After a great 5 nights in Budapest catching up with my family enjoying sights and odd chores like hubby acquiring a new bike tyre it was time to get back peddling.Incidently Budapest proved a very easy city to walk around and very relaxed, highlights had to be the 3 hour communist guided walk run by the tourist bureau, the jewish synagogue, my brother in laws birthday meal at the 100 year old and of course a session at the Gellert baths.

We set off early as Id asked hubby to give me the half way point to Lake Balaton and somehow with our hungarian atlas of bike routes he’d forgotten there were maps on the back of maps so underestimated our day, hence we thought we could be in for an 80km day, but it ended up much longer. The hotel we’d booked didn’t allow cancellations!! Although the new cycle route to Lake Balaton from Budapest is meant to be inaugurated this summer we did’nt see one sign for it. We followed obscure eurovelo route6 signeage but luckily when we’d been buying our Slovenia maps the guy in the map shop let us photograph 4 map pages from the estenbauer new book on vienna to budapest and back via lake balaton so I knew where the route was meant to go.

We had only been cycling an hour when the heavens opened torrential rain. Hubby had obviously had too many days off in Budapest as he asked if we could catch a train, I reminded him this was a cycling holiday! Cars were kind enough to whizz past so fast that they completely sprayed us even though we were on the cycle path, absolutely soaked.Luckily a cafe appeared so we treated ourselves to a quick coffee/tea, ok and a croissant and dried out a bit.It seemed to take forever to leave the Budapest suburbs and industry behind but eventually we were out in the countryside and vaguely still following the Danube south.The sun came out and all was well with the world.

We passed some huge army? Complex and then were about to stop in the forests for a quick wee when we saw camera signs and then other signs with men with guns, so we got the message, keep out!! We arrived at the ferry across to Ercsi , phew it was running, only once an hour in usual Hungarian fashion but we were happy to wait 20minutes eating the last of our fruit and drinking water, it had gone quite humid at this point.On the other side thete were bicycle signs and a brand new bicycle path wow . Well that lasted for about 4kms then must comp,etely stopped, apart from a few road markings so we followed those down onto an old farm track. The farm track was only dashed lines in the Erstenbauer book so we knew it was going to be rough. So it was an extremely muddy 12kms that took us nearly 2 hours, my bike kept getting mud jammed in the mud guards so it was like cycling with the brake on. You’d clean it out and then 2mins later, stuck . Exhausting, I was ready to lie face down in the mud and give up.

Finally we came out into the small village of Besnyo .We were running out of water , the only shop was closed and no pub to be found. The next stretch was also through farmland so I asked a group of elderly ladies if they could give us any water. One lovely lady walked us back to her cottage and filled our waterbottles up for us and chatted away presumably about cycling she patted her bottom so she must have been a cyclist aswell. The water tasted divine, spring water.As we were leaving the village a driver pulled up and asked in hungarian where we were going, then gesticulated saying kaput pointing to the mud. He showed us the alternative route a 25km detour on the map, so it was 5kms of mud or the detour. I was opting for the 25km detour but hubby was going for the mud. He won. Well it was worse than the other section but I tried to avoid pushing my bike through any of it, which meant pushing through vegetation instead.Eventually the mud did decrease and it was just a very overgrown farmtrack, marginally easier to cycle on.We had hardly seen a soul all day a few farmers in their tractors and a shepherd.

At last we reached civilisation the holiday town of Velencei on Velencei we stopped at the first cafe. The owner was great helped us to park our bikes and told us to relax, take our time, sit down.We must have looked a sight splattered in mud,hot and sweaty. Being so famished I’d just taken one look at the menu out the front and gone bean soup please. Luckily we had had protein bars, fruit and rolls with us so weren’t totally starving.The owner also brought hubby out a new Hungarian nonalcoholic beer produced in Budapest Dreher, very nice.

On we went except now away from the lake undulations started to creep in just what you need at the end of the day. A few drops of rain started noo but it did held off for later.At last we feached the historic centre of Szekesfehervar, cobble stones to cycle on to our hotel.A welcome cup of tea and strawberries we’d bought on the roadside and collapse. Szekesfehervar will have to wait till the morning.