Hungary is surprising.
First of all the Hungarians don’t use the euro. Who knew? Well we didn’t.
The Hungarians do great pastries. That’s probably a generalisation. Some Hungarians certainly do great pastries.
The Hungarians embrace diversity in their road surfaces. From freshly laid tarmac to loose sand, but often a mishmash of surfaces to give the potholes some structure. You can start on a beautifully surfaced stretch, and as soon as you’ve committed to it it will descend into a sandy, rubbley mess. Or disappear altogether.
However, it’s been a wonderful four days.
We’ve been through the frantic busy city of Budapest, where the noise and traffic and lights and people and trams and “wow, look at that” is a bit overwhelming.
The sleepy villages and towns that we pass through more regularly feel like they inhabit a different era.
We even stayed in a thermal spa complex for a night where we accidentally used the rather posh saunas reserved for the higher class guests.
In between all these there’s open spaces – huge ploughed fields, some over a kilometre long, with the cycletrack running along a raised dyke giving us the perfect view of a hawk skimming the field looking for breakfast.
People stop and stare, or wave, or salute us here in Hungary. We wave back. I guess we look a bit of a sight, and cyclists are certainly rarer or of the city, heavily burdened ones even more so.
Although the cycle route has taken us for longer stretches on the main roads it always brings us back along the banks of the river where we pass countless men sitting by the river, fishing, sunning themselves, drinking beer.
The river itself remains a joy to follow. Whenever the path comes back to meet it it feels like a relief. Each evening we camp as close as we can, starting and ending our days at its side. I’ll be sorry when we part ways in a few days time.
We leave Hungary tomorrow. Let’s see what surprises Croatia has in store