Vrhpolje, Ajdovščina, Slovenia
Enough
is enough – the workmen last night continued until 7.30pm and although it
wasn’t too loud this morning, we decided to move on. We went north to Slovenia,
intending to stay at a small site like a large CL in the western part which had
great reviews, but when we got there just after lunch, it was full! A Dutch
club of motorhomers had taken over the site for a rally and all 12 pitches were
taken.
Madame & Monsieur were horrified that they couldn’t have us
& spent a good 20 mins trying to find us
another site, bless them. Another one I’d considered was apparently closed, but
Madame didn’t think we’d get our long outfit down to the site anyway – perhaps a
blessing that we hadn’t gone there! They wrote down the address of a small one
like themselves about 40km away who weren’t answering the phone but off we
went.
We hadn’t bothered to get a vignette to allow us to use the
autocestas as we wouldn’t have needed one for the original site so we were
stuck to smaller roads.....suffice it to say we arrived unscathed but it was a
close run thing through some of the little villages where the houses were built
diagonally from each other, creating slaloms JUST wide enough, with large brick
walls! We had to turn the van around twice & R did a great job of that.
Kamp Vrhpolje in the village of the same name is lovely,
basically in the large garden of a family house with room for about 8 outfits –
although we do take up twice the space of some of them! The facilities are
excellent, modern & spotless, and the owner Karolina brought us a carafe of
home made red wine & 2 wine glasses on a tray. Now THAT’s what I call a
welcome! Her English is excellent, & she turned out to be a primary school
teacher so we had a good chat.
The church is next door and the bells ring every 15 mins.....but it has the most wonderful mosaic
inside. Apparently the whole village clubbed together and commissioned a famous
Slovenian artist to do it – so famous that he has done one in the Vatican too.
It fills the whole altar area and spreads sideways into the church, and its
stunning.
We’d obviously arrived at just the right time as tonight was a
special village event – to celebrate the Day of Sacrament there was a special
mass in the church followed by a procession to all 4 shrines in the village.
The priest was accompanied by a canopy & carried the Sacrament round in a
special holder, saying prayers at each shrine accompanied by many villagers and
an excellent choir.
Children carried baskets filled with petals and threw them into
each shrine, and prayers were said for various things at each stop (world
peace, health, happiness). It was great to watch a whole community come
together and walk the streets – but deafening from our place at the entrance as
we were right under the bells which were being rung with great abandon (and
volume!) every time the procession moved. It was all very interesting to see.
2025-05-22