Lake Bled

Where it sits. Lake Bled lies at 475 metres in the Upper Carniola region of north-western Slovenia, in a basin scooped where the Bohinj glacier once ended and a tectonic depression already existed. It measures about 2,120 metres by 1,380 metres, covers 1.45 square kilometres and reaches roughly 30 metres at its deepest. The Julian Alps rise immediately to the west and north-west — the Karavanke ridge and, further back, Triglav — while the eastern shore opens onto farmland. Several thermal springs feed the lake bed, which is why the water warms to 22 degrees or more by late July and why Bled had a bathing culture long before it had a tourist industry. Two structures give the place its instantly recognisable outline: a wooded island near the western end, and a castle on a 130-metre cliff above the northern shore.

Island, castle and a Swiss health reformer. Bled Island is the only natural island in Slovenia. It carries the pilgrimage church of the Assumption of Mary, a Baroque rebuilding of 1698 to 1701 on foundations that go back to an eleventh-century chapel and, beneath that, to a pre-Christian burial ground; the free-standing belfry reaches 52 metres and holds a bell cast in Padua in 1534, which visitors ring for a wish. Ninety-nine stone steps climb from the southern jetty, built in the mid-seventeenth century and traditionally carried up by a bridegroom with his bride. Access is by pletna, a flat-bottomed wooden boat rowed standing with two oars; the right to operate them descends within a small number of Mlino families under a privilege granted in 1740 by Maria Theresa. Bled Castle, on the cliff opposite, was first documented in 1011, when Emperor Henry II granted the estate to the Bishop of Brixen, and it stayed in the bishops' hands for more than eight hundred years. Modern Bled, though, was invented in 1855 by Arnold Rikli, a Swiss naturopath who opened a sun, air and cold-water cure institute on the shore and marketed it across the Habsburg empire. Yugoslavia continued the tradition at the top of the social scale: Tito's summer residence, Vila Bled, was built on the southern shore in 1947 and is now a hotel.

On screen. Bled's image is more photographic than cinematic. The island, framed from the Ojstrica or Mala Osojnica viewpoints on the western shore, is the single most reproduced picture of Slovenia and a fixture of travel television, but the town has attracted comparatively few feature productions, partly because the international shoots that came to the Julian Alps went to wilder ground: the Slovenian unit of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian worked on the Soča around Bovec and Kobarid rather than here. What Bled does have is a long broadcast history in sport. The lake has hosted the World Rowing Championships four times, in 1966, 1979, 1989 and 2011, on a 2,000-metre course laid along its length, and those regattas put the island and the castle into international coverage more often than any drama has.

What you actually see today. A six-kilometre path circles the lake, largely paved and almost level, taking an hour and a half at a slow walk; it is the best introduction to the place and the only part of Bled that is genuinely easy for wheelchairs and pushchairs. The castle is reached by a steep footpath or a road, and holds a museum, a working printing press and a wine cellar. The two classic viewpoints are short but sharp climbs on the western side: Ojstrica at 611 metres takes about twenty minutes from Velika Zaka and gives the postcard framing, while Mala Osojnica at 685 metres adds another quarter of an hour and a steel staircase for a higher angle. In the town, the cream cake known as blejska kremšnita has been made to a standardised recipe since 1953, when the confectioner Ištvan Lukačević fixed the proportions at the Hotel Park; it is still served there by the thousand.

Getting there and timing. Bled is 55 kilometres from Ljubljana, about 45 minutes on the A2 motorway, and 35 kilometres from Ljubljana airport. The nearest railway station, Lesce-Bled on the Ljubljana-Jesenice line, is four kilometres away with a frequent bus connection; a second station, Bled Jezero, sits above the western shore on the scenic Bohinj railway. July and August are hot, busy and expensive; May, June and September give the same water temperature in the afternoon with a fraction of the crowd, and a still morning in November or February produces the mist that photographers actually want.