Author: Rob Ainsley

Yesterday was a day off the bike: a day of admin, laundry, sightseeing by bus (the historic walled town of Levoča), and drinking green beer. (Evidently a special, brewed for Easter, maybe? I tried to imagine hints of apple, gooseberry, mint, kale, bayleaf or new-mown grass, but it just tasted of beer.) So I was…

A beautiful, windless spring day of cloudless skies, snowy mountains – and scary steel ladders. Because, in the middle of more delightful cycling, I did a remarkable metalwork-assisted gorge walk in Slovenský Raj National Park. A bit intimidating, but obviously I never thought of turning back. Largely because you can’t – it’s one way only….

A glorious day of windless sunshine, blue skies, and the snowy peaks of the High Tatras as backdrop. I was lucky, and just to prove it, I even saw a sign for it. (It’s pronounced more like ‘looch-key’.) I scooted out early on quiet country lanes from my rural guesthouse and bought provisions from one…

After all those browns and greys of my old Soviet hotel, the cobalt blue sky of the morning came as a relief. I wondered why the back road, suggested as a quiet way out of town by my phone’s basic mapping app, was so busy. The answer soon appeared, a stark grey building in the…

Is there a guidebook to Slovakian bus shelters? If not, I could write one – I seemed to spend much of my time today inside them, dodging sudden flurries of rain, sleet or snow. It was a long and sometimes humdrum day with a fair bit of tedious road riding along ‘Cycle Route 002’, which…

Sometimes, even though you’re going round in circles, you still have a constant headwind. Getting out of Trnava on this blustery, drizzly morning wasn’t fun. The road northwest to Piešťany goes through flat, empty, humdrum farmland. No reason to get the camera out, and anyway it might have blown away. But a savoury croissant and…

An easy, pleasant day across largely flat rural landscapes to Trnava, the ‘Slovak Rome’ (because of its churches, not pasta restaurants). It was a succession of characteristic Slovakian views: green woods; farms; quiet villages; cement factories. And Tescos. I left Malacky through the deserted parkland round the currently unoccupied Pálffy Mansion, former seat of the…

After a bleary night of interrupted dozes on the long train from Amsterdam to Vienna, and a local morning train from Vienna to the village of Angern an der March, it was time to start cycling at last. Angern sits on the March/Morava river, the border between Austria and Slovakia. This was the old Iron…

After three years of itchy feet and cooling my heels – pandemic restrictions have been bad for mental health, but also podiatry – I’m doing another international End to End at last. This one’s Slovakia, a country I’ve been through briefly a few times and liked, so I’m back to do it properly. Which, for…