September 21, 2014
Gyorszentivan - Esztergom
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A warm and sunny morning. only marred by the landlady trying to charge us 5 euro each, extra. She claimed the price we'd been quoted didn't include breakfast. That's not what the tourist office told us, we said. She caved in, but charged us 2 euro a bottle for the beer, which is a bit steep for Hungary. Johan and Birgit left before us.
The signing out of town was pretty good, but once into open country, the roads we were riding on, were in atrocious condition, muddy with huge potholes full of water. Not far from Bony we turned onto a proper road. In Bony there was a Coop shop, open until 12-00pm. It was 11-45. Another German cyclist was loading his bike with his purchases. I exchanged a few words with him, before Barbara reminded me to get a shift on, if we weren't to go hungry. I was in and out in a few minutes. The German guy had gone, but in his place, so to speak, was Kurt. You've got 5 minutes we told him. When he came back out, we swapped experiences as he packed away his food and drink and for a little longer, before we set out again.
It took me a while to figure out which road to take [still no map]. We aimed for Bana, then Babolna, where we might have taken a more direct road to Acs, instead we turned north at Nagygmand, following the route signing, into the wind for a few kilometres.
In Acs, we ate lunch on a bench in the warm sunshine, under a horse chestnut tree. A man and his young daughter were collecting the fallen nuts. He told us he got 25 forints a kilo for his harvest. Lack of a common language meant that that's as far as the conversation went. It seems a pitifully small amount of money for the work. The sack he attached to the back of his bike can't have weighed more than 20 kilos, so what they had just collected, at the rate he quoted, would have been worth about £1-25. I never discovered for what purpose they were to be used. Seeing this reminded me, that in the UK, during WWI, horse chestnuts were used in the manufacture of explosives. A government campaign encouraged the nation's youth to collect what they could. This was at the suggestion of Manchester University chemist, zionist and later first President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann. The success of this scheme may or may not have eased the passage of the Balfour Declaration, supporting the principle of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. From little chestnuts.......
Leaving Acs, we rejected the dirt road route that the trail signing put us on and instead followed the main road, Highway 1 again, for about 3 miles, after which we turned left onto the proper route. At Komaron, we were back close to the river, but couldn't see it. On the other bank. is the similarly named Komarno, in Slovakia. A bridge connects them. We didn't see that either. We decided to stick with Hungary. How good a choice that was, I can't say, but from Komaron, through Szony, Nagykolonia and industrial Almasfüzito, the path was rough, interrupted and in too many places, badly surfaced. From the junction with highway 10 for Esztergom, we were riding on the road again. It wasn't busy, so was not too stressful. From Nyergesüjfalu to beyond Tata, there is a decent cycle path. At the junction with highway 11, the last stretch into Esztergom, it runs out, so we were back on the road again. It was quiet, so no dramas.
In the centre of Esztergom, near the basilica, I enquired at the first place we saw offering accommodation. I can't remember its name. We dined out, in a restaurant that at first sight, looked like it specialised in pizza and ice cream, but, as it turned out, served more than passable local cuisine. The food's been good in Hungary.
Today's ride: 111 km (69 miles)
Total: 1,752 km (1,088 miles)
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