If you want to experience, appreciate and get a much better understanding of what makes the biggest Disappearing Lake in Europe tick, this epic 2 hour, sign posted hike around the far corner of this big Green monster is absolutely perfect.

But it is much, much more than that.. 

This spring is the very start of the Cerknica Disappearing Lake in this far corner..

It is an amazing forest hike.. It is a beautiful meadow walk.. It is a stroll by a stunning river.. It is a Green treasure trail, linking over a dozen springs and it is a hike around the far corner of an uber massive lake that will most likely have no water in it, cos it is the biggest Disappearing Lake in Europe and you will probubbly rock up here in the middle of summer!

Most importantly, it is ALL of the above and one of the very best ways to capture the full magic of Green Slovenia, with birds, fish, animals & butterflies, flora, fauna, churches & cute villages and we would argue, if you think you have visited Slovenia and NOT seen the Cerknica Disappearing Lake, then you haven't seen Green Slovenia at all!

Would you expect to find this stunning river in the far corner of a Disappearing Lake..

It is all called the Izvir Pot (Springs Trail)..

Izvir means "springs" or "source" of a river or lake in Slovenian and it is one of the most important words you can look out for on those brown "Slovenian only" road signs, cos it means you will most likely, very soon be having a Green adventure!

Green Slovenia has a huge amount of fresh water and because almost half the country is covered in leaky Karst limestone, most of the water swishes along a massive spaghetti plate of underground avenues..

You can see one of the springs with the hiking path above.. no spring is the same..

Until, that is, the water level rises, most often late autumn or winter and this water then floods out of millions of rock & mud sinks holes and springs (Izvir) in biblical proportions.. More than enough to fill the 40km square Cerknica lake in a matter of days..

The evidence of this Karst phenomenon can be seen on a massive scale here in little old Green Slovenia, but the Green magic is so rarely explained well enough to excited visitors and gets completely misunderstood & undervalued, with many people expecting to turn up at Cerknica Lake just to tick another lake off their "to do" list and have a similar experience just like Bled, with a walk around the lake on a concrete path, eating ice cream and buying a post card..

Lake Cerknica is much bigger and much better than that..

The water was bubbling up from under these rocks and flowing into the main river at this beach..

So you will absolutely not just rock up in Cerknica, 25 mins from the Lodge, easily find the lake and then do a quick stroll around it.. for many reasons, some we will explain now below..

And this is exactly why this 2 hour Izvir Pot is such a revelation and so exciting if you really want to experience the biggest Slovenian lake and have a serious hiking option too!

The wooden signs are excellent and give you the confidence to know you cross this meadow..

The 3 most obvious reasons why it so Tricky to just Rock Up and "Do" Lake Cerknica?

1.. The only road signs for the lake are STILL just in Slovenian, so you need to at the very least know Jezero means lake. Can you imagine for just one second how big the signs would be if any other country in Europe were lucky enough to have this unique, massive lake!

(Breaking news, At the main turning in the centre of Cerknica, there is NOW one small line saying "Cerknica Lake" in English on a bigger sign otherwise completely in Slovenian, so look carefully or just remember JEZERO is lake!)

2.. If you do find the lake, you will also almost certainly turn up to the most beautiful Green country in Europe in summer, so the disappearing lakes will most likely be empty and with respect, you will not really know what you are looking at or what you need to search for to enjoy them as natural Green treasures..

3.. Most significantly, Cerknica lake is so unimagineabubbly huge you. will simply just not know where to start looking..

This map illustrates perfectly, this 2 hour walk will take you round just a tiny corner of the massive lake..

We are desperate for visitors not to end up wasting your valuable holiday time or feel frustrated after an unsuccessful visit to this amazing lake, so we wrote a whole article on the Biggest Disappearing Lake in Europe to help & explain how to go see it and really get to know it..

That Secret Place to Visit article is the result of so many failed, half successful and surprising trips we made ourselves to this lake, culminating in some solid tips for guests to get what they REALLY do want out of such a lake visit.. and that is a half or full day Green adventure..

Stunning view across the lake to the village of Laze..

The Cerknica Lake Izvir Pot Path..

Well can you imagine how excited we were when we hiked this Izvir Pot trail for the first time, a full 12 years into living here, in the far corner of the lake and realised this is another SENSATIONAL way for guests to go experience the lake along a simple 2 hour walking trail!

You would NOT be standing here if water was gushing out of this spring..

What's more the route is mostly flat with multiple different types of trail to hike on including stone, gravel, mud, meadow and Karst rock!

We had been to this far corner area of the lake several times before and even done a guided hike up into the forest from the village of Laze in a different direction, but we never knew about this trail into the far corner, exploring so many different natural springs AND the biggest Cerknica izvir of them all, until a friend mentioned it!

You might not be walking for 2 hours, there are a lot of photos to take on the way..

Well, we can sure tell you that this trail is so different, revealing, unexpected and amazing that we would rate it as one of the top 5 best things we did last year and that is saying something in Green Slovenia!

Money has also clearly been spent wisely here, very recently, with superb new sign posting, providing an army of wooden posts to show the way, mark each of the springs and inform us all about the different wildlife here..

Another small Ivir or Spring to navigate, bring decent shoes..

There is a cute new little car park too and all the trail signs are in English, which is massive progress for us visitors and much needed. However the big frustration still remains in Slovenia that locals do not seem to realise visitors need to first & foremost know about THEN actually FIND the trails, museums, castles & gorges and sadly, most of the road signs here are still just in Slovenian!

This is why we also did a little blogette to help you with the bits of  Local Lingo that you really need to know and the road signs to look out for here (like Izvir, for example)!

Another example of the fantastic progress Slovenia is making in exactly the right direction.. a car park to hike around the far corner of the lake..

How to Find the Cerknica Springs Trail..

Brace yourself now, cos however long and scary these next two village names seem, they are ESSENTIAL to this Cerknica far corner hike and mark the start & finish of the trail. They will also help you decide which way around to do the hike AND will be key to tap correctly into google to find the little bridge with that new car park in between these 2 villages that will unlock this particular Green adventure..

So you will be aiming for GORENJE JEZERO and LAZE PRI GORENJE JEZERO and these are village names (or variations of) that pop up everywhere in Slovenia and can be misstyped for other village names, so BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR FAT FINGERS!!

Just take this road out of Gorenje Jezero to the bridge, which is where the little car park is..

You are heading for the Cerknica lake, so all roads for you will first lead to Cerknica, just a 25 min traffic free drive from the Lodge..

Simply go straight through Cerknica and out the other side on the main road passing through Martinjak (there is a really good cafe there) and turning RIGHT in Grahovo onto an even more beautiful country road to Žerovnica (there is a good local restaurant there by the bridge), Lipenj, Gorčice to reach GORENJE JEZERO in just 15 mins from Cerknica, getting a warm, glowing feeling you have arrived in another deeper level of Green paradise..

This wooden hut is what could be described as the "visitor centre" for the Hike around the Far Corner of the Cerknica Disappearing Lake..

The other thing to note on this pretty journey from Cerknica is you have actually been driving along the far Edge of the Cerknica lake and the only evidence for this in summer will be the glimpses of steep grass banks on the side of the road between the villages.. In winter, spring or autumn you might get to see the full lake for yourself!

Ok, so in the sleepy little village of Gorenje Jezero take a right turn towards LAZE PRI GORENJE JEZERO and soon you will be weaving on a narrow road out of the village towards a bridge and the car park!!

Congratulations you have reached the bridge and the starting point of one of the most unique hikes you will ever do in your life..

Hiking the Cerknica Izvir Pot..

This concrete bridge is by far the most sensible place to park for the hike and it crosses the beautiful Jezerščica river that springs up from the largest lake "Izvir" right in the far corner to flow way out towards the centre of the lake and then sink underground..

This bridge is one of the VERY BEST places to visualise how huge the lake is, cos one way looks out into the far corner of the lake, where we are gonna hike and the other side of the narrow bridge has an epic panorama covering a really good chunk of the entire Cerknica lake area, spreading out all the way back to the tiny dots of Cerknica.

The whole lake expands in front of your eyes, with the town of Cerknica just a set of tiny dots in the distance..

The river here by the bridge is also very beautiful, with fish swimming in the stunningly crystal clear green tinged water and if you are lucky some little birds will be sitting on the bridge rails drying their wings!

There is a handy open wooden hut, which frames the lake perfectly and provides a whole other chunk of info on some of the other birds you might see around here..

Cerknica lake is home to more than 50% of all European bird species..

Do not miss the rectangular "Pultar" on the other side of the bridge, which is a good example of the storage tanks needed to rescue fish when the full lake does it's magic trick of disappearing.. 

Imagine from here on the bridge that all you can see ahead is water, as far as your eyes allow, to the fluffy green forested, hilly horizon and then imagine ALL that water sinking back underground in a matter of 2 days and then you will appreciate why these tanks are required!

This is a Cerknica Lake Pultar used for saving & storing fish when the lake rapidly drains..

Do not underestimate the signs telling you this hike is just an hour and 4km, cos you will need about 2 hours or more to take your photos, explore each spring and marvel at the Green nature EVERYWHERE here.

This is definetely just a HIKING trail, not for bikes, but we did spot an interesting sign back in the village of Gorenje Jezero for a bike track that looked likely to lead across the dry lake to Otok, which is an island village, kinda in the middle of this vast lake!

If you fancy a bike ride, then take note of this bike path sign from Gorenje Jezero towards Cerknica..

Which way round do I do this hike?

The Izvir Pot is a circle route starting and ending at the car park by the bridge and it doesn't really matter which way round you do the hike.

On our first time here, we came in May heading off in the Laze Pri Gorenje Jezero direction, (from now on we will call this village LAZE).. But we loved the hike so much, we came back again at the end of the summer with Austrian guests and decided to hike the reverse way, so walking back form the bridge a few hundred metres into Gorenje Jezero and turning right near the church to join the main path..

You will drive past here to get to the bridge, but come back to start the hike on this path OR head from the bridge towards Laze and you will end the hike here, with a short walk back to the bridge..

By the way, our guests were from very beautiful Austria, staying 10 days and told us this hike appeared high up in their holiday top 5, but maybe more importantly for you, they said they had never seen anything in nature quite like this before.. which is high praise indeed!

One little tip if you do happen to come here at a time of year more likely to see a full lake is to hike the Gorenje Jezero way around the lake, just in case you are frustrated by the wet meadows nearer the Laze side of the hike and need to double back.. (But even then , you can hike higher into the surrounding forests to bypass the fuller springs which might block the path)..

The meadow path is usually passable with care and watch out for frogs..

Stuff to Look out for..

So now we all know that vast quantities of underground water gush out from rocky springs, caves and giant sink holes to create this and many other Disappearing Lakes and the main focus of this hike is to explore the 12 or more springs (Izvir) in this particular corner of the lake.

Each spring is completely different and marked by a wooden signpost, always containing excellent detail and in very good English..

Higher trail above the Pod Pečmi largest spring, for when the water is gushing out below..

Sometimes it will be obvious where the spring is, but other times you might need to hunt around near the wooden marker to find maybe just an innocent looking Karst stone hole or a bunch of rocks to discover yet another entry point for the water.

So these springs pop up all along the trail, which is a mix of forest and open meadow trails and your best chance of seeing some water action in the hotter, drier months will be in the middle section of the hike along the beautiful river that you already first met flowing under the car park bridge, but this river also flows next to the path on quite a bit of the trail!

At Pod Pečmi you can go left UP above the spring or right, directly to the spring, if possible we suggest you see both..

Even when Cerknica lake is empty, if you are lucky, when you get closer to the true corner of the lake at the POD PECMI springs, you might see water bubbling up from rocks next to the river and this will also give you more of an appreciation that water is constantly on the move here, up and down..

This is also a stunning forest walk..

Dance of the Mayfly..

We were incredibly lucky to turn up on a sunny May morning to witness a unique time of year when millions of Mayflies were dancing on top of the aqua green river.

One of the Mayflies landed for a rest, they have tiger like stripes..

You could literally stand on the river path right next to the river bank and not have one Mayfly touch you with a kinda fuzzy TV screen panorama effect directly in front of your eyes as the insects whizzed around above the river.. Very special and very lucky indeed!

The first time we hiked this trail we saw just TWO other people and the second time NOBODY ELSE.. Imagine this when you are trundling around Ljubblyjana castle with the masses or queueing for that train that goes into the big cave!

We were literally standing next to the water and not one mayfly touched us, they had other things on their mind..

On that first Mayfly hike, the one local we saw was taking photos out in the massive green fields and the other was sat in a kayak paddling through the blizzard of Mayflies on the river.. What about that!

Do keep your eyes on the wooden signs, more for the valuable nature info than anything else, but there are a few points where you might go wrong, but then you have no real choice but to find the path again..

Messing about on the water in the middle of a mayfly storm..

As we said, the main spring for Cerknica lake is Pod Pečmi and this far corner has two paths, one above the spring and one directly to it, so if the lower one is dry, make sure you go use both paths, cos there is so much to see here from above and below!

We presume the upper trail allows access to the spring when the water is raging out below and you should know there are a few other points where you might think the trail is impassable, but you CAN get around, worst case scenario is to go up into the forest or find a higher trail or forest road..

This 2 hour 4km hike is nothing short of sensational, with 12 springs to find along the way..

This was not necessary for us in May or September, but there is a meadow not so far from Laze where the grassy path does have a few wet patches you must skip over or around.

In May these puddles were alive with frogs and you need to be alert to nature along this entire walk so you do not miss the mysterious crack of a twig, the call of a hunting bird overhead or the bouquets of different flowers at your feet..

the river is always usually here, flowing from the far end of the lake to here, under the bridge..

We were totally buzzing with nature on our return to the Gorenje Jezero at the end of that first hike and the icing on the cake was to see a stork flapping back into the village to find it's nest packed chimney.. 

When we got back to the bridge we were concerned to see a little chubby bird sat on the wooden rail above the river, looking very sorry for itself.

A parent stork flies back to the nest.. This was pretty much the icing on the cake for an epic walk..

We were so worried this was an injured bird until a few of his mates whizzed up from the water and also landed on the rail and bridge too, so we realised we were just being treated to a show of birds drying their wings in the sunshine and our little friend zipped off as soon as we had gotten the chance to take the main photo used in this very article.. wow!

These are experiences you just cannot buy and returning from our second hike we were treated to some locals trotting past in their horse & carriage, off for an afternoon spin by the lake!

These birds were dive bombing into the river, then drying their wings in the sun on the bridge..

It is so exciting writing these articles to help you navigate the most beautiful, but secret Green country in Europe and we sincerely hope you will take these tips and go do this hike for yourselves and we hope we have been able to do this uber fantastic hike justice..

Have a great hike..