A “Nuclear Disaster”

My 2nd day in Slovakia. Yesterday started on a cycle route in lovely woodland and then I was on shared road for most of the day. Road was busy, at times with big trucks, but once I adjusted to cycling with traffic again I enjoyed it, and again good weather and lovely scenery. Without a doubt cycle routes are great and definitely needed – the obvious plus is they protect you from cars and trucks, etc. But they can create a false world – something I’ve never really thought of before and provably sounds a bit strange – I’ll try and explain what I mean. Depending on the route, it might not take you through many towns or villages – in addition to this if you have plotted a route to take in key tourist spots, which is the normal thing to do, you are not necessarily seeing the real word, again. Yesterday, because I was on a “normal” road I saw local industries, kids going to school, trucks that I tried to figure out what they might be transporting and spotting what country a vehicle had come from. I sat for lunch on a park bench in a wee town and watched folks doing their shopping, folks getting on and off busses, folks filling up their water bottles at the water fountain and wondered what was being said on the loud speakers in towns (but more of that later). I won’t be purposely avoiding cycle paths but I did enjoy being on a “normal” road yesterday.

I’ve been looking at the map for my planned route for next few days and on the ‘profile” there is a big hill coming up. I’d specifically kept the route north of the Danube as I will be following this on the way home and wanted the there and back routes to be different. But this is a big big hill / mountain and not going to be easy.

I woke up at 5am this morning still thinking about this hill and added Budapest, in Hungary, to my route instead of dropping into Hungary in the top North East of the country as planned – it makes my route longer but not as many big hills – I’ve decided to go longer and less hilly and if I get to see Budapest twice so be it.

So I did a there and back to see the old town and castle in Trencin this morning – Trencin had been recommended by someone on the Eurovelo group – glad I hadn’t changed my route yesterday as Trencin definitely worth seeing and I wouldn’t have seen it if I’d changed my route sooner.

Now backtracking to get onto my new route, I stop for a bite to eat at a picnic bench. I’m joined by Vlado, who’s stopped for a wee rest too – he speaks very little English and guess what…. I speak NO Slovak. But I’ve told him I’m from Scotland and when he asks where from I say Edinburgh as folks are more likely to have heard of it than if I say Stirling or Alloa – turns out that his daughter lives in Edinbugh. We cycle next bit together towards his home town of Piestany – in sign language he asks if my back wheel is ok – he indicates that it is wobbling – I haven’t been aware of it – transpires I have FIVE broken spokes (yes you can almost sing it to the tune of 5 gold rings) – I’ve heard of folks wheels collapsing with less broken spokes than that – in hindsight I’ve heard a couple of pings but thought it was stone bouncing off the bike when I’ve gone over them.

So Bertie Bike is in Vlado’s kitchen come dining / sitting room and he has spent a large part of this afternoon stripping my bike, cycling to the bike shop to get replacement spokes and a new chain, and is almost finished putting Bertie back together. As Vlado found one broken spoke after another he described it as a “nuclear disaster” Vlado has also made me lunch as well! Huge huge thank you to Vlado for helping me out and preventing an even bigger nuclear disaster.