Soca River

The Soča River had grabbed my attention from the first moment I saw it on Google images. It just begged to be swam, rafted or kayaked. It's such a beautiful river not just in colour but the way it cuts through the landscape, sometimes being 20m deep in a 5m wide gorge, or broad and shallow over pure white pebbles. It is however a bit of a siren, anyone drawn to its waters are quickly reminded it's spring fed melt water and veryyyy cold! But enough with the river appreciation and more on riding the thing!

Upper reaches of the Soča River.

So although we weren't experienced kayakers neither were we numpties who wanted to ride a glorified lilo down stream. We had to try quite hard to find a company in Bovec who used real, enclosed cockpit kayaks and would take us down some worthwhile rapids. We found not with any surprise that adventure companies are overcautious, so after bigging ourselves up as 'a fair amount of experience' kayakers we got ourselves a guide and headed off to a 'put in' which would lead straight into the good stuff. A point of note is that most companies start from Cezscoa, which is, if your up for some real fun ... boring! Go from Boka further down stream which then covers better rapids in the 2hr trip.


The rapid's grades vary with flow (obviously) but tend to get lower over the course of the summer with some parts of the river becoming negligible (grade wise) others are in their prime!


We went with Sport Centre Bovec and a guide called Panos (good lad!) so can recommend them as a good outfit with quality kit. Although we only did an afternoon and saw a small section of the river we'll definitely be going back to do more.