December 17, 2013
The rest of Slovakia: That's what I thought old boy
Leaving Svidnik I decided that the thing to do was to go and have a look at Death Valley. The road doesn't lead anywhere on my route so I would have to go up and come back the same way but I thought it worth it to take a look. Essentially what there was to see was lots of tanks in the fields to the sides of the road. The tanks were just basically left there where they were in the fields since 1945. They looked like they were rolling over the snowy hills towards me. I stood and looked at them and thought about the young men that would have been driving those tanks and what they must have been thinking, and what it must have been like generally to have been a young man at that time. Such thoughts always leave me with a deep sense of gratitude to have been so fortunate to be born when and where I was. Really, the only appropriate response is gratitude.
Also thinking about these young men coming over these hills in these tanks from both sides, hell bent on killing one another for no real reason other than following orders that had come down from politicians put me in mind of one of my all time favourite videos. I will share it with you now and hope you take the time to watch it. There is a terribe irony in the fact that this moving speech comes from Charlie Chaplin. Ironic not only because Chaplin is remembered primarily as a comic and this speech is anything but that, but mainly because he is one of only two men in history to sport such facial hair and the other man, well we all know what the other man did. Anyway, watch this.
It was on my way back to the main road that I realised that I still had the keys to Robert and Anna's basement in my pocket. Luckily for me that I found them when I did as I was only five kilometres from their apartment and could easily return them. Even so, by the time I had done that most of the day had been lost going nowhere.
Leaving Svidnik there is a main road that goes direct to Poland but it has all the truck traffic on it and Robert had advised me to take a different border crossing to the east which I was all for. It was 40 kilometres of rolling hills to get to the town of Medzilaborce from which the road to Poland left and by the time I got to that town it was already dark. Still I passed a sign saying Poland was eleven kilometres away and, although I knew it was a climb of 300 metres I thought it a good idea to do it now. There was no traffic heading that way and plenty of light due to reflections from the snow, so why not?
But as I went through the last of the town the road, which until now had been cleared along the whole route, now had a covering of snow and ice. Darn it. Clearly the pass had not been cleared and, given the altitude it climbed to, was very unlikely to be passable. I was preparing to turn around when an old man appeared ahead of me on foot out of the darkness and began blabbering to me. Because my Slovakian isn't up to much I wasn't entirely sure what he said but it seemed the gist of it was that the road ahead was closed.
"That's what I thought old boy, thanks for confirming it"
He continued to speak rapidly at me, taking me by the arm and pointing back the other way.
"Yes, yes, I better be going that way. Thanks again my man"
He kept talking. He still had a hold of my arm. I was trying to be polite. Then he found some English; "Money, money" he said.
"Golly old boy, is this a mugging?"
If it was, it wasn't a very good one. I pulled my arm free and cycled off.
"Good morning!" the man shouted after me.
I had wasted a day, I had to go almost the whole way back now. But there were some advantages. First of all, I had a great story about almost being mugged, and then I found a beautiful spot to camp. Down by a little creek it was, really a nice place. Wouldn't you just love to wake up here? How can you not love the world when you wake up here?
I spent the next morning cycling back to the main road, taking a slightly different route on a road which had also not been cleared and was a little difficult to cycle on. When I got to the main road a sign told me I was 13 kilometres from Svidnik. It had been 67 hours since I had arrived in that town and I had only covered a distance that should take less than one. And now I had to share the road with all the trucks anyway. Luckily most of them seemed to be going the other way and before long I was at the Polish border.
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SLOVAKIA SUMMARY:
Time: Five days
Distance: 306 kilometres
Best bits: The fact that I didn't die
Worst bits: Almost dying every day
Watch out for: Men weilding chainsaws, men inviting you to their ‘cabin in the woods’, hunters, muggers, wolves, trucks, snow, ice and things that go bump in the night
Top tip: Visit in summer
Today's ride: 107 km (66 miles)
Total: 11,109 km (6,899 miles)
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