September 18, 2011
Three Countries in the Morning: A head wind battle
We had a fairly ambitious plan for today. We would ride into Slovakia just before Bratislava, just look at Bratislava from our side of the river as with a population of almost half a million the thought of tackling it on bikes was a bit daunting. After that we would ride on to Cunovo, cross the border into Hungary and ride to Gyor - that is all about 95km. We woke with our bedroom curtains blowing into the room and looking out the window there was clearly a massive wind. Let's hope it was a tail wind then our day would be easy. It wasn't.
We set off into what was like a Canterbury Norwester but this was from the south east - exactly the direction we were going. Never mind this is for fun. Looking across the river at Bratislava was quite scary when you saw what sort of growth there must have been. First of all we saw masses and masses of high rise buildings which looked like huge apartment blocks. We came to the main bridge and got a great view of the castle on the hill that dominates the skyline and the cathedral mixed with many fine modern buildings. It surprised me that more people were not out on this sunny, though windy Sunday morning walking or biking - if it was in Vienna they would have already set up there BBQs in the grill zone, but maybe Bratislava doesn't have one. Although now about 9.30 none of the cafes in the park area were yet open. We pushed on to Cunovo riding almost entirely on the man made dykes that protect this huge flood plain from the Danube. Cunovo is a tiny town with a charming thatched 'inn' that was open for coffee and very good coffee it was at 1.4Euros - our money will go further here. We now had a choice we could either continue in Slovakia where our route would almost entirely along dykes or go into Hungary and take a slightly longer route through agricultural land and small villages. Long straight tracks on rather featureless country into a head wind looses its attraction so we chose the second option.
It was suprising to us how very good the cycle tracks were, as this had not been our experience in another part of Hungary last year. Our first mission was to get some money and I found an ATM in the first small town, did the calculation, put the decimal point in the wrong place and got out some money - we will be able to live like kings! Hungary does look different. Firstly all the agriculture we have seen as yet in the huge Hungarian Plain is on a very large scale. The country also doesn't look nearly as affluent as either Austria or Germany and of course the signs make no sense what so ever to us. - and we thought we had problems with German. Ken was delighted to find that here there are small shops that are actually open on Sunday.
On and on we went into the wind with the day getting hotter and hotter. We made frequent stops for cold drinks and icecreams. About 5km from Gyor I spotted a place with rooms to let, it was also a bar and restaurant so in I went. The bar had no smoking signs everywhere but you could hardly see across the room for the smoke haze. The barmaid was also smoking. At one table was a serious card school. The barmaid was charming, she called her boss and yes they did have a room. We seem to have the whole upstairs of a house with three bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, they will give us dinner at 7pm and breakfast at 7am - the cost is embarrassingly little. Went back to the bar for a beer. They had run out of tap beer, clearly there has been a big run on it today but they had plenty of the bottled stuff.
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Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 2,658 km (1,651 miles)
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