The Bohinj car-train through the Alps

At Bohinjska Bistrica, your car — with you still in it — is driven onto a flatbed railway wagon and carried through a 6.3 km tunnel bored under the Julian Alps, emerging on the other side at Most na Soči. It's not a tourist novelty bolted onto the railway for visitors; it's the actual, everyday way this stretch of mountains gets crossed without the long way round by road, and has been since 1906. Most na Soči sits where the Idrijca meets the Soča, the river that gives the whole valley its startling turquoise colour further upstream — worth a stop at the water before the drive back. It's one of the odder half-hours we spend with a car, and the only part of any day we run where nobody is driving.

up to 10 h and 300 km