Here we sit in a field full of long grass, in the middle of
nowhere, in Slovakia. We have covered 98kms today, through some lovely scenery
and long winding valleys. In amongst that, we have done some serious hill work
as well. Now, we sit, already having been discovered, by, we think, a guy
bringing his kids for a swim in the river, but we’re not sure and the locals
that we’ve encountered so far, leave a bit to be desired. Anyway….how did we
end up here?
At 6.45am Julia decided to wander over to the toilet block
at our camp, to charge the laptop. This is the most common way we get to charge
the computer. Last night we waited until everyone and there were only three
couples staying, had finished with their showers before we left it in the
toilet block to charge. Ju reckoned it would be fine, but me being me, stayed
awake until 10.45pm until I figured it wouldn’t get anymore use until we went
in the night. Long story short, computer almost charged, Julia finished it this
morning, whilst she did some Yoga.
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| A river boat cruises by our camp last night. This is a bit blurry as it was moving, but you get the idea - a stunning view. |
Our fellow campers last night were all bikepackers….well
except for one guys wife. The guy, a Swiss man, had already cycled from North
Capp at the Arctic circle, down through Finland, where he had one day free of
rain out of thirty four. Bugger that, talk about miserable cycling. He then has
travelled through Russia and down to Hungary. He is on his way to South
Africa. Very impressive….or so we
thought….It actually is impressive, but, remember I mentioned this guy’s
wife…well, it seems he has a little assistance!
What happens is, he packs the gear that he may need for the day, hot
weather gear cold weather gear, waterproofs, jackets….you get the idea, and off
he pedals into the wild blue yonder.
However, Mrs Swiss Guy, then takes off for the day, in their fully
equipped camper, to destinations already organised, so that husband, after a
hard day cycling arrives at a designated camp ground, where she has the meal of
choice, already prepared. Can’t fault
the guy for his cycling efforts….brilliant….but, he ain’t putting up or taking
down his tent in all weathers. His washing would be done every day and he gets
his meals and a warm, always dry bed to sleep in. Our other campers were a French couple,
probably in their sixties, who were cycling from the Black Sea, in Romania, to
their home in Nantes, France. They were a nice couple who we talked to a
little. They had started their tour on
the 1st of May and had just clocked 2000km so that got us wondering
how many kms we had done. So we counted
it up and we’d done 1930 kms!
Anyway, we didn’t have any food so first things first, we
packed up and headed off, hoping to find a supermarket in the not too distant
future. Our wish was granted in the form
of a mini-market 1km up the road. Got
our breakfast supplies and found a nice spot on the side of the Danube to eat
while the flysheet dried out.
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| A swan hangs around for a few crumbs - not likely pal! |
Then it was retracing our steps from about four days ago,
back up the EuroVelo 6 cycle path to the town of Szob where we could get a
small road going in the direction we wanted, which was North. We were after a town called Letkes and asked
an old Hungarian woman if we were headed the right way. She couldn’t speak a word of English but
managed to convey that we should turn left just a bit further up the road. Sure enough, she was bang on as there was a
signpost around the next corner.
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| An impressive looking house along the way |
This stretch of road was fantastic. It was flat to undulating but seemed really
fast. It was one of those roads that
looked like it was going uphill, but you whizzed along it like you were on a
slight downhill. It also had a fantastic surface and was mainly in the shade
which was much appreciated as it was already very hot.
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| A church literally in the middle of nowhere |
The village of Letkes seemed a bit more
prosperous than most and that was reflected in all the crops being grown there. The next stretch of road to Vamosamikola was
flat and straight, in the blazing sun and the surface was quite patchy in
places. From there to the town of
Kemence it was basically one long hill but the gradient wasn’t too bad – it
just kept going and going! The further
north we travelled, the poorer it appeared to be. So many abandoned buildings and crops. We passed whole fields of grapevines that
were totally overgrown – it’s like people had just given up and walked away.
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| An interesting looking modern church. Building complete but still waiting on landscaping - hope the wait isn't too long. |
We stopped for lunch in Kemence, using up all of our
Hungarian florins as this was our last Hungarian stop. We have really enjoyed our stay in Hungary
and the people we found to be very friendly.
I would definitely be keen to come back here.
Then it was across the border into Sahy, Slovakia where we
looked in vain for a Tourist Info as we wanted a more in-depth map, but only if
we could get one for free! No Tourist
Info but we found a garage with free wifi so we hit up google maps and found a
great route using small roads to get us to our next destination of Banksca
Stiavnica. While we googled we ate a
Magnum and then went across the road to Lidl to get our food supplies for the
rest of the day, as God knows when we’ll see another supermarket.
This road was fantastic.
Barely any traffic and winding its way through a valley alongside a
river. Unfortunately the river was
really brown – they must have had some serious rain upstream. That was a real shame as we were both very
keen for a swim as it was incredibly hot now – one town we passed through had
31C on their temperature clock.
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| 2,000 km down! |
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| Hill climbing means great views! |
We followed this lovely road for about 25km but we were
getting tired and the heat was draining.
We hit our 2000 km mark on this road and took a photo to mark the
occasion – although it was more to escape the heat for five minutes! At the end of this road we had a delightful
surprise just as we hit the 80km mark – a 12%, 2km long uphill, in the blazing
sun. Boy that really took it out of us
but then we had a fantastic 2km downhill where luckily the road surface had
improved dramatically, so we could really fly and let the breeze cool us down.
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| Being on the bikes, you get a close-up look at the flowers and wildlife - some you get to photograph, most you don't. |
Then we joined the main road for about five km which had a
fantastically smooth surface and great gradient but also a lot of traffic,
especially trucks. So after a coke and a
Bounty bar at a garage, we escaped that road and turned off onto Highway 51
which had hardly any traffic at all.
Which was good as we were getting really tired and the nearest
campground we knew about was still 50km away.
So we kept our eyes open for a freecamp and ended up here, in this field
full of long grass.
When we first rolled our bikes in, we scared a deer who
bounded away into the woods. Then as we
were eating, we heard a very strange sound which sounded like a choking dog,
only a very loud one. And it kept
repeating the same noise. After about
ten minutes of this carry-on, it stopped.
We concluded that it must be a deer and hope it’s nothing more
dangerous.
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| A nice little camp - let's hope we make it out of here alive! |
We kept our eyes open for deer and the thing making this
strange noise. In the darkening twilight
we caught a couple of glimpses of a fast-moving, big dog size, black creature,
running through the long grass. He had a
low sloped backside and no apparent tail – we think it was a bear. On my research of Slovakia, I had read they
have bears but usually in the mountains to the north. However, we had done a lot of climbing and we
were surprised just how cold it went at night – and how dewy. Our bike seats were wet before we put our
plastic bags on at 8.30pm, so we were probably at high enough altitude for a
bear. We snuggled down for the night,
hoping that was the last we heard from whatever it was.
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