Another fine hot sunny day. So far we haven’t cycled in any rain or even had a cloudy day. However we have been dead jammy because the day after we left Vienna the city had is highest ever recorded rainfall in a 24 hour period in history and the place got flooded out!
This cycle ride from Passau to Budapest is is supposed to be a ride along the blue Danube. However we didn’t see it at all today apart from a brief view as we passed over the so-called Bridge of Friendship between Komárom and Komárno – and it wasn’t blue. These towns used to be one until June 1920 when the boundaries of the old Czechoslovakia were drawn down the centre of the river and the northern part of the town in CZ became known as Komárno and the south side remained in Hungary and kept the original name of Komárom. The Bridge of Friendship symbolically still binds them together despite the fact there were border patrols stopping cars in the middle of the bridge. The guards took one look at our miserable sweaty peloton and waved us past. So not many views of the Danube today however what we did get was a prolonged but unwanted view of a of a dirty rutted track for 5km alongside another blinking field of corn on the cobb! Our route map did note the prospect of a section of rough surface but this was like off- road dirt track stuff. Muddy puddles, loose gravel, tufts of grass, potholes etc. the combination of which was not particularly well suited to cyclists with very sore bottoms and heavy panniers.
Much huffing and puffing mumbling and moaning eventually saw us through to one of the most beautiful stretches of new smooth blemish-free asphalt you could wish to find. It was essentially just a very wide farm access road on which no vehicles passed at all so this plus a brisk following wind soon cheered up the peloton whose thoughts were rapidly turning to lunchtime refreshments.
We rolled into the next village by the name of Acs and drew up at the first place that looked like it might offer beer and cold water. In fact just imagine an old western film where 4 cowboys ride into town and hitch their horses up to a rail outside the saloon. There was a wooden facade and a veranda with a rail along the edge. Two other mean-looking cowboys with narrow eyes were sitting on the veranda outside the saloon doors. One of them spits into the dust at our feet but doesn’t speak. The peloton look at each other and, not having the same true grit as Clint Eastwood, saddled up again and rode out to find another saloon. Luckily there was one just around the corner with aromas of freshly baking pizzas coming out of the windows. We stopped and refuelled before tackling the final 20K into Komárom.
Not far from our finish for the day we came across a bike sculpture that we thought worthy of a photo, and here it is.
The hotel we are staying in is unlike any we’ve stayed in before. It has the appearance of being taken over by Triffids with plants growing up every wall and into every crevice. It also, somewhat bizarrely, houses a full sized bowling alley in the reception area! It has bedrooms the size of the universe and a very large telly in our room that has a guilded frame around it. There are ancient stone pillars on the terrace and a pool that is promoted on line for swimming in but in fact if you lay in it you could do about two strokes and then hit your head off the wall at the other end. It’s charmingly quirky!
Is it possible to develop a fettish for bacon? I’m beginning to think it is. One member of the peloton spends half her time ranting on about whether this hotel or that one will have bacon on the breakfast menu or ‘ do you think that cafe over there will have dumplings with bacon bits in?’. On the two occasions when’s crispy bacon has been on the breakfast buffet bar she makes a mad scramble to get a plateful before every other guest gets a chance just in case it all goes before she gets there. Every day we have some philosophical discussion about the merits or otherwise of bacon (it must be crispy) and whether there is too much salt in it. I’m getting a bit worried about this.
Also, another member of the peloton has developed an equally baffling fettish for ice cream and most particularly for great bucketfuls of the very dark, very rich, chocolate variety that in any other circumstance could be use to repair potholes in tarmac. I tried some one night and chocolatey it certainly is but try eating it in the quantities he does would make the rest of us mere mortals sink to the ground and crawl back to the hotel on hands and knees with our leaden chocolate paunches scraping along the cobbles.
Frankly I think the two weeks of persistent hot baking sun has had a disturbing effect on their sense of dietary proportion the solution for which is most probably some sort of therapy.
Oh Komarno is quite nice and has a town hall clock which plays a military oompah tune every two hours when a pair of CR Smith double- glazed bathroom windows open and a stationary fusilier is revealed standing to attention. Fascinating. It was worth stopping here overnight just for that.
Velodyssee 