Doing the Duna

We don’t leave Budapest until around 1pm today. We are only travelling about 45km to Ráckeve but given that it has been so hot since we left the mountains in Slovakia, it is not a really wise move, as we are leaving at peak heat.

I’ve read accounts of how hair-raising it is to ride in Budapest. Our trip into the city several days earlier was uneventful (although never-ending) and our trip out is equally uneventful, even on a weekday. Following the EV6 route, before long we are out of city traffic and cycling along very narrow, unpaved roads. The Danube forks into two just south of Budapest, and we follow the south arm. About half an hour into the journey we run across the young German couple we’d met on the ferry near Szob trying to repair a flat. We try to help out but don’t have the right tools, so we wish them luck and continue along.

In Hungary, the name for the Danube river is Duna – which sounds very comforting and snuggly to me. In one of our inane cycle-day conversations (the kind you have when you’ve been with the one person for a long time and have run out of things to say) we have coined the new word Duna-ing, which means, loosely, “Doing the Duna”. That’s what our trip has become – Duna-ing.

On a very hot day in Budapest we fell in love with limonata – home made lemonade with fresh lemon juice and soda water. We find this at cafes along the Duna and it is a great and refreshing excuse to take a break from pedalling in the heat.

The ride today is unremarkable but HOT. We ride unpaved tracks and quiet roads, crossing the river once before reaching Rackeve. Neil is in charge of accommodation today and has found us at the Savoyai Mansion Hotel – an eighteenth-century former castle. That is my idea of accommodation, though this one is a bit run down and without air conditioning which turns out to be a big mistake! The staff are very helpful and store our bikes for us in a separate shed.

We take a walk into Ráckeve, whose main claim to fame, besides the nearby aqua centre, is the only gothic style Serb Orthodox church in Hungary. It is still very hot and we inspect the river but it looks a little dubious and I decide it isn’t quite hot enough for me to jump in.

Our hotel has dining in the courtyard, so we return there for dinner, where I feast on fried cheese and vegetables, palacsinta (pancakes) and, on the advice of a friend of Hungarian descent, pálinka, a fruit brandy style of firewater. The service is very refined and formal and appropriate for our somewhat faded regal surroundings.

My rudimentary Hungarian is useless here; when people want to communicate with us they use German which is more Neil’s forté.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 45.6km
• Climb: xxm
• Average speed: 18.5km/h
• Average temperature: 34C
• Moving time: 2:27:55
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at our hotel while we dined in the pleasant courtyard.

Along the way today: