Educational Trail Kučar – Kolpa

The Kučar–Kolpa educational trail is a circular route that leads to the Podzemelj campsite in the village of Podzemelj, up to the top of Kučar, then back via Zemelj, past the Church of St Helena to the starting point. Along the walk, visitors can learn about a hillfort from the Early Iron Age, observe burial mounds, explore the natural environment and the Kolpa River, and enjoy the beautiful landscape interwoven with fields, forests and vineyards. The highlight of the trail is undoubtedly the midpoint, when hikers ascend the 222-metre-high isolated hill of Kučar and are rewarded with a stunning view of the path carved by the Kolpa River through time.

Points of interest along the route

Podzemelj village, Kolpa River, Kučar hill, Church of St Martin in Podzemelj, burial mounds, hillfort.

LEGEND OF VELEBABA
In Bela Krajina, in Velika loza, there once lived a giant who had a wife named Velebaba. Whenever Velebaba cooked, she lit such a fire that drought spread across the entire region. When she sang, her voice drowned out the strong winds sweeping across the Gorjanci hills and the Bela Krajina steljniki, bending the slender birch trees to the ground. When she spun thread, she produced so much yarn that there was enough for all of Bela Krajina and three more villages. When she wove, she created so much cloth that all the people of Bela Krajina could be dressed, and every bed in the region had linen. When she drank, she could dry up the Kolpa River. When she washed her gloves and the giant’s clothes, she would stand with one foot in Zemelj on the Slovenian bank and the other in Zaluka on the Croatian side of the Kolpa, using the waterfall near the mill as her wash basin. The Kolpa would always darken and become cloudy when she did her laundry. Wherever Velebaba sat, the ground would sink into a hollow.
When Velebaba died, the giant buried her and piled so much earth over her grave that it became a hill. He planted oak, spruce, hornbeam and beech trees on it, and then disappeared from Bela Krajina.
People of Bela Krajina say that the hill of Kučar by the Kolpa River is Velebaba’s grave.