Thursday 2nd July

I got going early with a fear of a new thunderstorm which never came. I felt very smug having examined the ‘shorter distance’ route that the Garmin arranged for me on my map and it looked like a nice twisty route free from those boringly efficient motorways. However before 10 minutes of riding I was lost and after surrendering to Emily (the name of the Bitish voice) I found myself on what looked suspiciously like motorways to me. I must have been dehydrated because shortly after one stop for coffee and an almond croissant at a service station where all the white ad red uniformed staff were assembled outside for a photograph I felt woozy enough to stop at a parking platz mit WC and drink huge amounts of water and wash out my sore eye (I blame it on the pillowlessness of this trip). Just when I was getting despondent my route took me onto the lovely twisty, empty recently tarmaced roads that I really enjoy; they weave in and out of pine woods, getting dark and damp and beautifully scented, then out into the sunshine again. I arrived at this final campsite of the trip as I did the last one, with a doubting heart. By today I was feeling that I have had one or two more camping days than I really wanted. I arrived at lunchtime with a queue of others waiting to get on the site. The lady running the place only had a few words of English but she directed me to the space for tents. I followed the route past the huge always white mobile homes and caravans to a cute field right away from everyone else and I set up camp in the shade (its been really hot and humid today) and right next to a gurgling stream. This has been the nicest spot I’ve had so far. I’ve even paid for wireless internet access which i am doublful about ever working. For 3 euro I get ein stunde (one hour to you).

I walked up to the nearby town with the fantasy of purchasing some pork, white wine and cream to cook a last delicious meal in my private little corner (by the way I forgot to say that I have my very own park bench – so the chairlessness problem is solved). I found the town extremely strange with a number of shrines and then shops that sold a range of goods that corresponded to nothing I had ever come across. Of course I was looking for a supermarket but a butcher would have done. The first emporium resembling a supermarket sold crisps, warm wine and beer and the rest was haircare products. I replaced my wire basket and kept looking. The only other place resembling a supermarket had about 20 various items layed out in the space that you might normally expect to see 200. The owner was an unamused man with a moustache and long grey hair using a 1960s vintage cash register. Was this some kind of statement? I’m not sure. Ive bought a red pepper a leek, two beers (cold) and some Kirsh filled chocolate. He gave me a box to carry them back down the road to the site.

I’ve spotted the only other Brit I’ve seen on this trip, sitting reading ‘Mystery man’ with his feet up on a red LDV ex-Parcelforce van just up the field. I plan to accost him with the greeting ‘Where’s my parcels, then?’ Also in my field are a sweet German couple, she seems to have had a stroke and was almost speechless when I first tried to strike up my hopeless German conversation as we waited for the counter to open, and another man from Denmark, casually flaunting a colostomy.

Wednesday 1st July

Yesterday brightened up, chiefly as a result of having a heavenly meal of pork in the attached restaurant on a large terrace overlooking the sun setting over the large lake here. Service too was exquisite from and English speaking waitress who gave me an english menus and told me the German for ash tray which I have forgotten now. And today started misty but wit a table mysteriously appearing outside my tent, one of its plastic legs repaired with a wooden spoon taped to it. when i returned from my wash I found an elderly man laying a tablecloth, and when I returned from collecting the crisp bread rolls I had ordered I found a jug of boiled water and a jar of nescafe. I drank some out of politeness before brewing my expresso making (which I later used as a hammer). Sitting in the sun reading then going for a swim in the beautiful lake took until lunchtime but then with very little warning the heavens opened and I crouched in my tent holding the flysheet away from the gradually dampening inside. Water started to ebb along the ground sheet and I made a desperate barricade of my Ortlieb 100% holdall. Lunch consisted of some fruit and much water. It has been too hot and humid to even consider climbing into motorbike clobber to visit the nearby town. I have plotted what looks like a nice wiggly non motorway route up to the next campsite. its about 145 Miles Northwest from here and should take 2 and ¾ hours. The facilities here are beautifully ample and are constantly being cleaned. I’ve had a number of showers today.

A Danish couple recently arrived towing a huge caravan and appearedto squeeze it between two others. Mr Danish handled the uncoupling while Mrs arrived holding a handbag and smoking a cigarette. Incredibly, after moving the care out of the way, he moved the caravan my remote control, including manoevering it into a tight space using a llittle device that my son used to use to race his car around the living room. I was very impressed but find it a little despicable at the same time. It is still so humid here I am wondering if we will have a further storm (there was donner und blitzen) in the night. I have been the only person with a tent everywhere I’ve been – certainly such a small one. It has worked like clockwork though a chair and a kind of pillow will get packed for the next trip. apparently hard-core Touratech sell suitable chairs and this will give me an excuse to buy into this exclusive brand name.

If this site were smaller, with a cooler atmosphere instead of many fat families from Bavaria, with an alternative and not quite yet discovered feel to it, I would definitely return. I am looking forward to getting on the road tomorrow particularly as it looks like a good route. I am wondering how my evening will go with Astrid (I want to call her Astrid Proll after the Bader Meinhof 1970s terrorist) und Ullie on Friday.

Tuesday 30th June

Well, this evening has turned out a lot better than I thought it would a couple of hours ago. I’m sitting in a chair -yes remember those? In a sunny but strange campsite near but not in Regensberg south eastern Germany, about 30 miles from the border with the Czech republic. Lots of miles today in fact 239 nearly all on motorways for a change so apart from one or two not particularly near misses with big trucks, it was easy riding and mostly dry. I thought it too far to go to Regensburg so opted for a campsite about 20 miles nearer right next to the lake Murnesee. When I arrived I sat on my bike in the car park for a while as it was threatening to rain and I was in two minds about staying. Eventually after paying a nice English speaking lad at the reception (who told me about his exploits getting drunk) put my tent up in a hurry and in rather a sullen mood, arranging the opening away from the site and facing the attractive lake here, the place is full of caravans and families yelling at each other (there is an elderly man shouting even now – I think he must do it at home) and someone just belched loudly before climbing into a white van and driving away (thankfully) but the rain held off.

I struck up conversation with my neighbours in a smart motorhome from Switzerland who have travelled up to Poland and around and are returning home with their dog. Having only spoken to him, he was reassuringly articulate (in English) in this rather rough at the edges place. Also, I am starved for conversation with just being limited to prosim, dove and dobre for the last 4 days – which is hardly a rich and nuanced vocabulary. He put together an extremely smart chair and has lent it to me. It makes such a difference. I will definitely pack one if I ever do such a trip again. He tells me he rides a motorbike and recently took a 2 week break to blast around Italy and the Alps. So he understood the ‘I’ve not done culture on this holiday’ syndrome that I have got into. Just covering the miles, loading up the bike and unloading, planning routes is the fun of it. So, maybe I will do this again but with certain changes: find someone to ride with; head for somewhere and stay 2 or 3 nights then move on; take a folding chair; consider purchasing a Beemer [note on 19/08/09 – I’m collecting a 1200gs tomorrow!]; maybe head for somewhere with more reliable weather like Spain on the ferry to Santander. The mixture of camping and the odd small hotel works well and is cheap. This place was 12 euro. Last night was even less and the first night was 5 Euro. Now, returning to the elderly man shouting: we are not far from Nuremberg and his rants bear a striking similarity in tone and style and volume (if not in content which I cannot understand) to Hitler’s speeches to the rallies in that city. Either this gentleman has studied the tapes of the rallies or is actually Hitler himself. There is a restaurant adjoining the site and I will see if my neighbours want to eat there later. I can order rolls for breakfast before 7pm. There are fatish people riding up and down on bicycles.

German camp sites seem to have a different clientele to many other countries.

Monday 29th June Back in the Czech Republic, south east of Prague

I rode for 8 hours (with two brief breaks in petrol stations). I made much better progress going in a westerly direction than travelling out to Slovakia, there were fewer roads closed and diversions for some reason. They are constantly building roads around here, with those nice circles of stars on a blue background on signs. I rode 264 miles today – there was a large detour as the road to Brno was closed. Max speed 89.3mph (nice work); moving average 43.3mph. Moving time 6 hours 6 minutes (but I thought it was 8 hours).

I was plagued by severe self-doubt for most of the journey. It was brought on by remembering the list of things I should eat and places I should visit in Slovakia written down for me by one of the students at Middlesex who is Slovakian. I did none of them – even though I had the list with me on a page torn out of her notebook and stuffed into my camping guide. What was I doing instead? Its hard to say. I think the trip has been dominated by travelling – getting from one place to another, so stopping idly on the way, and taking in a Mäsové Guľky didn’t figure as I zoomed, knuckles gripping the handle bars tightly, through very many drab villages on the road, getting a glimpse of incredibly old women, bent double almost, walking by the road wearing an apron and carrying an axe. Or there were the dozens of young men with incredibly athletic bodies, with dark dark skin and black hair, working by the road or just standing. I was looking out for Roma. I couldn’t tell the difference between this despised bunch and the normal human population of Slovakia (I would not make a good racist here). I did notice one striking woman with the same dark skin and a perfect, beautiful Roman nose. Does that make her a Roma? I heard from the Dutch owners of the campsite in Slovakia that a nearby hotel was considering employing a roma girl but could not because they were told that everyone else would refuse to work with her and that guests would refuse to stay there (I wouldn’t for one).

So, after these 260 odd miles today, I have ended up in yet another campsite owned by a Dutch person with only one other resident – in a caravan with a tent poking out the side, with two bicycles on the back and a car with Dutch number plates. using the tiled communal washrooms reminds me of the book I have been reading Austerlitz which is about one man’s lack of memory, his discontinuity with his past.

At the age of 4 ½ his parents had him shipped away from Prague in 1939 to avoid the gathering persecutions of Jews by the Nazis. Strangely this book traces routes that I am taking – up to the Hook of Holland to take the boat to Harwich for example. That was 1939. I remember in 1960 and the following few years my own journeys on the night boat to visit Germany. Like the book’s character I remember only fragments – arriving at night at harwich, (we must have travelled there by train from Liverpool Street but I remember nothing of how we got there) walking on a kind of slatted walkway onto the ship, the funnels and the smuts, the cramped cabin with the 4 of us, and being sick. Today you barely know you are sailing. The space of time between Austerlitz’s frightful journey in 1939 to my own holidays is, say, 25 years. The space from my journeys as a child to these recent trips is 45 years. How strange. In fact how strange it is that the war was over for only eleven years when I was born. It must have been so fresh in everyone’s minds when I arrived. So, inspite of missing every cultural opportunity on this trip so far, the fact of moving over Europe has some meaning to it.

This campsite is run by a tall Dutchman with a pleasant but nervous laugh which after it fades turns into some hint of desperation that I have to turn away from. He speaks pretty good English. The woman who he says is his wife does not seem to speak any English at all and I wonder whether she is Czech. Returning to my journey, I was hastened by 50 odd miles on the CZ motorway system,

but after I left it, my GPS guided me down smaller and bumpier roads and track and my anxiety rose that surely this cannot seriously end in a campsite – but it did and the place has a rather ex-communist-camping-in-the-countryside-is-good-for-you feeling. It looked so forlorn I wondered whether it was closed up and I was on the verge of turning back onto the labyrinth of lanes and tracks…. but now I have got the owners to open up the restaurant and serve me a couple of Pilsner Urquells (the first was on the house) and chicken schnitzel and chips which i have just tucked into (interrupted by a quick dash over to my tent to zip everything up because it started to rain). How uch nicer these microwave chips than another meal of pasta and vegetables cooked crouching over my stove. The sun was out and warm an hour ago but now everything is damp again, though the sky is bright. There’s a slightly swollen river by the site and a train track which seems impossibly high in the air behind the tops of some trees. Things are getting slightly chilly. The air is thick with the soundd ov evening birdsong and a noisy extractor vent from the kitchen (that has just cooked me my welcome dinner so I shouldn’t complain).

After another 3 nights under canvass, I’m staying with my cousin and her husband in Germany. I must make a point of gently questioning them about my family’s years after the war which my mum is so reticent about.

Saturday: Slovakia nr. Brezno

Good news and bad news. The good news is I finally found my way to the jewel in the crown campsite in Slovakia recommended in the informal guide I found on the net. It is hard to find but it is beautiful and though the owners aren’t here, fellow Dutch campers have made me welcome with a cup of tea. The word has it that nothing could be too much trouble for the owners. Lets wait till they return to find out. I am pouring over maps to see if I can stay two nights here and make a speedier return across cz and Germany next week. Everywhere takes so much longer to get to because of all the roadworks and summary closures of roads, with just a cross in red tape over the name of the town you need to go to. On the BAD side, it is pouring with rain (now continually) and camping and rain don’t mix. Neither does biking and rain – though somehow that’s slightly less bad. There is a Tesco 8k away apparently but I don’t feel like budging an inch from under this awning and table and bench that I’m sitting at. Not only is it raining but its now cold. I am sitting in my jacket. Apparently there’s an apartment here as well as camping and I am sorely tempted to ask for that.

Sunday morning Same place

For the first time I am staying put in one place. Last night after making my standby dinner of what I happened to have with me because it was too wet to go and look for the supermarket, I met and talked to the campsite owners and their two sones, 14 and 17. They moved here from Holland about 3 years ago for the space and quite and to gget away from the fast pace and pressure of city life in Holland. We talked about life here, how some people resent the fall of communism because now they have to put effort into their jobs. We talked about how badly the roma are treated here. Their sons built a great fire and we sat around it after dark discussing these things and they taught me three simple words I will try out today Dobra, Dove and Dyekume – hello, goodbye and thankyou. They also told me that Michael Jackson has died – apparently from heart failure. Its amazing what news you miss while you are travelling. The rain: ah, it rained all night it seemed and my sleep was really disturbed. I noticed how my mind runs to a worse case fantasy e.g. what if the small stream 5 metres away from my tent overflows in the night? what if it rains continually for the next 5 days? what if all my things are getting soaked? what if the tent leaks? what if the bike won’t start? etc. I realised how good I am at these lines of thought, like ruts worn in the road of my thinking. So, I tried to imagine the best case, me sitting completely unscathed and unwashed away in the morning having coffee in the sunshine – which is pretty much what happened. My things were bone dry. The tent did not leak. Therefore I can have some confidence that the other disasters won’t happen.

Here’s a kitchen to sit in while it rains

There is a wireless network here but I can’t find any pages. By the time I get a chance to upload all these thoughts, I probably won’t be interested in them.

Here’s the GPS trail from Bojkovice to here:

Friday 26th Near Slovak border

I rode again with the normal menaces: roadworks that completely confuse the GPS and add hours onto the journey and heavy showers of rain. Mind you, I don’t mind riding in the rain now. My Heine Gerricke jacket keeps me bone dry. My time in Kutna Hora was mixed. It was great arriving to the band in the square and finding my hotel was good(ish) – but I saw a nearby hotel – too late advertising rooms at one third of the price so I ended up feeling that I had been ripped off. People in hotels seem to lack that quality of a real or even acted welcome. There is something faintly resentful in their actions that leaves me feeling that I would sooner be under canvas for all its annoyances. Here at Bojkovice, in the Carpathasian hills, I have a nice spot in a terraced campsite (so the camping book says). I just walked a mile to the nearby supermarket and felt the same kind of vague resentment from the staff there – unlike the friendly welcome I got here and at the last site. There is a genuine camaraderie of camping.

It poured and there was thunder and lightening while I shopped but I missed it to find my beautifully put up tent rather damp.

Yikes I look so young – its my first camping trip

Now its nine pm. The site has had an influx of teens who I imagine will make things noisy tonight. Apart from them are mainly Czechs but two campervans of Dutch who were friendly and helpful. I had a moment (only) of bliss when the sun cam out (the sky is completely clear now!) and I got my trusty cooking equipment out and used my bike as a kitchen worksurface.

I cooked pasta with sauted vegetables and nice sausage, followed by a yughurt with a cheap pivo. Unbelievably 0.5L bottles each cost 8 or so Crowns and there are 27 to a pound. I have worked out thee rest of my trip. Tomorrow I ride 125 miles to the highly recommended site in Slovakia, then the next day I return here, follwed by two more nights in CZ toward the south and two more i Germany before I visit my cousins, then a final 200miles to Hook of Holland. If this weather really presages some warm dry days I will be really happy. Lets see if I sleep well tonight – somehow I doubt it. I had a whiff of wireless network just then but it went away.

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