Although I have visited Avala and the "Unknown Hero" monument on this mountain many times in my life, I immediately accepted a friend's invitation to join a group of mountaineers who were going for a walk to the top.
Cold and rainy weather was forecast, but as I had bought new hiking boots a few days before, I wasn't worried.
I just have to buy more leg warmers like this.
There is no time that can stop our company walking along the paths in the forest.
Avala is not a high mountain. With its 511 m above sea level, it can hardly be called a mountain (those 11 m earned it that status).
The planned walk, from the meeting place to the top, included overcoming an ascent of 196 m (in fact, some m more, because during the walk we descended a few meters above sea level below the sea level at which the starting point is located).
We had to walk for 3.5 hours and cover about 10-11 km.
Interesting and fun...
The meeting place and starting point is at the Sakinac spring.
The spring got its name from the Arabic word Saka, which means a two-cart with a barrel and a horse-drawn carriage, which was used to transport drinking water from the spring.. The work of transport was carried out by "Sakadžija".
On this board, the image of Djordje Weifert, an industrialist who started the first brewery in Serbia, and used water from this spring to brew his beer, is scratched.
We walk along muddy, wet paths, covered with fallen leaves and obstacles of fallen trees, carefully one behind the other.
The rain that starts to fall forces us to take umbrellas in our hands (that is, only those of us who don't have waterproof jackets).
They prevent us from making our way through the path in places where it passes through thick branches and vegetation.
But they help us when we took a break for breakfast in the yard of an abandoned house.
A house in the forest, with a garden and a strange sculpture in the shape of an angel...
An enviable choice of the owner of this now abandoned house and a pool that is in a dilapidated state.
If there was a little more time, I could devote more time to this abandoned house, so I would have material for the #urbex community.
This way, I'm sharing just a few pictures of this house, with a promise: When I find myself in this yard again, I'll snoop a little around the house, maybe the door or a window is open, so you can take a peek inside.
After we feed ourselves (not to say refreshed, since the rain did that for us), after breakfast we continued on.
At one point, we emerge into a glade, which is surely close to our end point. I know because we came across this interesting game: Matching the names of animals with their pictures and clues.
That game had to be near the top of the mountain, easily and quickly accessible to children...
On it are all the animals that can be seen on Avala.
Well, they cannot be seen easily and quickly, but if you are patient and have time to sit in some shelter for a long time. after a while, you might see a rabbit, hedgehog, pheasant or roe deer.
My mountaineer friend did, so he sent me a video of a doe running.
Beautiful.
After almost three hours of walking, we pass under the repeater and come out at the foot of the "Unknown Hero" monument.
The mausoleum was built on the top of the mountain in 1938 according to the project of the architect Ivan Mestrovic, in honor of all the Serbian soldiers who died in World War I.
Under the plateau on which the monument is located, there is an ossuary where the remains of the unknown hero were transferred (transferred from the nearby grave where this soldier of unknown name, decorated posthumously, was buried in 1915).
The entire complex was a victim of indiscriminate bombing throughout its history. First in 1941, then in 1944 and finally in 1999.
Grenade shells damaged the stairs and the central monument. But the monument still fared better than the Aval tower, which was demolished in 1999. The one you can see now is the new successor, which was built in 2010.
In view of cold, wet and rainy weather, we expected fog and low visibility. From the monument, from where on a nice clear day you can enjoy a fantastic view of the surroundings, this time it was not the case.
You could see only the tops of some tall trees, as well as the TV tower on Avala.
Passing through the alley, we approach an attraction, it is several American sequoia trees. On one side of the alley three trees, on the other two.
Probably the climate does not suit them to such an extent that they grow and reach the height of the tallest tree in the world, but the bark of this tree, soft as a sponge and tender, indicates which tree it is.
We move further along the top of Avala, and on the way to the return path, we pass by the building of Hotel Avala.
A beautiful architectural building, which in summer has a fantastic restaurant garden where I like to sit and drink coffee. Now the hotel is closed and as an object of cultural importance I believe it is waiting for some kind of reconstruction.
Due to the excessively wet ground and fallen leaves, we decide to use a well-maintained concrete path.
I take the opportunity to shorten the path by passing between the trees on the part that seems safer to me, but in the end we all descend together to the Sakinac spring, which was our starting point.
Thank you for stopping by my post and I hope you enjoyed the photos and the story I shared with you
All photos are my property, taken with a mobile phone