From Bratislava to Spissky Hrad (Spis Castle)

Day's Summary
"I hurt my leg on a damaged drainage channel. Left Bratislava and head for the east going via Zelenia again. Had a crisis trying to find fuel off the motorway and stopped for lunch at a really good roadside stop. Had lovely views of the snow capped Tatra mountains before getting to the Spissky castle. I stayed the car while Marianne walked up to the castle which was very big. Then we drove through rural eastern Slovakia to the Slovensky Raj National Park."

It was drizzling when we woke up, but the rain stopped. Before leaving I decided to use the facilities to clean the camper toilet and to fill the water tank. It was almost done when Marianne called me to look at water pouring out from somewhere. As I ran across to see what was going on, I put my foot in a hole in the grating over a drainage channel and collapsed as I felt my right calf muscle tear. I was agonising and for a minute I could do nothing but hold myself by hanging on to a convenient pole. What a disaster. I had visions of going to hospital, but after a few minutes the pain subsided. Fortunately everything was done and I was able to get into my seat and could drive. I never found out where the water was coming from.

Leaving Bratislava was quite straightforward and we got onto the motorway towards Zilina. After our slow progress in getting to Banska Stiavnica we had decided to stick to the fast roads. The countryside was lovely with rolling hills. We did not see much evidence of vineyards, but this is the wine growing area of Slovakia. With my leg drama we had forgotten to fill up, and we were not keen to do so on the motorway as prices tended to be high. We in any case missed the first stop and couldn’t make out how much further it was to the next. And we discovered that the camper fuel gauge went down much faster in the second half of the tank than the first! We stopped at a rest stop that had no service station, only toilets. We did get quite good views of a nearby castle though.

We were getting a bit panicy and turned off onto a side road that went through small villages, but we soon discovered that not all small towns in Slovalia have fuel stations. After driving for about 40 km and going through four villages, two of which seemed to have workshops, but no fuel, we got to Nove Mesto . This was a real town where there was a shopping centre where Marianne managed to buy Voltaren, but more importantly there was a very “tight” but proper filling station, with the cheapest fuel we had seen since leaving Germany. Obviously we filled the tank. Then we got back onto the motorway and made good progress. We were more relaxed now. It was also much easier driving on the big roads than on the narrow rural roads. The weather remained heavily overcast, but there wasn’t much rain. Just past Trencin, which we bypassed, the road had some dramatic suspension bridges, but the top class road ended soon afterwards and we ended up going through Zilinia again (quite a big city). After this there was a stretch of road that was quite narrow and twisty and following the Vah River through the mountains (we had driven here the previous day on the way to Banska Striavnica).

This became motorway again and then narrowed down and followed the river. At this point we pulled off at the Motorest Rieka at Krafovany for lunch. This was a lovely stop and we enjoyed coffee and delicious soup. Then it was onto a busy road for approximately 25 km, with lots of signs of the new road happening, before we were back on a motorway heading for Poprad. We went past a number of small towns, and major ones like Ruzomberok. The motorway gave us a chance to speed up and the sun came out, so we had lovely views of the snow-capped Tatra Mountains to the north. As we left the sparkling peaks behind the road bypassed the big city of Poprad and soon thereafter we saw the walls of Spissky castle straggling over the hilltops to the south. We turned off and followed a narrow road to the castle parking area, still a bit below the castle walls. I did not feel up to walking the distance so Marianne set off on the expedition alone. I did get my bike off and rode around the parking area and up and down the road. My leg didn’t feel too bad, but walking obviously was not a good idea. I got out Manfred’s binocular camera and I could see Marianne on the walls. It had super good lenses and I would have loved to try to fix it to take pictures.

She was away for about an hour and then we set off to find a campsite. We took the back road through Spissky Vlachy, Jamnik and Spisska Nora Ves. It was interesting to see a number of gypsy settlements along this route - very poor looking quite dark skinned people. One could be wrong, but we got the impression that this might be a bad place to camp. Spissky Vlachy was quite an impressive town and we stopped to take photographs and we eventually ended up in the Slovensky Raj National Park. Here we found the Podlesok Autocamping. This was very big and in a lovely place, but there were only about six sites occupied. There were no flat sites, so we found a flattish one and used the levellers to get the camper as level as we could. It was also very muddy. Obviously there had been lots of rain here as well. We were also surprised how few ablutions there were. We imagined that it must be a bit of a problem in season with so many sites. There were also some very neat and quite spacious chalets. None of them were occupied. This is obviously a place where people come to enjoy nature and we afterwards discovered that Gerrit and Hanneke has also been here.

We enjoyed supper, and Marianne washed herself at the scullery which was close to us, while I took the long walk to the ablution block to shower and got to bed quite early. We were surprised that it wasn’t particularly cold, given the fact that we were still in the mountains at an altitude of about 550m.

Geschreven door Leartravels