Day 37

23/09/2011 – Day 37

Budapest to Dunavesce – 87km

Today we were in the position of having no objective other than putting in as many kilometres as we can. The next major city is Belgrade which is 570km away so will take roughly a week to get there.

The official route wants us to go into the centre of Budapest and then come out to the river again. Or, we can just head in the right direction from the hotel and pick up the route at the last bridge as we leave the city, which is exactly what we did.

Amazingly the city planners do not seem to have thought out the cycle path system in Budapest. Often you are following a well-marked path only to have it stop in the middle of nowhere, leaving you surrounded by heavy traffic.

Once you pass under the last bridge leaving the city the official signs reappear showing both the Donauradweg and Eurovelo 6, but now they are in yellow. They lead you easily through a slightly complicated section until you have to turn back on yourself to cross a canal when they turn to green and point in a different direction to the map. (I think the green ones are for alternative routes).

Now we are in the poorer end of the city, there is a feeling of poverty and everything looks sad and dirty. There was no feeling that this was not a good place to be, just that it was poor.

We stopped for second breakfast in a tiny bar where the woman only spoke Hungarian but with some pointing, mime and a few laughs coffees were ordered. I have no idea what she said but we left with a smile on our faces.

The whole day has been spent on bad to very bad tracks or road. Having left the city limits we ended up on a grass track on top of the dykes again which is heavily rutted and bumpy. The vibration really wears you down.

Once we reach Tӧkӧl the route puts us on the road, once again a sign here would be very useful but we stopped a passing woman and asked her the way, she was very nice and did her best to put us right.

Now we are on the road my new bike shows its weakness, only having 21 gears and 26” wheels means it is much slower on the road sections, I am having to pedal flat out just to keep up with M. But we can still put in average speeds of 20km/h +, which is good.

Just outside Tӧkӧl we decide to stop for lunch down a side road and find a derelict factory gate and sit on the steps. Seconds later a head pops out the window, I is not derelict (although sometimes it is hard to tell here) but the security guard is ok with us being here. Then a grey cat appears shortly followed by one of here kittens, probably from earlier this year. The mother is very friendly and has the feel of being a pet that has been abandoned; she wants to be stroked and to climb on us. The black kitten is not so sure and keeps her distance and was obviously born in the wild. As we eat our salads and cheese sandwiches we are constantly harassed until we give in and feed them a few scraps.

We stay on the road until Ráckeve where we have to re-cross the river back to the east bank. While M is filming the clock tower a man walking past tries to tell him that we can go to the top and look out over the area, a woman walking the other way who can speak English stops to translate, everyone we meet is so friendly and helpful (not including the thieving bastard from the hotel in Budapest of course).

We find a café in the middle of the town’s one way system and stop for a coffee. It is a little oasis in the middle of traffic chaos! The only problem is they serve a form of instant coffee that they all seem to like here, except it is disgusting.

The afternoon is an even split between road and bad track, although it is better than the tracks this morning, but that does not mean they were good either. The roads are not much better, full of potholes and the edges are crumbling away making it very difficult to cycle anywhere except the middle of the road.

We decide at about 5pm to start looking for a place to spend the night and turn into Dunavecse following a Motel sign painted in the road and looking for a room advertised in the guide. As it turns out they are both the same place. When we arrived it was closed but there was a phone number to ring and the owner arrived a few minutes later. The price was 5000 Forins or 20€ for both of us for a room with bathroom, can you believe it? It is almost the same price for a camp site. But when we see the room it all makes sense, it is not the cleanest place in the world but the room was ok and the beds not too bad if you don’t put your nose too close to the mattress.

The owner asks if we have a lock for the bikes and they should be OK outside but as soon as he is gone they come upstairs with us and spend the night in the corridor. We are the only people staying here and the owner lives a short distance away so we have the whole building to ourselves.

Diner was across the road in the local hot spot, there is a restaurant upstairs and outside while the bar downstairs had a disco on and was full of kids. Amazingly the waiter spoke English well and they had a menu in English. We both ordered local dishes but they were not much to get excited over. But the time we had finished eating it was late and we were pooped so we called it a night.