September 9th Stage 38 Sutto to Szentendre (Budapest)

September 9^th  Stage 38  Sutto to Szentendre (Budapest)  80 kms

Unfortunately we and the other mad Englishman were not the only people on the campsite last night. Some young, extremely rowdy people had rented one of the apartments and kicked up an appalling racket until the small hours. The lack of sleep, though, didn’t prevent us from being up and away betimes this morning. If we were to explore Esztergom and get to within spitting distance of Budapest tonight we had to get a move on. 

It was a beautiful morning and although there was more traffic on the road than I had expected, some of it as dangerously fast as yesterday, most of the way to Esztergom there were at least adequate cycle tracks. On the last few kilometres into the town though, with the huge dome of the basilica towering above everything else, there were a couple of nasty incidents. I thought how ironic it would be to be knocked over in sight of the third biggest Christian dome in Europe. Would I be assured salvation?

The basilica certainly is big but as far as I was concerned that was it. Admittedly we couldn’t go in on Sunday morning whilst Mass was in progress, but the outside which I had expected to be splendid seemed to me like a drab imitation of St Peters or St Pauls stuck on the top of a hill. The bemused Chinese tourists wandered around and took photos, and were more taken with the accordionist and the young chap dressed up in mediaeval costume playing the flute than they were with the religious edifice. I was saddened by the young teenager, and her sister who could have been no more than eight, performing badly, round the back of the church, for anyone who would listen, the older girl on the violin and her sister singing. Who had sent them out on a Sunday morning to beg like that? At least it wasn’t raining. The younger girl was yawning and the elder looked exhausted. Out of the museum attached to the church came another fancy dress parade with a lot of drum beating. A small crowd cheered. I wished I was inside with the faithful. The view from the terrasse was impressive, over the great river and the bridge into Slovakia which it seemed had taken more than fifty years to repair after bomb damage in the war. I wondered what went through the minds of the people who lived in the high rise flats on the Slovakian side of the river, every morning as they looked out of their windows and across the river to the immense domed edifice opposite.  To be honest, I was glad to get back on the bike and cycle over the cobblestones in the dark tunnel under the basilica to take a good cup of coffee and a piece of cake in a very pleasant café in the very pleasant old town.

I enjoyed riding along the cycle path out of town with the locals going about their Sunday business thinking how curious it was that I was experiencing the great geographical phenomenon of the Danube’s mighty turn to the south from such an innocuous, untidy, little path.

I then made the best decision of the day by turning off the busy main road down a lane to the Szob ferry. It goes once an hour and was due in ten minutes. When I boarded I was the only passenger. The ferry itself is nosed and nudged and pushed and pulled across by an accompanying little boat. Mine had clearly originated from England and was called Nelly. The captain would very skilfully guide the ferry across the quite swiftly flowing current by lodging the old car tyre he had fixed to the bow into one of the row of similar tyres draped along the side of the ferry. His assistant would attach various hawsers between the boat and ferry and we were off. I felt hugely privileged to have the ferry all to myself and thanked both the captain and his assistant profusely on reaching the other shore safely. Now instead of a vicious main road I could enjoy a new dedicated cycle track which followed the river bank for three or four kilometres and then a very serviceable piste alongside the road with marvellous view of the forests on the other side and the castle on the top of the hill above Visigrad.  On arriving at Nagymoras  some twelve or so kilometres later I was just in time to catch a similar ferry back to the other side.

There remained just a little more than twenty kilometres to  Szentendre where we had planned to stay for a couple of days whilst we dealt with Budapest. This road,  bordering the river, with grand villas behind trees and some very fancy cars reminded me of driving into Geneva through Versoix. Both Katherine and I, not for the first time, marvelled at how things had changed since we last made our journeys to Hungary in the 1970’s.

80 kms  Total from Schaffhausen 1254 kms  Total from Galway 3164 kms