Three countries in one day! Don't get to do that very often!
"But wait a minute!" you say - "didn't you do that exact thing just a couple of days ago?" Hold onto that question, please. I'll come back to that in a moment.
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I was exhausted after yesterday's unexpectedly tough roughstuff ride. I don't think I'd have found it so bad if it hadn't come on top of just 3 hours' sleep and an unreasonably early start the day before that. When I got in from dinner at about 9pm, I couldn't decide whether to prioritise laundry or blog writing, so I abandoned both of those things and got an early night instead. Much as I love roughstuff, I was very much looking forward to a mainly flat, mainly tarmac day to recover!
Unfortunately I made the mistake of looking at the weather forecast on the way to bed. 22 hours of rain with 20-50mm rainfall and a fresh wind from the NW, exactly against my direction of travel. The idea of battling against the wind and rain all day, plus spray from all those close-passing vehicles I had been warned about - not to mention the danger if they didn't see me in the conditions - sounded quite horrific.
When I woke up at about midnight, I couldn't get back to sleep for fretting about this, so I went online and looked for trains. With a bit of help from Google Translate, I ascertained that there was a train at 10.05 from Smolenice (the place where I had stopped for the night) which would get me to a town called Kúty, just over halfway to my next overnight stop; that it took bikes; that there were engineering works with a replacement bus on another section of that line, but not affecting the part I wanted to travel on. At least, I think that's what it all said. The residual 45km to my destination sounded more like the sort of distance one could grin and bear the rain for, and if the weather proved to be utterly impossible, there was also a feasible onward train connection. My intended cycling route happened to pass right by Kúty anyway, so I didn't even have to amend it. With Plan B in place, I was able to get back to sleep at last, having reset my alarm clock for more sleep and a later departure.
As luck would have it, I woke up spontaneously at 6am anyway, and the weather actually didn't look that bad. The rain seemed to have blown itself out overnight. A look at the weather app confirmed this, with only some patchy and intermittent rain now predicted along my route, although that wind was still in the forecast. I decided to cycle after all - so I roused myself from bed, made coffee by my newly devised filter-coffee-without-a-filter method (I ought to do a vlog about it), and set about demolishing the overstock of breakfast ingredients I'd bought the previous evening. My bike bags had been full to start with, but at risk of squishing the loaf of bread I somehow managed to cram everything in which I hadn't eaten, which was great as I don't like throwing food away.
Next I had to decide what to do about the chafed-foot injury mentioned yesterday. Although the socks-in-sandals experiment had been a success, I thought that today there'd be a lot of road spray, and a wet sock would be worse for chafing than none at all. Also, I'd probably want to keep my socks dry to wear in the evening. So I opted to go with bare feet in my sandals, lots of antiseptic cream, and hope!
The clock was just striking 8 as I set off, and the sun had even put in an appearance, illuminating the castle (now a conference centre) which stands guard above the village.
The wind was gusting strongly, though, enough to affect my control of the bike, and I began to have third thoughts about taking the train after all. I tried telling myself that it was only the existence of the train that was encouraging me to wimp out, that if there wasn't a train option I would just get on with it, and that I'd be better off cycling than sitting waiting 2 hours for the train.
Then I met a bus! Even with my nonexistent knowledge of Slovak, I could recognise a rail replacement bus! Then the level crossing was down! The rail website hadn't offered me an earlier train than 10am, but what if there was one? Could I catch it? What an irony it would be if I was in time to see it leave at the level crossing!
I waited for a while at the crossing until, bizarrely, the barriers went up again without a train having passed. As I crossed the tracks, I could see that there was a train standing in the station, so I went to take a closer look.
A woman railway worker came walking along the platform, so I asked her whether this train was going to Kúty. In fact, as I don't know how to say that in Slovak, I just uttered the one word "Kúty?" I hope she didn't think I was propositioning her! Anyway, she ushered me towards the waiting room and showed me the timetable which said 10.05. So this was, in fact, the "train I first thought of" and it was going to Kúty, but not for another two hours. As you were, Tom. Back on your bike!
I mentioned a "mainly flat, mainly tarmac" route, but first I had a farewell appointment with Madame R.S. Tuff, because I'd come down on the "wrong" side of that Carpathian ridge and I'd planned a gravel route back across it to kick off the day. This turned out to be a pleasure, though, because the track was similar to the easiest ones from yesterday, the gradients were gentle and the trees screened me from the wind. I had "summited" by 9 o'clock and from there it was pretty much plain sailing, the wind turning out to be much less gusty on that other side of the hills.
Then I had a section of main road, which turned out to be unexpectedly good to ride on as it had a broad "hard shoulder" protected by a white line, in essence a perfect de facto bike lane, even though there was no inkling of any bike lane signage. In fact I wondered whether the highway authorities had deliberately done it like that, to provide a cycling facility by stealth without getting into any political arguments about funding for bike infrastructure!
I wasn't on the main road for long, though, before I turned off onto a much narrower, less well-surfaced country road. My initial worries about motor traffic abated when there wasn't any ... I soon found out why! The road led into what appeared to be a prohibited military area. Thank goodness for Google Lens, which translated the signage sufficiently for me to conclude that pedestrians were allowed except during military exercises. I presumed that there would be additional signage or barriers at times when this applied; I stretched the dictionary definition to class myself as a "pedestrian"; and I carried on cycling through, pleased that I had inadvertently picked a route prohibited to motor vehicles.
But oh no!! Out of nowhere, towards me came rushing a blue saloon car with its headlights on, which appeared to be moving over to my side of the road as it approached! The Military Police coming to apprehend me, surely, having spotted me on CCTV! Relief washed over me as the car returned to its own side of the road and passed me without slowing. I responded with a nod and a lift of my hand from the handlebar. Rule no.1 of successful trespassing: look as if you are supposed to be there! A bit later, the same routine worked a treat when a genuine, signwritten Military Police jeep did come along.
So here I was, bowling along a dead flat, dead straight road through pine forests, with sand drifted across the road and surrounded by military installations. I could for all the world have been back in Brandenburg! Not exactly what I travelled all that way for...
Before long, to my further relief, I reached the matching end-of-prohibition sign on the other side of the military area, and soon I was back onto a waymarked cycling route and came upon an absolutely beautiful new picnic shelter, where I sat down to have flask-coffee and a snack. The picnic table top was printed with a fabulous information poster about the life cycle of bees.
The next small town I reached had a huge and elegant baroque church with Mass in Latin relayed on speakers outside - it being Sunday. I regretted not having included time for Mass in my schedule, and lingered outside for long enough to sing along with the Pater Noster.
From right beside this church, a pristine new bike path - with plaque proudly advertising the EU funding to build it - led alongside a drainage ditch in the direction of Kúty. Komoot had suggested a slightly different routing, but this new path was "obviously" heading in the right direction, so I took it. I was bowling along merrily, and then it just ... stopped. Literally.
If I'd been short of time, or it had been raining, or I had an unsuitable bike for roughstuff, I'd have been seriously annoyed. As it was, I found it hilarious and carried on. And it got a good deal rougher than that, with the bank becoming quite overgrown, and having to teeter precariously across a crumbling concrete sluice gate over a side stream.
Thus I eventually made it to Kúty, arriving an hour or so later than if I'd waited for that train, and decided to go and have my packed lunch sitting on a bench at the station watching the trains coming and going.
Kúty lies close to the border between Slovakia and Czechia, and very soon after restarting I was crossing the Morava river, which divides the two countries. This brought a dramatic change in both the landscape and the tourism/cycling infrastructure, as I soon found myself following a waymarked "wine route" cycling trail, which sounds enticing for a more leisurely trip sometime!
The route was flanked by vineyards, gastronomy and wine-tasting opportunities, "chateaux" in various states of crumbling-ness, and in one village a festival in full swing with dancers in regional costume!
At Sedlec I was very close to the border with Austria, and as I had plenty left of both time and energy - in contrast to yesterday - I added a short detour to visit the land of my mother. This meant that I had cycled through three different countries in one day, which I can only remember having done three times before*: twice cycling from Basel to Zurich (Switzerland, France and Germany), and this epic ride taking in Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein. Of course, it's possible to cycle in more than one country by joining them up with other means of transportation - like I did the other day, linking Germany, Czechia, and Slovakia via two trains; but I don't think that really counts! (I hope that answers your earlier question, dear Reader!)
[* EDIT: I've remembered a fourth occasion since writing the above, via Switzerland, Austria and Italy in 2019.]
[* FURTHER EDIT: just a few weeks after the ride described here, I followed up with one more, via Czechia, Poland and Germany.]
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The crossing into Austria was accomplished on a tiny agricultural track without even a proper national boundary marker - just an Austrian flag sign on a post (see photo at the top). On the way I passed a historical curiosity which I'd have completely missed without this detour: the Portz Insel, in former times an actual island amongst wetlands, where the Austrian and Czech communities on either side of the border have collaborated to reconstruct a historic brick bridge which provided the access to the former island.
The frictionless border crossing and the cross-border cultural collaboration seem nothing less than miraculous to those of us who grew up in the era of the Iron Curtain, hard border controls, and jackbooted officials stomping up and down train corridors in the dead of night demanding to see everyone's papers!
One final unplanned roughstuff excursion, through pumpkin fields (with hares) on the Austrian side, eventually brought me back across the border into Czechia at the town of Mikulov, where I spent a little while cruising around hunting for the best viewpoint to photograph the castle - before finding that the very best of all was from the bedroom window of the unprepossessing motel on the edge of town which I'd booked myself into.
Mikulov - which I'd never even heard of before planning this trip - is a major centre of the Moravian wine industry. For dinner (after I'd caught up with the laundry postponed from last night, leaving clothes festooned all around the room to dry) I went to a restaurant specialising in local wines, sold by the 10cl, so I was able to try three different ones - one as aperitif and one with each of my two meal courses. Unfortunately, the menu didn't include Wiener Schnitzel - which I consider to be mandatory whenever I visit Austria - so I would have to find an opportunity to catch up on this obligation another day!
By the time I'd finished my meal, it had started pouring with rain, and it didn't stop all night. I'd intended to spend a little time after dinner mooching around the old town with my camera, but instead I just fled straight back to my accommodation.
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