Please forgive us if we have led you to believe that all days on a cycle tour are sunshine and lollipops. Truth be told most days are cyclical in nature, a myriad of ups and downs directly related to weather, terrain, gear and food. However, every once in a while you encounter a day that is brutal, torturous even. Today was one of those days.
We started on a high, having experienced the best of Vienna and Bratislava. After a leisurely morning, we were excited to hit the trail once again, thrilled to be riding in another new country, Slovakia. Successfully connecting to Eurovelo 6, everything looked on track until we made that fateful turn east. It was then the headwinds hit us with a vengeance. Under the searing thirty degree sun, we found ourselves pushing forward on a flat, unforgiving dyke trail directly into the wind. Soul sucking wind. The kind of wind that forces you to peddle even when attempting to cruise downhill!
After 30 some years of marriage, we have learned that sometimes it is better to simply suffer in silence. After all, whining and complaining about the heat and the wind does little to change the situation and it has been said that silence is golden. For hours we rode on in complete silence, each of us fighting our own mental battle against the elements. Progress was painfully slow, yet we both kept peddling. What else could we do? By 4 pm we had only travelled 40 hard earned kilometres. Budapest felt unachievable. At that exact moment, Lady Luck smiled down upon us and served up a charming, little pizza place in a town called Sap. It was an extremely easy decision to take a break, refuel and hope for the winds to die down. Reenergized after a pizza feast we returned to the trail confident if we travelled until dark we could makeup a few kilometres. Unfortunately, in a cruel twist of fate, the cycle path changed to a deep gravel pathway. Our pace once again slowed considerably, and to make matters worse, it was now dusk and the mosquitos were swarming. Frustrated, tired and cranky we literally stumbled upon a bar with what we thought was a camping sign. (Our Slovak is worse than our German if you can believe that!) Feeling completely done, we beelined to the bar and sought out the owner. We suspect he sensed our frustration, as he led us to the back of his property, showed us a grassy area and invited us to pitch our tent. Unbelievably, he refused to accept payment for the makeshift campsite. Once again, when we have felt at our lowest, the simplest gesture of kindness has touched us deeply. It was the truest form of 5 star accommodation.
Route Update
Thanks to the kindness and generosity of a complete stranger, our tent is pitched behind the bar in the town of Klizska Nema . Tomorrow, we will continue the quest for Budapest....unless the mosquitos eat us alive tonight!
Giggle
Unbeknownst to us there is a nude beach on the outskirts of Vienna that stretches for miles and our route took us directly through it. Naturally, being Canadian and quite reserved, we really didn’t know what to do or where to look so we simply kept peddling striving to face forward at all times. Nothing to see here! Suddenly, a quite hefty naked man, frantically waving both his arms (and other stuff) jumped on the trail in front of me. Not quite sure if I was being warned or accosted I kept on peddling all the while yelling at Rob suggesting he should talk to the guy. Turns out, the overly friendly, naked man was simply trying to tell us that we were going in the wrong direction and the path was a dead end. Appreciative, we turned around, but I must say I have not been able to order Bratwurst again.
