The Soča Valley

<p>The Soča is the river people photograph and refuse to believe: a milky, luminous turquoise that holds its colour the length of the valley, from its source under Mount Jalovec down past Bovec and Kobarid towards the Italian border, where it becomes the Isonzo. The valley is Slovenia's outdoor capital — whitewater rafting, kayaking and canyoning in the gorges, paragliding off the ridges, and fly-fishing for the native marble trout.</p><p>It is also a battlefield. Between 1915 and 1917 the Isonzo Front ran through these mountains, and twelve battles were fought along the river at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives; the twelfth, at Kobarid, is the Caporetto of Hemingway's <em>A Farewell to Arms</em>. Trenches, tunnels and cemeteries remain all over the slopes, the Walk of Peace long-distance trail links them from the Alps to the Adriatic, and the Kobarid Museum tells the story about as well as any war museum in Europe.</p>