Love Path (Ljubavna cestica)

Ljubavna cestica, the Love Path, is a network of forest walking paths in the Sopalj area just above Crikvenica. It was laid out in the 1930s, and young couples walked it so often that the name stuck. Locals and summer guests used it for decades, but after the Second World War it was neglected and slowly forgotten until volunteers from a Crikvenica society began clearing it in September 1999. That work lasted until 2002, and further restoration followed in 2009 with money from Primorje-Gorski Kotar County.

The designers are not known for certain, but the path is usually credited to two foresters: Ante Premužić, head of the forestry directorate in Sušak and author of the famous Premužić trail on Velebit, and Alfons Kauders, who in 1908 founded Crikvenica's forest nursery, the first in Croatia. Premužić also wrote a plan for laying out the surroundings of the seaside resorts of Crikvenica, Selce and Novi for tourism and forestry, and the Love Path came out of that thinking. Local gardeners led by Franjo Brož did much of the work. Walkers who know the Velebit trail often notice the family resemblance in the way the path is built into the slope.

The path runs through sub-Mediterranean woodland of downy oak, hornbeam, manna ash, hop hornbeam, black and Aleppo pine and Montpellier maple, with butcher's broom, juniper and Christ's thorn in the undergrowth and snowdrops, violets and cyclamen in season. Much of it is shaded, which makes it walkable on hot days.

Its main historic sight is Gradina Badanj, a hillfort above the road between Tribalj and Crikvenica. Its first phase dates to the 4th century, when the late Roman frontier in Liburnia was being fortified, and it worked as a lookout post on the road between Tarsatica (Rijeka) and Senia (Senj). It was enlarged between the 6th and 8th centuries, later became the seat of a local župa, declined in the 13th century and was wrecked by an earthquake in 1321. Visitors can still trace its oval plan with two rings of walls, a well-preserved tower with a cistern and unusual latrines on the eastern side. Close by are the ruins of the 12th-century church of the Holy Spirit (Sv. Duh). The path makes an easy half-day outing from the Crikvenica seafront.