Maribor to Slovenske Konjici 35 miles (total miles 294)

It was an interesting day today.  After a week of following well marked cycle trails, today we had to navigate our own way through lots of quiet farm roads.  Fortunately I had spent quite a few hours at home mapping out a potential route and downloading it onto our cycle computers. This has turned out to be really useful as we could bowl along just following the turn by turn directions with occasional checks on the paper maps.

We had planned to end up at a campsite just outside Celje today, however seven days of biking were starting to take their toll and by the time we reached Slovenske Konjice ( don't ask me how to pronounce it!) fatigue was starting to set in.  The last 12 miles with about 5 miles of climbing didn't seem too attractive.  So over a beer and a pizza we looked up bookings.com and found a cracking apartment in the "Wine Growers Mansion" less than half a mile away.  A quick stop at the spar for a bottle of plonk and some peanuts and we were soon checking into some excellent accommodation with great views over the surrounding vineyards.  The great advantage of booking online, apart from the language barrier, is that the owners don't know that you are a dirty smelly bike tourist until you turn up for your keys so they can't claim to be fully booked.

Even better, the wine growers also had a superb mastercheffy restaurant 200m from the accommodation where we had a slap up meal with the waiter pointing out of the window to the particular vines which our wines had come from.  It was so posh I had to put on my best shirt and even a clean pair of socks!

It turned out to be a really good day, we will have to make some adjustments to the rest of our route but we have a couple of spare days to work wth so we'll just see how far we get tomorrow.

Today's route https://www.strava.com/activities/1171066489