Category: Slovakia

The final day of the Slovakian End to End proved perhaps the most enjoyable cycle-touring of the lot. Especially for fans of wooden churches, such as Eastern Slovakian Orthodox adherents, termites, those with an aversion to nails, and now, cycle bloggers. Indeed, I saw three fine full-size examples in situ today, as well as several…

Another short, easy, mostly flat day in scenery that could have been Lowlands Scotland. Especially for the frequency of Co-ops: yes, shops are open again after the Easter break, so I could buy proper food on the go from the ubiquitous village potraviny. After a miserable day of petrol-station crisps and biscuits yesterday, my usual…

It’s Easter still. And everything was. Still, I mean. All shops closed, all roads (almost) empty. The only refreshment possibilities were on petrol station shelves, in packets or with ring-pulls. I set off from Prešov through silent, echoing retail parks and through silent, echoing villages. In one village, though, I did see a curious Slovak…

An easy day of exploring Košice by bike, rounded off with a beer specially brewed for cyclists. No wonder Czech and Slovak brewers are often said to be the world’s best. I rode south from the city centre along the riverbank cycle path. It’s part of EV11, a 6,500km-long monster ‘Eurovelo’ route that links northern…

In brackets, as this is a side-trip to Slovakia’s lovely second city. I’ll sit out Easter in a place big enough for some restaurants and bars to be open, and I’ll resume the main ride from Prešov on Monday. It would be a terrible waste to come to Slovakia, one of the world’s great places…

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…