1500-2000m ASL, gradients in 5-10%. Gorgeous and most mortals can handle them, as opposed to the more “epic" climbs that are GC battles in the Giro that tend to be in the alps, longer and steeper.
I wouldn’t recommend as a route per se, but search Super Maratona and you’ll land on tourism site. The super is a huge loop that covers almost every climb. You could scan that for choosing your preferred options.
Hello,
You can check out the route of the cycling event that I organise in the region (we have much longer stages, but cover most of the highlights): https://www.infernoseries.com/infernodolomitesslovenia
For hotels, I can recommend Hotel Boka in Slovenia (the Vrsic and Mangart can be ridden as a loop from there), and maybe for one or two nights the B&B Hotel on the Tre Croce pass.
Best
Konstantin
While you are in Graz, riding around there especially in the Wine region to the south close to the border is also very nice!