In which Sid and Doris meet Jan, Romy and the electric barrow and warn them of mud en route.
Today we target Esztergom, our first 100 kilometre day for a while and nowhere nice to stay before there anyway. Weather forecast, maybe rain, definitely easterly wind. Hmmm.
Leaving the rather tired Hotel Konferencia (a huge junior suite in the style of 1980s: dark wood and orange lighting) we find Jan and Romy getting ready for their run to Esztergom. Theirs is not a light weight expedition and Jan has a small van full of luggage in a compartment in front of him.
While Romy has a standard bike, Jan has some battery power for when he needs more than legs can give. We swap numbers and we try to tell them about the conditions we find before they get there, because Sid and Doris go like the wind (says Miftah Bat).
Early on we find a new path alongside the old main road, itself now superseded by a motorway. This gives us good progress toward Komarom (which is the Hungarian town, opposite Komarno on the other side of the Danube ceded to Czechoslovakia in 1918).
On the way out of Gyor we see signs to the Audi works. And when we have dinner with Jan and Romy we are pleased to find he works for Audi, in Ingolstadt.
“S” advises to eat often, as we come into Gonyu for onzies we see some less technical local output at the gnome outlet. Perhaps it is like a little stud farm, but best not enquire too closely. Pleased to see a Galapogas tortoise, rare even in Ecuador.
In our planning we have knowingly included a rough track which buys us time on a quiet road later. Finding grass down the middle of the track is all part of the adventure. Finding hippos messing about in their wallows is beyond epic. So S and D take pictures, and also record the better road we find about five kilometres later.
This delivers us into a small village where the little station car park shows it is now a commuter town once served by this dilapidated exhibit but now by this.
At our lunch stop we learn more about the correct way to comport yourself in Hungary, particularly in relation to smiling. In the cafe we pick out some pizza, a cake and a drink. We ask for a knife and fork. The request is met with head tossing incredulity and some special eyebrow raising among the staff. And now he is asking to borrow a glass. Smiling is not part of customer relations.
We are soon back onto the main roads. On our first day in Hungary we did see a horse and cart, now signs specifically ban them from this road along with tractors. Bicycles welcome, and best of luck. We do see a Lada 124, a Lada Samara and a Niva. Most of the car traffic seems to be 15 year old Suzuki Swifts.
There are some villainously ruined cycle paths which are only acceptable because the alternative is mixing with cement trucks and car transporters (full of new Suzukis) driven by men who definitely retain their family links to Magyar horsemen, definitely. Of course the various populations washing through from Turkey, Serbia, Austria, Bulgaria means that modern Hungarian DNA shows little connection with the Eastern marauders. But that doesn’t stop the Circus Maximus behaviour. Our being on the bike path does give us the opportunity to catch this inspiring bit of Socialist Realism on the HQ of a huge and empty complex (towers, conveyors, railways, metal framed windows, broken glass, rust, spurge, entropy). The reality of their autarkic socialism was that large parts of Hungarian industry were epically uncompetitive, making for huge unemployement in the 1990s. Audi and Holcim to the rescue.
And if we thought being on the crap cycle track was bad, it ran out and we were playing in the traffic again. This has proven quite good for our speed on other occasions; Doris was clocked at over 30 kph on a main road this morning. So in a village we were glad to pull off for a cafe stop, not quite aware how mentally wearing playing with the Horesemen of the Steppe had been.
It was only by accident Doris found that this is the museum cafe of the cement works now in the hands of Holcim (Swiss based building materials firm). Feast your eyes on these interesting bags of cement – we did. See also these competitors in the regional heats of the National No Smiling Competition.
The wind has been getting up and we tow one another into town waiting for Esztergom and the Portobello Yacht Hotel in the very nicest part of town. Sid is thinking chandlery, degreasing fluids, hoses, buckets. It is a Wellness Centre with spas, saunas and mysterious rooms for changing into and out of the acceptable sorts of nakedness or towel wrappedness. So S and D were clean (and ready for dinner with Jan and Romy) the bikes less so. (But they weren’t coming out for dinner).
Back up to 100 kilometre days, a rest tomorrow (Friday) in this pretty town with the run into Budapest scheduled for a traffic-quiet-Saturday. Here’s hoping.