Four day trips between two borders
You set off from the campsite and by evening you have reached a glacier, a trench or another country.
The advantage of a small region is that everything can be done in a day. These four trips start from the coast or from Udine and are back by evening, without driving the same road twice.
The towns rebuilt after the earthquake
In 1976 the earthquake flattened half of Friuli. Gemona and Venzone were rebuilt stone by stone, with the fallen blocks numbered: today they look untouched, and knowing that they are not is the most interesting thing to carry in with you. The route takes in Venzone, Gemona and the lake of Cavazzo, and lasts half a day.
The Carso and the osmize
From Trieste you climb onto the plateau and make the round of Opicina, Monrupino and Duino: cliffs dropping into the gulf, the Val Rosandra, the Grotta Gigante. In the right weeks you eat at an osmiza, a family cellar allowed by law to open one month a year, marked by a leafy branch hung at the crossroads.
The Great War
On the Isonzo and on the Gorizia Carso the fighting lasted two and a half years, and the landscape still carries the marks: the Redipuglia memorial with its hundred thousand names, the trenches of Monte San Michele, the open-air museum of Kolovrat on the Slovene ridge. With teenagers this itinerary works better than any book.
Up to the border
From Udine you climb the Canal del Ferro to Tarvisio, make the round of the Fusine lakes and come back over the Predil pass. Within an hour you can be in Austria or in Slovenia, and the three borders meet at Monte Forno, where there is a boundary stone and a view that repays the climb.