Kupa River

Kupa River

 

Location: Croatia, Slovenia  Map

Length: 296 km (184 mi)

 

Kupa or Kolpa River is a pristine river on the border of Slovenia and Croatia. In the ancient Roman times it was known as Colapis. It takes origin in the Gorski kotar in the Risnjak National Park (in Croatia) and reaches a total length of 296 km (184 mi). It is one of the most popular places in the country for rafting. Although it is generally a slow flowing, in some parts it is forms a series of water cascades.

 

The Kolpa spring is about 200 m long and up to 50 m wide, a picturesque lake under the steep, forested slopes of Risnjak near the village of Razloge in Gorski kotar , also called Kupeško jezero. The lake is a karst spring of vokli type, in which the divers have so far dived to a depth of -154 m. The Krašićevica stream occasionally flows into the lake, and the underground connection with the Malenca and Velika Voda near Crni Lug sinkholes has been proven by painting. The spring is located inside the Risnjak National Park and has been protected as a natural monument since 1963. It is interesting to note that the spring is only 24 km away from the Adriatic Sea, and the Kolpa flows almost 1500 km far into the Black Sea.

From the source, the Kolpa River flows 5 km to the north along the narrow wooded valley to Osilnica , where the left tributary of Čabranka joins it, and from there it flows all the way down from the village of Rakovec east of Metlika along the Slovenian-Croatian state border. Due to the narrow valley and distance, the valley is all the way to Bela krajinasparsely populated, hardly transitional in the transverse direction, the linguistic border has been passing through it for centuries, but it is typical that the river has always united inhabitants from both banks and never separated. "Its valley is, for the most part, very narrow, almost a real canyon for some time, and is carved extremely deep everywhere. ... Its deep-cut valley becomes more effective in relief, because it is carved into high-lying limestone plateaus, equipped with a vast majority of steep slopes. the slopes. "

The deep Kolpa valley is the most northerly of the great rivers of the Dinaric mountains , which flow mostly from its heart to the north towards the Sava River . The Kolpa also flows transversely to the Dinaric tectonic structures, oriented from the northwest to the southeast and constructed almost entirely of Jurassic and Cretaceous limestones and dolomites. Only in the area of Čabranka and between Brod na Kolpa and Kostelthere are impermeable Permian shale siltstones and sandstones, from which many smaller streams flow into the Kolpo, which are not found in the narrower sections of the valley, cut through thick layers of limestone. The rock structure also defines other characteristics of the valley: where the rocks are impermeable to the surface, the valley is wider and the surface is divided by streams, which is especially evident along the Čabranka and the section between Brod na Kolpa and Kostel. just beyond the river, just behind the road, and very steep, sometimes steep valley slopes rise just above it. These narrowest parts are also almost completely uninhabited.

The first such extension is at Osilnica , at the confluence of the Kolpa and Čabranka , where the present small local center and headquarters of the municipality were established. Soon below the village, a river enters the narrower part of the valley, made in the Triassic dolomites, where on the two banks of the river are small villages, placed on the streams of short tributaries ( Ribjek , Bosljiva Loka , Srobotnik ob Kolpi , Kuželj on the Slovenian side and Turks and Kuželj on the Croatian side ). High above this part of the valley, on the Slovenian side, rise the white walls of Borovška Gora with the picturesque Loka wall . From this part of the valley is the story of Peter Klepec, a hero from Slovenian folk tradition.

At Brod na Kolpa (on the Slovenian side of the village of Petrina ), a 7 km wide stretch of the valley in Permian shale sands and sandstones begins, bearing the provincial name Kostelsko after Kostel Castle high above the river. At the bottom of the valley and on the slopes, there are several villages dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries. Here is an old passage over the Kolpa valley (the main road Kočevje-Delnice), which was also used in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Turkish armies to invade the then Carniola ( Turkish invasions ). The local center of this part of the valley is Fara , on the Croatian side of Brod na Kolpa .

Below the village of Slavski Laz begins the next, almost 20 km long gorge of Kolpa, which extends to the next small extension below Stari trg near Kolpa . The valley is cut about 300 m deep into the surrounding karst plateaus, and there is hardly room for a small village or a lonely, abandoned mill in the valley floor. The river flows in this part through the deep karst and receives no surface tributaries, and is fed by several karst springs, mdr. a strong karst spring of the Bilpa , in which the Rinža River sediments from the Kochevskoye field come to the surface of the water .

 

About 200 m above the Kolpa River , on the north side with a steep edge ends the Poljanska Valley , a former island of Slovenian settlement in the midst of a province populated by the Kočevars . Smaller villages are also on both banks of the Kolpa River and near Sodevci, as well as the last bridge across the river all the way to Bela krajina , as soon the Kolpa is again covered by a narrow, unpopulated gorge, where there is only the river bottom and fishing trails next to it. After this part of the valley there is a 12 km long road from Radenci to Damel and a marked footpath. The valley extends only slightly below Severin on the Kolpa River on the Croatian side and at Damljeon the Slovenian side, then squeezed again into a narrow canyon and only opened at Ucakovci in Bela Krajina.

The landscape opens here into the wide Karlovac basin, to which the Bela krajina belongs geologically, and slowly we enter the Pannonian part of Slovenia. The surface here is lower and flattened, but the Kolpa continues its stream through a narrow valley, carved into the surrounding flattened and karst surface, which extends only slightly at Vinica , and in the rest of it there is no space either for settlements or for the road. It is only at Griblje that the valley again widens into a smaller plain at the edge of which is the town of Metlika , and slightly lower the river enters Croatia and continues its course through the low hilly landscape of the Croatian Pokolpje. At Ozalj , the valley widens again and the river flows in increasing winds to the east, gets from the right Karst river Good and flows throughKarlovac , where the Koran flows into it . It then flows along a mostly densely populated valley between the low hills past Petrinja to Sisak , and just below the town joins the Sava.