A significant amount of climbing was involved in today’s mountain exploring but fortunately it was courtesy of cable cars rather than our own efforts. More of that in a moment.
Last week I was contacted by a guy called Julian from the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF). He is involved in developing the new Eurovelo websites that have been set up by the ECF – Eurovelo.org & Eurovelo.com. The former is aimed at the professionals of the cycling world (those who could be instrumental in developing the network of Eurovelo routes) & the latter is aimed at the likes of you and me who might want to cycle along the routes. When I started planning my cycle to Italy along the route of the Eurovelo 5 back in 2008 I would have loved a central point of information that could give me the basic facts that I needed about the route. At the time nothing really existed but thanks to the new website, that central source of reference is gradually becoming a reality. It was thus quite nice when Julian – from the ECF – asked to interview me for a couple of articles he was writing for the Eurovelo 5 & 8 sections of the site. This morning I took myself off to a local café with WiFi and had a long Skype conversation with Julian answering his questions about my experiences back in summer 2010 and also my plans for cycling the Eurovelo 8 this coming summer. I felt a little like a foreign reporter filing his copy from a far off location. The only problem was that I wasn’t talking about anything to do with being here in Slovakia. Interesting experience nevertheless. Julian is actually off to Australia soon to do a similar job for Cycling South Australia based in Adelaide (the reason why we had to do the interview this week) and it did make me wonder whether trip number three should be somewhere in that great continent. One to think about…
Back to Tatranská Lomnica. We didn’t really escape the town today choosing instead to catch the two cable cars required to transport us to the very top of the nearby mountain going by the name of Lomnicky Stit which reaches 2,364 metres. Before setting off we were a little unsure as to whether we would be rewarded with any kind of view from the research station that sits atop of the mountain; down in the valley it was a grey, overcast morning but we hoped that by ascending to nearly two & a half kilometres into the sky we would escape the clouds. We were in luck as that is exactly what happened. You can see in the previous post a panoramic photograph of the scene we were able to survey for the hour or so that we were able to wander around the James Bond villain’s lair in the sky. That said, we didn’t encounter any white haired men stroking their pussies (although the stocky bald headed chap who opened the gate to the cable car on our arrival could easily have picked up work in Hollywood as a baddie’s henchman), just a scientist making a regular trip to fiddle with his instruments and a barman who succeeded in persuading us to upgrade our coffees to coffees with peach liqueur. He didn’t have to work too hard. The views were epic, stunning, striking, awe-inspiring (etc…) – I’m sure you can fill in a few more adjectives of your own that would describe perfectly what we were able to see. The view was certainly worth the €41 it had cost each of us to reach the summit. Here are a few more photos taken from above the clouds…