Slovakia and the Czech Republic…

A wet start to my nine hour ride too Prague...

The border between Poland and Slovakia lay ahead of us...

The ride down to the Slovakian border of Chyzne was certainly made on one of the better roads in Poland…

It twisted its way through the southern outskirts of Krakow, plunging down into little valleys and through villages, before climbing again through thickly wooded forests towards the Jelesna River, which forms part of the border between Poland and its southern neighbor…

The road was slick with rain that had fallen during the night, and this combined with fairly heavy traffic made the ride a little less enjoyable than it might have been…

Church on the edge of the town of Jablonka...

The forested areas close to the border reminded me of Sweden and Finland...

The town of Chyzne, just before the border...

Entering Slovakia...

I avoided the larger towns and ducked through the countryside instead...

Once in Slovakia, we ran southwest through the countryside, passing through villages and cultivated fields, where in some of the more remote villages, men and women tilled the fields using hoes and long handled forks…

We rode through Dolny Kubin, and then cut across the countryside to Kral Ovany, rather than ride down the E59 to Ruzomberok…

From there the road followed the wide Orava River until the village of Kralovany, where it emptied into the larger Vah River… Hugging this river is the road to the city of Zilina, and were it not for all the heavy trucks that use this route, I would have had a whale of a time…

Great roads run alongside the Orava River...

Running underneath the D1 motorway...

Castle on the hill...

The road surface was very good, and wound through thickly forested areas separated by small towns and villages where life seemed to go on at a far slower pace than it had in Poland…

It had been almost three weeks since I last spent a full day out on the road, and I was enjoying covering a relatively long distance in a single day again…

Just after the village of Dolina, we entered the Czech Republic...

On the ring road south of Brno...

I crossed into the Czech Republic near the village of Stary Hrozenkov, after following the Vah River all the way down to Chocholona.

I stopped at a large service station built on the site of what might have been the previous border post… It was on the edge of a peaceful little village, and while I stood eating a large sandwich that I had bought at the little shop attached to the station, I saw a horse drawn cart come out of the forest nearby, loaded with firewood… The two guys sitting on top of the load waved at me as their cart made its way over the busy road…

The cart did not seem out of place at all in this area, despite the trucks and cars that buzzed past it…

Bringing firewood out of the forest....

With over 300 km still ahead of me, I put my head down after that and rode quickly through to Brno, where I was caught in a heavy rain storm, and had to pull over and shelter under a bridge for half an hour… I was now on a major motorway that curled around the southern edge of the city, passing the famous racetrack, where the Moto GP had taken place just a few weeks before…

Wet roads and spray made my entry into Prague a damp one...

After refueling at Brno, I decided to stay on the motorway all the way to Prague… The speed limit here was 130 km/h, and most of the traffic were doing their very best to maintain or beat that speed…!! Spray from the recent rain was whipped up by the traffic, and hung above the motorway, and although it was no longer raining, there was enough moisture in the air to make it a wet ride to Prague…

Closer to the city itself, the sun was shining brightly, drying up much of the road surface, and making the going much more pleasant… Until I ran into the mother of all traffic jams…!! Cars and trucks were backed up for more than 30 kilometres…!!

Luckily, Prague drivers are biker friendly, and left a wide space between the lanes, allowing me to cruise by them at a reasonable speed…

I had programmed the address of Frank Ambros’s flat into the GPS, and was thankful that I would not have to ride around looking for a place to stay in all the traffic I was experiencing…

Frank is a very close friend of my fathers, and immigrated to South Africa almost 40 years ago… His brother Rudla still lives in Prague and would be my host for the next few days…

The flat was part of a massive housing complex, to the south west of the city centre, which comprised about 20 huge blocks, built around courtyard gardens, and close to the railway station that would be my link to the city… There was no way I was going to ride the Big Fella through this heavy traffic to get to the old city…

Wedged between two trucks on the motorway near Prague...

Rudla came down to meet me when I arrived outside their building, and warned me about leaving anything of value on the bike, even though it was parked under the window of the room I slept in, on the first floor… Apparently petty crime is a problem in this neck of the woods… He mentioned that more than 20 bikes had been stolen at Brno during the grand prix this year…!!

I covered the bike, and hoped that it would not be tampered with… The last thing I needed was to wake up to a missing bike…!!

GBWT 2010