We gathered up a fair old convoy going out of Maribor – with Sam Dale in his big red barge and two–thirds of the Dirt Norco (Ben Reid and mechanic Ali Beckett) team, as Stanny was back home with a mangled shoulder. Ben and Ali still had the thunder truck with a trailer attached to bring all the Tetley’s tea bags they need for a season on the road. Imagine these two juggernauts rolling up, along with a scruffy Irish photographer in a white van and you’d expect any respectable campsite owner to run us out of town. But we had no problems as we cruised in to bring down the tone of a cosy little holiday spot on the edge of Ljubljana. Maybe they thought we had come to tarmac the drive?

First priority was to get our damp socks and race gear hanging up on the hedge, then finish off by scattering our bikes and spare parts as widely as possible. But still there was no curtain twitching from our neighbouring Hymer dwellers. What a chilled out bunch the Slovenians are. I guess it might be to do with all the revolution and fighting here just 25 years ago, in today’s peaceful times you have to try pretty hard to upset these folk.

Whenever you are exploring somewhere new, the key to success is getting some local knowledge, and this brings up maybe the only problem with finding your way around Slovenia…the language. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It was hard enough to remember people’s names, never mind getting directions on how to find the riding spots. Luckily most Slovenians speak good English. So apologies in advance to all the great locals who showed us around, I am surely going to insult you by getting your names completely mixed up!

Our first man on the ground was Goraz Strazisar. He runs the Kranjska Gora bike park and seems to know everybody who is anything to do with bikes in Slovenia. He hooked us up with four Ljubljana locals who would show us the best riding spots – and I thought I was seeing double when they told me their names – the first two were both called Jan and the other two guys were both called Ziga!

First stop on the tour was a pumptrack in the woods. To be honest it was pretty basic, just a few berms and rollers and I was thinking ‘Uh–oh I hope I haven’t dragged these guys all this way without some good trails to ride!’ But I guess that’s the beauty of a pumptrack, simple is good. So we knocked some fun out of it for an hour or so but then Jan and Ziga gang were keen to get us moving along to a dirt jump spot. A few more turns got roosted and we didn’t waste much time getting back on the road.

Destination number two was well hidden away down some small country roads outside Ljubljana, you’d never find it without getting an invite from the builder – Krystjan – who was waiting for us there. It’s pretty obvious that many hours have gone into this place, digging and carrying water from the nearby river when the summer gets hot and dusty.

It took a while to figure things out, with lots of lines criss–crossing each other between the tall trees. It’s sort of like a pumptrack that grew up into dirt jumps. Berms, rollers, tables, and a couple of fairly sizable gaps were there to be tackled. Krystjan has the smooth lines dialled here. Sam and Ben loosened up from racer mode and we rode there till the sun started to sink and hunger levels just got too much.

Back at the campsite, we settled in to try and decipher the local dinner menu, which is damn frustrating with a raging hunger. Through sheer luck, we ended up with various tasty grilled meat dishes. Not sure what it was exactly, but it went down well with a couple of bottles of the local Zlatorog beer.