Bistrica River Gorge
Between Podsreda and Bistrica ob Sotli, the Bistrica River has created a beautiful gorge, which is considered to be the most picturesque and well-preserved river gorge in eastern Slovenia. You can walk along a forest road through most of the gorge, with the beautiful Bistrica River with its pools and surrounding vegetation on one side and the steep slopes of Bukovica on the other. Here, we can find some lesser known and endangered plant species, such as the golden apple and martagon lily, fringed pink, rough houseleek, rough horsetail, yellow whitlow-grass, yellow bellflower, butcher’s-broom, and yew. Interesting representatives of the animal kingdom include white-throated dippers, black stork, various species of butterflies and dragonflies, amphibians, vultures, and chamois, while trout and crayfish can be found in the water, and beaver tracks can be seen in some places.
The gorge is accessible from the settlement of Zagaj, from where you can take a 2-kilometre-long walk on a footpath along the Bistrica River, whereby 400m of the gorge are not accessible on foot.
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Explore other natural attractions in Kozjansko Regional Park:
Gruska, which lies just off the main Kozje–Buče road, is a distinctly noticeable pocket valley, starting with a 30-metre-high overhanging wall. In the wall, there is the source of the Gruska stream, which turns into a beautiful waterfall during heavy rains.
At Gradišče above Podsreda (3.3km from Podsreda) is the Kozjansko Park’s tall-stemmed orchard, where more than 120 varieties of apple and more than 60 varieties of pear are planted.
The Vetrnik area is dotted with beautiful, colourful dry grasslands, which are remarkable for their wealth of flora and fauna.
Between Podsreda and Bistrica ob Sotli, the Bistrica River has created a beautiful gorge, which is considered to be the most picturesque and well-preserved river gorge in eastern Slovenia.
The Lurška Cave is a large sinkhole in sandstone of Miocene age (about 20 million years old), up to 38m wide and 17m high, now heavily overgrown with moss and ivy.
The spring is located in the lithothamnion limestone, in the solitary karst of the Kozjansko Park. Karst springs are characterised by high fluctuations in flow and occasional turbidity at high water.
These are caves, dug into quartz sand that was brought to the Bizeljsko area millions of years ago by the Pannonian Sea. The sand holes belong to the indigenous natural, historical, ethnological, and cultural heritage of the area and are an attraction along the Bizeljsko–Sremič wine tourist road.
In the steep wooded hillside above the left bank of the Bistrica River in Pilštanj, a picturesque rock called Ajdovska žena was formed in dolomite. It is 12m high (7m on the sloping side) and 2m wide.
One of the most beautifully coloured birds living in Slovenia, the European bee-eater (Merops apiaster), nests in an abandoned quartz sand mine in Župjek near Bizeljsko. It nests in colonies and Župjek has the oldest continuous colony of European bee-eaters, with around 30 nesting pairs.