Belgrade (or even onto to Bucharest!) to celebrate with the Serbians their Wimbledon success, we have already gone east into one more country than we had planned. So now we are leaving Budapest against the torrent of commuting cyclists, retracing our path for a few days, to then pick up the Greenway cycle route north towards Prague. Besides, we are having enough trouble learning essential vocabulary (beer is "sor" in Hungarian and "pivo" in Slovak) to take on any more variations.
We will try and take the Slovak side of the river on our return, for a change of scenery, but sometimes there is no choice. This is how we find ourselves back in depressing Esztergom. It looks full of promise as the copper dome of the Basilica dominates the skyline (the largest church in Hungary) but there is still no one about. Even the large Cruise Boat crew are herding all their passengers onto coaches to take them somewhere else for the evening.
We pick up Ted and Sue's Norwegian cycle blog, and are glad we are not facing their gradients and mozzies, it makes our trip sound like a picnic (I expect everyone there understands English though!) An evening stroll takes us onto the metal bridge crossing to Slovakia. As we stand with one foot in each country a car transporter passes underneath, 3 barges pushed by one boat, approx. 1000 vehicles.
We didn't notice we had put our tent under a big light until dark fell and it came on! Well if Sue and Ted can sleep through the midnight sun, so can we.
Once over the bridge into Euro land there are thriving businesses and a new Billa superstore, where we stock up on food. Through Slovak villages with little vineyards and hundreds of acres of blooming sunflowers. There are good numbers of touring cyclists coming the other way now.
We take a five mile off-road detour to visit some Roman remains. The surviving walls outline a fort with 2 towers by the entrance gate, all with a good view of what was happening on the Danube.
Some of the tiny villages are almost car free (apart from this one old Trabant on the cycle route!)
In typical CICOV a gaggle of old dears are gossiping outside the Post Office (we think it must be pension day), leaning on their old bikes with baskets on the front. Everyone else is on a bike too- old gents (some on tricycles ) pulling home made trailers with either fishing or gardening gear piled in, or younger working men in dirty blue overalls pulling their work tools in similar home made trailers. One old dear hadn't got a bike so is just pushing her heavy metal trailer to the shops. They are now are always the identikit Coops.
At 100 m intervals along the roadside are trees laden with an orange fruit like across between a peach and a plum. They must be ripe now, as the locals are picking up the windfalls. However, we're not sure we can stomach all the local food - we came across one menu with a dish of 'constipated pork'!
We pass the now famiar skyline of Bratislava and re-enter Austria at the village of KITTSEE.
We are now leaving our Danube route and heading North, vaguely in the direction of the Czech Republic. So we cross the Danube for one last time, near Hainburg, and follow local cycle routes that we come across. First a castle route takes us past 2 impressive piles, and then a lovely country lane route , through more sunflowers and wheat being harvested. In amongst these crops are many "nodding donkeys" gently bobbing up and down as they extract oil. There must be oil rich shales under these farms (my geological advisor informs me).
There is some off-road, and some cobbles, but only undulating hills so not too strenuous. One slight mishap was that I was stung by a wasp on the leg while cycling along, and the little whatzit survived !
We are spending the night in a room above a Chinese restaurant in MISTELBACH - our last night in Austria so not very apt, but it's all we could find. Besides, we rather fancy a Chinese meal as a change from all that Wiener Schnitzel and there is likely to be rather a lot of Goulash and dumplings from tomorrow!
Miles to date 2,227
Location:BUDAPEST to
