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Day 13: Esztergom to Budapest and the end

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Although billed as an easy 70km to the end, it proved quite challenging to actually get to the Chain Bridge in Budapest. The end point but much happened before then. The day started with us fighting with hordes of toddlers and babies for a generic breakfast. The hotel we were staying in was 100% a family oriented hotel so even at 7am, there were a lot of kids running around eating slightly odd tasting cheesy egg dishes and sweet treats from the breakfast buffet. Packed up and ready to go for the final time. This was the first time we could check the brake fixes of yesterday but they seemed to be holding out. Dr T’s bike was making some very alarming noises going over bumps but when it is 70km to the end, you sort of just ignore them and hope for the best. Out of Esztergom there were some lovely riparian cycle paths and we were pretty chipper about the remainder of the journey. Us feeling very chipper. Unfortunately — and this ...
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Day 12: Bratislava to Komarno…no wait, Esztergom

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Today was an odd day involving a bike shop trip, some frenzied bike repairing, a tram trip, a long walk to the train station, lengthy delays and some on-the-fly rerouting of this out penultimate day. However, we saw one of the most impressive cathedrals in Europe as a bonus. I had been fretting about the bike most of the night and so got up early and headed to the “local” bike shop which was very firmly in the doughnut-of-shit which surrounds the historic centre of Bratislava. When I asked for brake pads, the hipster dude manning the shop supplied me with a box of random brake pads and suggested I searched through it. And, at the bottom of the box were these beauties. Eight euros and we were back in the game. I high tailed it back to the hotel and spent a miserable and dirty hour fitting the brake pads and realising that they didn’t fix the problem. Trying to do proper bike repairs using a crappy multitool that I bought 15 years ago was not an enjoyab...
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Day 11: Vienna to Bratislava

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A shorter day between two of the great capitals of Europe but there was a surprising amount of this in between. 20km of this in a perfect straight line. The Artist “Boutique” hotel in Vienna was absolutely lovely. We may have been the only people staying there and a team of 5 chefs and waiters served us fresh eggs and coffee until we were bursting. I did some early morning “repairs” on my bike’s rear brake calliper. As long as I wasn’t intending to actually use the back brake then it was going to be fine. As we rolled away from the hotel, a car edged out of a junction and reflexively I pulled both brakes. Great, that’s 70km of brakes squeaking and binding that I had to look forward to. Getting in and out of major cities is always a pain in the bum and Vienna was no different. Cars, roads, bridges, rivers, tramways. Always interesting… After some cycling under graffiti-stained motorway underpasses we were expelled into the Vienna’s Prater...
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