ROADBOOK

Roadbook S1 Bora Ultra — the course, trail by trail

116.2 km in two acts – the night from Trieste, the day in the Slovenian Karst: every CAI trail and every connecting section of the race, in the order you come to them.

The S1 Bora Ultra is a journey in two acts: the night from Trieste to PortoPiccolo, then the day from PortoPiccolo across the Slovenian Karst and back. Its 116.2 km are exactly two courses joined end to end: the first half is the same as the S1 Trieste Ultra, the second the same as the S1 TransKarst Ultra. This page describes them in the order you come to them.

Part 1 — The night, from Trieste to PortoPiccolo

The urban prologue

It all begins in the heart of Trieste/Trst in the early evening, while the city is still buzzing with life: a crossroads of Italian, Slavic, Germanic, Jewish and Greek cultures, where Joyce wrote Ulysses, Svevo dreamt up Zeno’s Conscience and Saba kept his bookshop in Via San Nicolò. The first kilometre crosses Piazza Unità d’Italia and the old town at a controlled pace: an urban prologue no other trail race can boast.

The night climb and the Val Rosandra

Once out of the centre, the course climbs through Trieste’s city parks, from the Parco del Ferdinandeo up towards the hills that form the natural amphitheatre in which the city sits, with the lights reflected in the sea as a backdrop. The first CAI trail you come to is CAI 015, at Hervati/Hrvati: from here the course enters the upper Val Rosandra/Dolina Glinščice.

After CAI 015, the course uses a few connecting sections of the Vertikala SPDT and reaches CAI 046, which it follows down towards Bagnoli della Rosandra/Boljunec, at around km 13. The Val Rosandra is the only valley on the Italian Karst where a stream flows above ground: its sheer white limestone walls, up to three hundred metres high, were Emilio Comici’s training ground in the 1930s.

From Bagnoli to Bottazzo

From Bagnoli the course continues on CAI 046 towards Crogole/Kroglje and the Crogole lookout, briefly overlapping with the Alpe Adria Trail and CAI 001. It then joins CAI 001, passes by the Cave of the Ancient Inscriptions and drops to the valley floor; after a climb on an unnumbered track it takes CAI 039 and rejoins CAI 001, reaching Bottazzo/Botač with some stretches shared with the Vertikala SPDT.

Basovizza, San Lorenzo and the Obelisk

From Bottazzo the course climbs on forest tracks towards Basovizza/Bazovica, where it takes CAI 044 — Sentiero Ressel, returns to CAI 001, passes San Lorenzo/Jezero and continues to the Obelisk of Opicina/Opčine. This is the stretch of CAI 001 towards Sistiana that the very first editions of the Corsa della Bora followed, with Trieste at your feet like a carpet of lights.

From the Obelisk to Barcola and Miramare

At the Obelisk the course leaves CAI 001 and takes CAI 012 — Sentiero Nicolò Cobolli, passing close to Monte Gurca and the cave of the same name; in this sector it also uses a short stretch of the Strada Napoleonica (1821). After briefly crossing CAI 001, the Alpe Adria Trail and the Vertikala SPDT, it drops through the Bosco del Bovedo to the Barcola/Barkovlje seafront.

From Barcola the course follows Viale Miramare and the coastal stretch of the Topolini, climbs back up towards Miramare Castle via the Scalinata di Sissi and heads uphill on CAI 009, the route between Miramare and Contovello whose upper section overlaps with the Sentiero dei Pescatori/Ribiška pot.

From Contovello to PortoPiccolo

From Contovello/Kontovel, a village of stone houses among terraced vineyards of Vitovska and Malvasia Istriana, the course alternates stretches of CAI 001 with connecting sections along the ridge; it crosses the Strada della Salvia/Žajbljeva pot, shares part of the Aurisina educational trail/Učna pot Nabrežina and leaves CAI 001 at the Aurisina Cave industrial estate, near the BRT/Bartolini depot.

It reaches Borgo San Mauro on local roads, follows a short stretch of CAI 023 — Sentiero Tiziana Weiss and ends the first half on the final stretch shared by the four longest races: the Vedetta Weiss, 159 metres above sea level, with a Gladio network bunker at its foot, and the Costa dei Barbari, run in the dark with only the sound of the sea for a compass.

The junction: the PortoPiccolo life base, km 61.2

At PortoPiccolo the race changes character. This is where the S1 Trieste Ultra track ends and the S1 TransKarst Ultra track begins: on the official track the junction is at coordinates 45.76352, 13.63751. Runners on the S1 Bora Ultra can choose to stop here and be ranked in the S1 Trieste Ultra, because the two races have followed the same course up to this point.

Part 2 — The day, from PortoPiccolo into the Slovenian Karst and back

The second half follows the S1 TransKarst Ultra course in full, but you run it in daylight, on legs that have already been through the night: the climb from the White Cliffs and the Sentiero Rilke are now revealed in the contrast between the white rock and the blue of the Adriatic.

From the White Cliffs to Duino

The course climbs from the Sistiana quarry, crosses the woods above the bay and reaches CAI 001, partly shared with the Alpe Adria Trail and, along the cliffs, with the Sentiero Rilke. It follows this to Duino/Devin, running through the village past Duino Castle and the White Lady. From Duino it picks up CAI 001a — Sentiero del Mitreo and, at the Mithraeum Cave, leaves it for CAI 033.

Medeazza and the long branch

The course switches from CAI 033 to CAI 003a, which leads to Medeazza/Medja vas. Here, where the S1 Half Trail and the S1 Borderless Trail bear towards Monte Ermada, the S1 Bora Ultra takes the long branch towards Jamiano together with the S1 TransKarst Ultra: it follows CAI 003 — Alta Via del Carso at several points, with stretches shared with the Vertikala SPDT, crosses the Bosco Flondar and passes close to the ruins of the Casali Flondar on its way to Jamiano/Jamlje.

In the Jamiano area it briefly follows the SR 519 Jamiano road and then uses CAI 075 at several points, alternating it with short race-specific deviations; it does not reach the SR 55, the formal end point of CAI 075, because the race track leaves the trail before that.

Bonetti, Hill 208 South and the border

The course enters the Bonetti/Boneti and Hill 208 South sector, skirting the Abisso Bonetti, the Grotta dell’Artiglieria, the Grotta 2ª di Bonetti and the cave emplacement bearing the plaque of the 2nd Engineer Sappers Regiment, 190th Company — a 1917 concrete slab documented in the Pro Hereditate register. The course passes close to these structures but does not go through them. This whole sector lay on the Isonzo front, whose sites lie along the Walk of Peace/Pot miru, the cross-border remembrance trail linking more than three hundred First World War sites across Italy and Slovenia, from the Alps to the Adriatic.

Near Issari/Hišarji, after leaving CAI 075, it follows a short connecting section of the Valichi del Carso and takes CAI 079 — Sentiero Abramo Schmid, named after the colonel and Karst scholar: the trail grew out of border patrols in the years after the Second World War and was called the ‘kerb path’. It follows the border zone to Monte Kremenjak, 235–236 metres, and on to Hill 219/Špik, from where you can see the Adriatic, the port and the shipyard of Monfalcone/Tržič.

The Slovenian Karst and the way back

A steep zigzag descent follows the border line; on the Slovenian side the course uses a stretch associated with the graničari/graničarji, the Yugoslav border guards, and climbs back on a gentler gradient towards Sela na Krasu, in the municipality of Miren-Kostanjevica. It then heads towards Vale and re-enters Italy through the border woods.

Back in Italy, it meets CAI 003 again and follows it as far as CAI 032, which leads through the Precenico area to San Pelagio/Šempolaj. Between San Pelagio, Prepotto/Praprot and the Fornace di Aurisina the course alternates between local connecting sections, a short stretch of CAI 010, the non-CAI section through the Lupinc Park, a stretch of CAI 035 and a connecting section near the Fornace and the SP 5, before picking up CAI 010 again towards Santa Croce/Križ.

The Lupinc Great War Park is an open-air museum created by Danilo Lupinc on his own land: trenches dug into the limestone by Russian prisoners of war in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army, a plaque dedicated to his grandfather Anton Terčon, who fell in 1916, and the Grotta Lesa, a natural doline with a collapsed roof reached through a stone arch.

The finale, second time round

From Santa Croce/Križ, once a Slovenian fishing village, the course uses stretches of CAI 001 and connecting sections along the coast and on educational trails, then three short sections of CAI 023 — Sentiero Tiziana Weiss, followed by non-CAI connecting sections to PortoPiccolo. The final kilometres take you back over the Vedetta Weiss and the Costa dei Barbari in broad daylight, after crossing them in the dark a few hours earlier, with views reaching from the Slovenian coast to the Grado lagoon.

The final plunge down to the Bora Village at PortoPiccolo brings you full circle: you left Trieste in the night, crossed the whole breadth of the Karst — city, plateau, border, Slovenia and back — and now you return to the sea with two races in your legs.

Trail sequence — first half (km 0–61.2)

CAI 015 → Vertikala SPDT/connecting sections → CAI 046 → CAI 001 → non-CAI track → CAI 039 → CAI 001 → forest tracks → CAI 044 → CAI 001 → CAI 012 → non-CAI descent → CAI 009 → CAI 001 and connecting sections → short stretch of CAI 023 → PortoPiccolo

Trail sequence — second half (km 61.2–116.2)

CAI 001 → CAI 001a → CAI 033 → CAI 003a → CAI 003 → short stretch of SR 519 → CAI 075 → connecting section → CAI 079 (Sentiero Abramo Schmid) → non-CAI stretch in Slovenia → CAI 003 → CAI 032 → connecting sections → short stretch of CAI 010 → Lupinc Park (non-CAI) → CAI 035 → Fornace/SP 5 connecting section → CAI 010 → CAI 001 and connecting sections → short stretches of CAI 023 → PortoPiccolo

Where the races split in the second half

From the life base onwards, the S1 Bora Ultra shares the opening kilometres of the races that start from PortoPiccolo. The split points have been checked against the official 2027 tracks, and the km figures given are those of the races starting from PortoPiccolo, not the S1 Bora Ultra’s.

S1 Family Hike & Trail / S1 Half Trail — split shortly after the Mithraeum, at around km 7.75; the two tracks meet again at about km 8.36 of the S1 Family Hike & Trail, which corresponds to about km 16.90 of the S1 Half Trail.
S1 TransKarst Ultra and S1 Bora Ultra / S1 Half Trail and S1 Borderless Trail — split at Medeazza, at around km 9.8 of the races starting from PortoPiccolo.
S1 Half Trail / S1 Borderless Trail — split at the Grotta del Motore, at around km 13.2.
S1 Borderless Trail / S1 TransKarst Ultra and S1 Bora Ultra — they merge again just after Monte Sambuco, at about km 15.6 of the S1 Borderless Trail and about km 34.8 of the S1 TransKarst Ultra.