WHO ARE WWWW?
WWWW is not a club, just a group of friends. The Wirksworth contingent (Alison Richards, Ali Clamp, Jane Tresidder, Suzanne Clark and Lorrie McCuaige) all have Marin bikes, and have also dubbed themselves ‘The Ancient Mariners’. Alison Richards is shown here making an essential railway crossing.
TOUR 2005
The Wirksworth and Watford Women Wheelers* wanted to go somewhere different this year for our week-long cycle holiday, and eventually chose Slovakia, east of the Czech Republic and north of Hungary.
We had little knowledge of this part of the world, and it was surprisingly difficult to find out more. Attracting Western European tourists is an ambition for the former Soviet bloc countries, but they still have much to learn about tourists’ requirements. Brochures from the state tourist agency are full of lovely pictures and flowery language, but no practical information. The Western travel guides are better but quite sparse. We read that good 1:50,000 maps are available locally, but in all our travels, we only found one shop with maps, and the ones we wanted were out of stock. We were left navigating with the 1:200,000 map of the whole country, which I’d bought at Stanfords in London. At least it made us feel like adventurers!
GETTING THERE
We flew to Bratislava, the capital, and took a train north-east towards the High Tatras Mountains. Our 6-day circular route (190 miles) was in lesser mountain ranges, and ranged from altitudes of about 300 metres to 1,000 metres - mainly undulating, but also with many long ‘ups’ and long ‘downs’ (12 miles all up and 12 miles all down at one point.) The map had no contour lines and only gave the altitudes of the peaks, so we had several surprises.
COMMUNISM MEETS CAPITALISM
We travelled through an odd mixture of left-over Communism and new capitalism. One night we stayed in a tacky tower block hotel in a very grey concrete town, and as we cycled away the next morning in the rain, we were assailed by a loud public address system at every street corner, with a woman’s stentorious voice barking at us in Slovak. We imagined that she was telling us to be upright citizens.
The next night we stayed in the 1,000 metre high village of Drabsko, in a beautiful Alpine chalet, built by our b&b hosts from timber they had cut from the surrounding forest. Our chalet hosts were incredibly helpful. One member of the family came out by car along the route they expected us to arrive by, so as to be sure we knew exactly where to come (and we’d lost the address, so that was a godsend!) Our group was too big for their b&b annexe, so they moved out of their own house so we could all be accommodated. We hadn’t specified an evening meal, but there were no eating places anywhere nearby, so they left us a meal to heat up. They even arranged for us to go horse-riding at no charge at a friend’s stable next door.
GREAT CONTRASTS IN TOWNS
Some towns, with a wealthy medieval Hungarian Empire past, are very attractive. Others are shabby, Communist-era-industrial. Very few shops have shop windows for displaying their wares, so it is difficult to know what they are selling – their entrances are rather like an entrance to a block of flats or offices.
The countryside is very pretty around the towns, but there are also vast areas of forest, where you cycle on and on forever through the trees. (Oddly, it reminded me of Bill Bryson’s ‘Walking in the Woods’, about the American Appalachian Trail.) In one forest, in a small pasture by a stream, we found a wooden picnic table for our lunch. We were greeted by a Slovak cowherd, an older man with three cows and a dog. We spoke no Slovak and he spoke no English, but we managed a conversation of sorts. (The only Slovak phrase I mastered was ‘I do not understand’, but that didn’t stop people trying to get me to understand.)
We passed several impoverished Roma (gypsy) shanty towns on the outskirts of substantial Slovakian towns. Romas tend not to have cars, so they walk in large groups on the roads, often hauling small carts containing children or provisions. Slovakians warned us to watch out, that the Roma are thieves, but we had no problems. We didn’t try to take their photographs. They stuck out from other Slovakians, separate and no doubt ostracised. At least they smiled and waved at us – most Slovakians, especially women, looked the other way when we passed by, and no one smiled or waved. Perhaps it is something to do with their history – strangers have traditionally been invaders.
We finished our holiday with a morning in Bratislava, which has a beautifully restored old town centre with no cars, though sadly, there is a busy road between the centre and the wide Danube River. A soaring bridge crosses the Danube here – and attached alongside, but well below the noisy traffic, is a lane for cyclists and pedestrians.
