This is one of those beloved "Locals" walks that we hear about from friends, put onto our little Gem list to do and then find time to go do, cos they always turn out to be unexpected adventures and reveal other new Green secrets too!

One massive tip for hiking in Green Slovenia is NOT to do the hikes you might read in the hiking guide books, written by people staying here for just a few days or longer, desperate to write a hiking book.. 

But instead try to find these even better really local hikes.. Cos firstly, nobody knows about them and secondly, Green Slovenia is so green and beautiful that almost every single village has at least a couple of these secret hikes leading every direction out of the village!!

a lovely late summer afternoon walk..

This particular secret hike is up a hill called KOKOŠ 670m, which actually means little hen or chicken, so we will also call it "Little Chicken Hill" to keep it easy to remember!

Let's zoom in on where Chicken Hill is.. Right on the Slovene Italian border in the Red Karst, south west of Slovenia and just over 20 mins from the Lodge!

Beautiful Lokev in the background..

It might make more sense for you to know that this hill is very close to the Lipica Lipizzaner horse stud and the ubermassive Skocjan Cave and we discovered you can even extend this hike to go to Lipica too and see the Gee Gees!

The local Green hotspot around here is the lovely little Red Karst village of Lokev, which is the perfect place for some lunch or an evening meal before or after this hike..

So why would I do this particular Little Chicken Hike?

Green Slovenia is a tiny country, indeed in the shape of a chicken, perched in the middle of central Europe and EVERY DIRECTION you go, within only 20 mins, the landscape, geology and scenery can completely change to show you another view of Europe that you will feel familiar and comfortable with, but you might need to pinch yourself to rememeber you are actually in little Old Slovenia and not Gernmany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Croatia or any other European country of your dreams!

You can really see the reddish hue of the Red Karst soild here..

So here, right on the Italian border and just 20 mins from the Lodge, you will need to pinch yourself when you see the big Italian style sun drenched terracotta roofs in the village of Lokev surrounded by every shade of green you could imagine under the blue sky..

But this is the RED Karst, the bit of Slovenia's huge Karst region that has red soil and even a unique mini wine region attached tot he top of it, called TERAN KRAS..

So hiking around here, you will get to sample a little section of this lower Red Karst countryside, with the white Karst rocks littering the forest floor and shorter Mediterannean trees mixed equally with coniferous and deciduous.. All this with those little white stone church steeples popping out onto the skyline!

You might be the only people on this little secret Forest track..

the Hike..

There are 3 elements to the Little Hen Hill hike..

The first phase is a very pleasant low level hike along a farming stone track out of Lokev village, with plenty of beautiful Red Karst stone walls seperating the fields.. Look out for beautiful meadow flowers and look ahead and up to the heavily forested hills and the final one, with a telecom mast on top.. is Kokoš!

almost back to Lokev now..

The second element of this adventure is where you really notice you are in the Red Karst as you enter the forest and the mood changes as you become surrounded by trees and thick green vegetation in every direction..

You will notice the thick white Karst stones everywhere too and the tight narrow forest path has a reddish colour to it.

The path is pretty clear here and now you will need to follow the little red circle markers on the trees and rocks along the way.

sporadic little red circle markers, but the track is pretty easy to follow..

The track is flat and very neat indeed, often with two little Karst rock stone walls on either side, so it is like you are walking up a Karst corridor.. in summer this will also be quite refreshing and shady!

It is not long before the path starts to get more and more rocky and the third part of this hiking adventure goes steeply up the side of the forest hill, still following the same path and the red circle markers, until you pop out onto a much wider and open forest stone road that leads directly to the top of Kokoš!

Nothing prepares you for this sudden change in steepness and this is very typical in Slovenia, where you suddenly realise there will be no gentle curving circular track up the hill and you are gonna have to suck it up and start sweating!

the track started getting steeper and the sun showed the way to the top of this hill..

These steep tracks are very rarely dangerous, but like this one, you just need to stick to the track and pick your way up.. it is really great fun, especially when you get to the top and kinda magically pop your head out of this thick forest environment!

Indeed this hike is like a forest short cut up directly to the main track that leads across this mini range of Karst hills that end up at the Italian border.

You do this walk for the countryside and hike, NOT the view!

One thing to be clear about here and almost exceptional for Green Slovenian hikes is there is a very disappointing view up top, cos you are still frustratingly surrounded by thick forest!

You need to walk away from the Koca (Hut) a little to a big open field near the telecom mast and actually from there you can get a glimpse down to the Coastal Hinterland with the last Karst cliff and motorway flyover between Kastelec and Crni Kal, just before Koper..

Multiple destinations form here, so a major crossing point..

We should also warn that whatever you might have been told or read earlier about opening times, whenever you hike up a Slovenian hill or mountain with a Koca (hut) on top.. it might or might not be open when you get there!

So if you were planning to get a soup or drink up there, it is always worth packing something in reserve, especially water.

The hut on top of Kokoš is pretty big and we guess it can turn into a little local party palace for locals in the evenings, but for our hike up it was.. closed!

How Do I find the Chicken Hill Hike..

Lokev is actually the largest village in Slovenia, but you will probably not notice this! It does have a long narrow road directly through the centre of the village and you just need to get to the Lipica end of it where there is a little roundabout and a tiny cemetary car park. 

park here at the little cemetary, on the edge of LOKEV, Lipica end..

This is never full, so park up and begin the walk from here.. walk around the road side of the cemetary and then turn left onto a stone track, where there is also a red hiking sign to give you extra confidence!

The red signs do say 90 mins for the hike, but we did it quicker than that, so this is a 2.5 hr to 3.5hr there and back, up and down hike.. 

just after the cemetary, turn left and stay on this track to Kokos..

When we first actually tried to do this same hike, we thought it was possible from the the centre of the village and ended up walking up some of the other hills in this final little Slovenian hill chain instead!

The walk was so good though, we wrote another blog on it called Hike the Hills of Lokev and then when we finally did find the right path for this Chicken Hill hike, it was only then that we realised you could link these two hikes to make a much bigger one!

Vilenica is one of the best and most secret caves in Slovenia.. several KMs from here this could be an epic hike..

Combo Hikes..

It all depends on your time available, but there is plenty of hiking here in thick Karst forest!

Looking up at these green covered hills from Lokev it is really difficult to tell which hill is which, but now we know Kokoš is the one at the very end and the largest mini peak of the chain is Veliko Gradisce (Big Castle) 754m, which we conquered in our Hike the Hills of Lokev!

We had seen and ignored, due to time, a sign heading to Kokoš when we went up Veliko Gradisce hill instead and the very same moment we popped out of the forest onto that large stone track just before the top of Kokoš was exactly where we realised this was the main track that connects these two peaks.

This is exactly where you duck in and out of the forest, or stay on this larger track down to Big Castle hill and another way back to Lokev..

So why not start off in the cemetary car park and do the Chicken Hill walk and then instead of coming back down the same way, you could hike off towards Veliko Gradisce (Big Castle) on that main path then aiming for the village of Preloze Pri Lokvi and back to Lokev for a little hike out of the village back to the car.. Or do the same in reverse!

The one thing we would say about this route, would be to maybe get off this main Alpe Adria path as soon as you can and get into the thicker forest if you can as it is really something special hiking here completely surrounded by trees!

or Hike to Lipica..

We were actually a little bit surprised at the top of Kokoš to find a marked route heading off towards Lipica, but this does make sense, as it is not very far at all on the map..

So let's say you intended to see or even visit the horses, it would be possible to start this hike a bit earlier, hike up Kokoš, at the hut, follow the path to Lipica, see the beautiful white gee gees, even have some lunch in the hotel restarant there and trot back.. 

Wow, what a way to do Lipica!

this is the route to take from the top of the hill to Lipica..

or Hike to Vilenica..

Equally, we also saw a sign behind the Kokoš hut leading off into thick forest, but still along a marked tracked with a sign for Vilenica.. 

Now this isn't even a village, it is a little nature park with one of Green Slovenia's most beuatiful tourist caves.. Vilenica Cave.

The cave is located in such a lovely green spot that we often wondered about hiking somewhere from here, so the next green adventure we do around here will be an attempt to link Vilenica with Kokoš!

They are much further away than Lipica and Lokev via Kokoš, but possible in a day and we are gonna take this oppotunity to tell you what an AMAZING & DIFFERENT cave visit Vilenica is.. ONLY open 3pm Sundays, so now you know..

How about combining it into a completely unexpected hiking day out with a cave visit at the end.. 

You will not only get to see the fairy tale Pixie chamber inside this cave, but we are pretty sure you will be the ONLY visitors to green Slovenia doing the Chicken Hill Hike and the Vilenica Cave in the same day!