Wednesday 22nd August
Bratislava to Gyor: 4 hours, 82km

“In the morning I went for a walk with Ivana and benji (their dog) through the nearby vineyards. It was a great walk through the country side and we picked grapes from the vines to munch along the way.

Getting back, I packed my things and said goodbye. It was a boiling hot day. When I started there was thin cloud cover which only seemed to serve in trapping the heat. As with every city, it was a little tricky navigating out of it. Many of the roads were in bad condition, especially near the edge, where it would often rise and crack forming what could only be described as a permanent wave like feature, which would have been fun to surf had it not been for the passing traffic that occupied the rest of the non-cracked road.

I rode along the highway that leads out of town and towards the Slovakia-Hungary border. Sharing it with fast moving trucks and lorries was certainly hair-raising and suddenly I began to appreciate the well kept cycle paths back in Germany. Welcome to Eastern Europe, I suppose.

I eventually got onto the 506 road, that I would stay on for most the day. While also not in German like condition, it was more than rideable and more importantly quiet. The landscape on offer was nothing to write home about (but I ll do it anyway), fields upon fields of various crops, mostly wheat and dead sun-flowers. Like the sun-flowers I soon drooped my head and got lost in some thought or another.

I crossed a bridge into Hungary and came to the town of Gyor. There I changed money and continued just a bit further to a campsite that I knew existed (thanks to google). On entering the campsite I saw the road sign that said Budapest was 120km away. I was one day (albeit a long one) from my initial-final destination and the end of ‘my’ Eurovelo 6 road.”

Matt Krog

Read all of Matt’s posts on his website. All of the posts about Matt on CyclingEurope.org can be found here.