< Alpe Adria Trail
This year saw a new edition of my guidebook to hiking the Alpe Adria Trail published by Bradt. The Alpe Adria Trail is an epic 750km trek from the foot of the Grossglockner (the highest peak in the Eastern Alps), through the Austrian state of Carinthia, Slovenia's Julian Alps and the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in northern Italy, finishing at the small town of Muggia near Trieste, on the shore of the Adriatic. I wrote the first edition of this guide (and walked the route) over half a dozen trips to Carinthia, Slovenia and Friuli-Vezezia Giulia in 2015 and 2016, to experience and photograph the trail in different seasons, different lights. At that time it was the first English-language guidebook to the trail (and it still is). I have often been asked what my favourite part of the Alpe Adria is, a question I can never really give a satisfactory answer to since there are so many highlights over a trail of this length – but if I were to list a few personal favourites, the Nockberge mountains in Austria under a dusting of October snowfall, the gorgeous colours of the Soča valley in Slovenia in Spring, and the rocky trails above Rifugio Zacchi in Italy, would all feature fairly high on the list. You can see more images from the Alpe Adria Trail in the archive galleries for Austria, Slovenia and Italy.