Budapest to Dunafoldvar - 105km 65km
Like most cities we've visited, the most difficult part is the leaving.... yes leaving these lovely places is a bit of a wrench, but the real trick too often is finding the now, increasing more opaquely marked EV6 route!
As mentioned before we have many navigation tools now affectionately named...
EV6 - EuroVelo 6 - well waymarked in the west, and deteriorating with each day we fade further into the east. By now it is more notional than real!
DV6 - DougVelo 6 - Doug's click by click facsimile of EuroVelo 6 as a 'get me there one way or another' .gpx route on my Gatmin. Second only to the waymarked route when it evades us. Far from perfect, but it'll get us there.
GV8 - What else but GoogleVelo 6 - when the first two fail us we resort to Google Maps routing but it's hard on phone battery power and it'll be expensive in non-EU Serbia.
MEV6 - MobikeEuroVelo 6 is represented in most countries on a website showing maps with it shown in a big fat wide yellow line so heavily trowled on the maps that it can, at times be confusing as to even what side of the river it's on!
All of the above..... the further east we get the more this option will be invoked..... then we'll create our own route, msking the best of a bad lot! But that's OK, as long as we can stay off the craziest roads!!
Crazy roads, uhh yes, there's a few about.... Hungarians in a Hurry is case in point. These idiots will try to pass you on any road at any time, no matter what the circumstances .... but I've developed a mitigating technique to contsin their urgency... you see I have two rear view mirrors and when I can see a meeting of 3 (ahead&behind cars and me/us at one point in future space I move out early with my left arm out to make myself as large as possible, they slow and wait patiently knowing exactly what and why I'm doing it and when the way is clear, I quickly pull into the right hand side of the lane and let them go by..... they understand I am in self preservation mode, and thank me with a short friendly toot of their horns as they ultimately pass!!
Patagonia, uhh yes.... undescribable roads, trails, woodland tracks etc.... you simply wouldn't believe me if I described what we've done today.... the 'best' of which was a series of Patagonian style dirt tracks crossing farm fields one after another..... hard packed dirt base with up to an inch of soft powdery dust like flour!! It caused Paul some anguish as he lost some degree of control with his narrower tyres, but my 'Monster Truck Massey Ferguson tractor inspired', Schwalbe tyres carried me over that stuff with such great ease and speed that Paul simply disappeared in my dust.. quite literally in my dust, as I was throwing up quite a cloud of this stuff that at times, and sometimes I was even engulfed in my own cloud as the wind was blowing between 25 and 35kph and stright up my back, and for the last 2hrs of our 100+km day!
I finally sourced some Hungarian Hops for my next batch of Homebrew at home near a vineyard in The Outback! Perhaps I'll call 'The Hurrying Hungarian IPA'. And in a shop where we sourced some life given double Espressos in Ráckeve, I spied some very alarming cigarette packaging..... I thought the stuff in Canada was extreme, but I am sure this takes the biscuit, and yet still oodles of people smoke the evil ( and very expensive) weed.... give if up folks, it'll stunt your growth!!
Soon we got to the campsite and Paul uttered those words you never want to hear on a 'mission', you know, 'Houston, we have a problem, Over'! No, we didn't have an explosion, but somehow Paul's hip bag with his phone, passport, wallet, money, and credit cards was not to be found.... somehow it had come loose, and fallen from his person.... our best guess was after our last stop location some 33km up country... this was not good at all!! We quickly developed a plan involving a taxi and Paul.was gone within 30mins only to return 1hr45mins later empty handed.....
Between Nick, a 27 yr old tech savvie circumnavigating cyclist we met at our campsite, and Paul's Son David later that evening we learned a handy 'find my phone' function on Google! Paul's wife Deb kept a cool head and cancelled cards unecessary for the rest of our trip, whilst keeping the important one alive in case we found it! Smart!!
Google this....
'find lock or erase an android device'
Then follow the instructions.... but to do it you need to know your Google Password so you can log into your Google Acct on another phone and use this function to locate your phone!!
Easy, if you know you password, so always know it, and find that lost phone well before your hair turns grey!
The rest of the story in tomoorow's blog...
We dined in a local restaurant and drank some very pleasant Staropreman Dark!!
Special mention goes to the helpful young lady in the restaurant that called the taxi (twice!), the most helpful taxi driver that spoke not a word of english, Nick, and Deb &David Bergson. The helpfulness of these five people may just have sslvaged our ride!!
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