What a treat to have a mattress and duvet again! Had a good night in the cabin and not sure if
it rained again during the night but the tent survived and wasn’t too wet in
the morning.
 |
| Our lovely little haven for the night |
We hung it up to dry out
while we got breakfast and it was almost dry when we headed out at 8.30am. Stopped in town at Tourist Info to get a more
detailed map to help us get out of town and had a general look around. Then we cycled out to the same area as we
cycled to last night where Kaufland was, to go to McDonalds as the free wifi at
the camp was rubbish. We were both keen
for a coffee and relax before we hit the road so that is what we did. Got the blog uploaded and had a lovely
caramel latte macchiato each with a cookie.
 |
| Trencin |
 |
| A last look at the castle |
Also checked the directions I had sorted for this part of the trip
before leaving NZ – I had done this for most stages of the trip, but we had
decided to ignore them!
Wrote down instructions to see us through for the day, went
and got some shopping from Tesco’s and then had a bit of a nightmare trying to
get out of Trencin. The road I had us on
seemed to turn into motorway, so we deviated off that and had to ride about 3km
out of our way back to another bridge to get us over the river before we could
then turn SouthWest and head the way we wanted in the first place. Just on the
other side of the bridge, the clouds were once again looking ominous as we took
a few side roads that would lead to the one we wanted. Took shelter for a
moment under a shop awning when a womans voice came over a loud speaker and I
mean loud. The whole suburb could hear it. Then, after she’d droned on for a
couple of minutes, a siren starts wailing, for at least a couple of minutes. It
was reminiscent of the Hunger Games and
at any minute we were expecting people to start appearing in uniforms en mass
and weapons to start rising up out of hidden bunkers.
We had to stay on Highway 61 to start with and that was
really busy with a virtually non-existent hard shoulder. But luckily that stretch only lasted about
5km before we were able to get off onto a quieter road. To get to the quieter road we had to pass
under a railway station via a tunnel which was luckily a ramp down and a ramp
up – no stairs to cope with.
 |
| A picturesque church along the way |
This was a lovely ride – mostly flat from one Slovakian
village to another, with not too much traffic.
Ideal for cycling. Unfortunately
we had to join Highway 61 again for a couple of kms before turning off into
another village. Only there were several
railway lines in the way and no road or bridge over them. Only by chance we noticed a sign indicating a
pedestrian way and followed that to another underground ramp which brought us
out to the other side to the tiny hamlet of Trencianske Bohuslavice. After a quick Pepsi…..this one’s for you
Michael Jackson…we had some lunch and laid the fly-sheet out to dry in the hot
sun. At the same time, the thunder clouds were never far away and now we were
riding through a lovely valley, uphill, but a nice gradient, one of those you
don’t mind. Figured we may have a chance at avoiding getting wet today as the
clouds were all heading for Trencin and gathering over the mountains.
 |
| One of the lovely valleys we cycled through |
We reached the Czech border it was the usual story of old
checkpoint buildings, still there but abandoned and graffitied and the most
noticeable change for us was the change in the road surface – it was much worse
on the Czech side.
At the end of our gradual incline which we had been steadily
climbing for about an hour, we reached the lovely little town of Brezova.
 |
| It's not that we set out to take photos of churches - there's just so many of them, it's hard to get a photo without one in it! |
They have a stunning church there but even
more pleasing to us was the hotmix surface which appeared on the road and
lasted halfway up the 3km climb out of town.
 |
| Typical Czech houses on the hill out of Brezova |
Man that was hot work but as we whizzed down the other side, it was like
jumping into a nice cool pool. The views
were stunning and the next town of Strani was a very affluent looking little
town.
We were on the lookout for a bank as we had no Czech kroner
but unfortunately, no bank, so no Czech money.
We also realised it was Friday so we are really hoping somewhere will
change our money tomorrow or we could be very hungry come Monday!
 |
| Leaving the town of Strani, one agonising pedal push at a time! |
Went into the church and had a chat with the
lovely pastor there and then set off for the second big climb of the day. Another 3kms uphill out of Strani and when we
started down the other side, we burst out of the shade of the trees and this
magnificent vista opened before us. Our
little camera couldn’t do it justice so we didn’t stop to take a photo
(besides, we were doing 40kph and loving the breeze on our sweaty faces!) but
it was quite awe-inspiring.
We were really hoping we didn’t have any more big climbs as
we were getting pretty tired after about 75kms at this stage. At the bottom of the 5 km downhill, we went
through the town of Slavkov and then got a beautiful smooth, flat cycle path to
the lovely village of Dolni Nemci. It
took us around the outskirts of the village and at the far end we spied a
lovely looking bus shelter where we had a bit of a pick-me-up in the form of a
cup of coffee and some cashews. This
village is very affluent and I guess the wealth comes from all the crops that
are grown in this area which include a lot of wheat.
Had a nice flat ride to Hluk and then a few small climbs on
our way to our destination of Kumovice.
However, at the top of one of these rises, overlooking a beautiful vista
of fields in every direction, Pete spied
a cracking freecamp. Much as we were
looking forward to a shower, we decided to pitch here as the camp owner at
Kumovice might not accept Euros instead of kroner and then where would we be?
So here we sit, with a fantastic panorama as the sun sets on
our first day back in Czechia. There is
a huge difference between this part and the part we cycled through to get to
Cesky Krumlov – there is definitely a lot more money round these parts. I wonder if this will make the people less
miserable. We haven’t really had much
interaction today, but will need to do that tomorrow with hopefully money
exchanging and shopping. We didn’t even
have to ask for directions today - I think that is a first!
 |
| Sunset from our camp tonight - and after that we got a fireworks display....seriously! |
No comments:
Post a Comment