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Green safety line, Slovenia
This summer, the country’s tourist board launched a new green Venice bike route. Connecting natural spas, the nearly 200-mile cycle route starts in Ljubljana and heads north to the Austrian border and then south-west to Croatia, winding through mountains, meadows and vineyards. There is a castle, a beer fountain and miles of wildflowers on the island. The first leg ends in medieval Kaminic, a town with red-roofed castles and monasteries, overlooking the mountains, Slovenia’s largest arboretum (tulip sports on April 2) and the Terme Snovik spa in the forested Tuhinj valley.
Resorts along the route are certified by Slovenia Green, which promotes recycling, renewable energy, car-free access, environmentally friendly cleaning, locally grown food, natural building materials, and more. The spas offer hot spring-fed pools, mineral water to drink and wellness experiences with salt, saunas, massages and barefoot trails.
Along the way, cyclists can visit the world’s oldest winery in Maribor or sip a glass of magnesium-rich crystal in Rogaška Slatina. Slovenia’s warm Mediterranean climate means good cycling for most of the year, although April to October is recommended. The Wellness Route has several accompanying routes through the Pomurje region, including the Green Gourmet Bike Route or the three-day Pannonian Route. The Gourmet Route begins with a train ride on the Bohinj Railway under the Julian Alps. A free pass encourages the use of local public transport for those who need to delay.
A sustainable city break in Berlin, Germany
Berlin was found to be Europe’s best eco-city when luggage storage company Bounce recently researched sustainable hotels and transport. According to the analysis, 84% of tourists and residents travel by bicycle, foot or public transport. And Germany’s winter plan has taken many people out of their cars by offering unlimited travel on local and regional trains for €9.
Berlin joins the World Sustainable Tourism Council in August 2021 and Visit Berlin lists eco hotels, restaurants and sights. They include places like SPRK Deli, which makes everything from surplus food. Club Kitchen is a favorite among meat hipsters, offering salad bowls with sweet potato, ginger, pumpkin seeds, edamame and other delicious things. The city is full of great places to stay, from East German caravans in a former vacuum cleaner factory in Neukollen’s Hüttenpalast to the hammock-studded 25-hour Bikini Hotel on the slopes of a zoo.
Buy an all-zone travel card (€10 per day, including Potsdam with its parks and castles) to explore Berlin’s wildest corners. The 100 and 200 buses are good sightseeing routes from Alexanderplatz to the zoo via the leafy Tiergarten. Take bus 218 to Grünewald for Berlin’s best walking tour. Follow this six-mile waymarked walk along sandy beaches for wild swimming and relaxing wooden cafes.
YHA Walking Festival
Those lonely months of walking during the covid lockdowns have sparked a lot of interest in walking. The UK Youth Hostel Association hopes to see this through its new Walking Festival. There will be group walks, descent routes, free tea or coffee for walkers and a 25% discount at various youth hostels. There’s a guided Snowdon Dark Skies Challenge – climbing the mountain by torchlight and breakfast at the hostel as the sun rises. Many hotels, such as Eskdale in Cumbria and Blaxhall in Suffolk, have pioneered sustainable practices: energy-efficient lighting, solar hot water and community recycling methods.
The festival runs from September 4 to October 20. “We want more travelers to discover our hostels and all they have to offer,” said YHA chief executive James Blake. “A bed for the night, a day trip for a cuppa, filling up a bottle at a filling station, using the drying room or simply taking a break.”
Individuals and teams can log their miles to walk around the world in 46 days on the festival’s website. Blake suggests that if 5,000 people could walk five miles each, they would travel around the world together. The YHA was established in 1930 “to help promote rural knowledge, love and care that feels as fresh and vital as it did 92 years ago.”
A bird’s eye view of Extremadura, Spain
Extremadura is one of Europe’s top birding destinations, from bee-eaters to honey buzzards. Birds of prey are particularly impressive, with 23 breeding species including 1,200 pairs of black vultures. More common cranes arrive here than anywhere else in Europe. Covering 16,000 square miles, Extremadura is larger than the Netherlands.
While most visiting birds arrive here individually, the Extremadura Tourist Board established the world’s first Bird Tourism Club, modeled after the wine or whiskey routes, to help travelers find information, guides and lodging. Birdwatching money provides a good economic reason to protect habitats, so travel helps preserve biodiversity.
In the year A magnet for visiting birds since it opened in 2005, Casa Rural El Recuerdo (three nights from €216 room-only) is a converted farmhouse with an organic olive grove and vegetable garden. The guesthouse generates half of its energy from solar panels. Owners Claudia and Martin Kelsey encourage wildlife trips throughout the year for the many migratory birds and summer butterfly and dragonfly tours. As a local guide, Martin can take visitors to see the species they want to find without having to drive long distances, which means less fuel and more time in the field.
Green Velo, Poland
With more than a thousand miles of connected bike paths and quiet paths through wild natural landscapes, Poland’s longest fully signed bike route visits the eastern parts of the country. Five regions, with funding from the European Regional Development Fund, have joined forces to create the Green Velo Trail. The Miles Cycle Path is designed to be low maintenance with no impact on water supplies or vegetation; There are benches, charging points, bike racks and trash cans. Accommodation varies from camps to castles.
The trail crosses 12 areas, or “cycling kingdoms”, such as the Świętokrzyski National Park, with its vast forests and mountains. In another kingdom, the marshes around the Biebrza and Narew rivers are good for bird watching and elk viewing, golden marsh marigolds and purple Siberian irises for cycling. The waymarked Green Velo Route skirts the edge of protected valleys, with views over autumn-flowering wetlands. There are bats, beavers and lots of wildlife in the Narew valley to Łomża with its monastery and cathedral.
Other attractions on the route include the mysterious Krzyżtopór Castle near Ujjazd and the palaces and galleries of the city of Kielce. The green velo glides through the center of Kielce, passing through the limestone rocks of the Cadzilnia Reserve. Here there are concerts in a natural amphitheater among fossilized rocks.
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