Day 13: Esztergom to Budapest and the end

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 is a feature of Hungarian cycle infrastructure which would continue to be a problem — the lovely cycle paths ran out in a couple of km and we were directed out onto “National Route 11”. It’s an iron rule of cycling that when the road you’re on has one or two digits, it’s going to be busy and scary. Route 11 was no exception to the rule.

However, the EV6 route designers had a cunning ace up their sleeves. After about 5km of battling with speeding traffic, we were directed down a small side road back towards to the river to get a ferry across to the other side.

T’aint no ferry gonna dock here.

The Eurovelocrats hadn’t thought about the lowest water levels in the Danube for decades. The ferry was cancelled because it literally couldn’t dock. So it was back out onto the Route 11.

A hastily grabbed picture which captures the vibe.

As I remember so well from cycling south of Budapest, there’s a certain type of two way road in Hungary — and further into the Balkans. Very fast drivers and truly terrible tarmac especially in the zone where a cyclist rides. Obviously not nearly as bad as a typical road in Cambridge — I’m looking at you Trumpington Road — but still potholed and crumbling.

It was a very long and quite scary 25km to Visegrad. We had our lights on in the vain and unrealised hope that this might encourage drivers to slow down or pull out a bit further when passing. We cycled past a lot of signs instructing drivers to pull out at least 1.5m from cyclists. On some occasions it was 1.5cm.

We rolled into Visigrad and stopped at the first place that we saw which appeared to be identical to the Portobello hotel in Esztergom. Absolutely rammed with families loading up on the “free” buffet. I managed to trap my finger in a very poorly designed Hungarian toilet door and suffered the first proper injury of the trip.

A small sized photo for the squeamish.

Visegrad is famous for its castle which was built in the 11th century by somebody called Bela the Fourth on the site of — surprise surprise — a Roman fort. It holds an amazingly strategic position but was sacked in the 15th century and was basically left as a ruin until the beginning of the 20th century when a long term renovation programme began. Unfortunately the renovation hasn’t been done terribly sympathetically and much of the castle has been patched up with concrete. It would have been fun to visit some bad renovation but it’s at the top of a very steep 5km hill and, on a bike, that’s an easy place to miss.

Visegrad castle in all its 5km of climbing glory.

On the way out of Visegrad there’s a statue of Bela the Fourth which, strangely, appeared to have the inscription in Spanish.

Bela IV.

Almost immediately after leaving Visegrad, a lovely bike path appeared. “Great” we thought, “now we can look forward to this all the way into Budapest”.

This was nice after Route 11.

Two or three kilometers of safe and easy cycling was a big relief but…remember I mentioned the inconsistency of Hungarian cycle infrastructure? We then came across this.

That’s it folks. End of the cycle path. Back onto Route 11.

There was a lot more Route 11 pain. Rolling hills, poor tarmac, crazy drivers. It turns out that it’s good for making distance because you just get your head down and cycle but both Dr T and I were getting a bit frazzled by it all by the time we turned off Route 11 and into the lovely town of Szentendre.

A beautiful riverside promenade.

Szentendre has a strange history. In the early 17th Century there was just a single family living here. During the Great Turkish War, Serbs were invited to settle in the area and there was a mass migration of Serbs who brought their architecture and their Orthodox Christianity. It’s now an artists colony and a big tourist destination in Hungary. It feels rich and prosperous. And, for what it’s worth, The Witcher TV series used the Szentendre Hungarian Open Air Museum as one of its sets. Who knew eh?

We stopped for a drink and some “lemonade with green apple”.

I know this looks like radioactive waste but it was bloody tasty.

The route said 28km to Budapest and after fortifying ourselves with drinks made of uranium or something, we were ready to hit the road.

This far out from Budapest, there are the prosperous suburbs full of health-conscious middle-class people who vote hence there was some really great cycling infrastructure.

Leafy wooded paths through the woods on the banks of a Danube sub-channel.

It was all very nice. There were the serried ranks of balcony-bedecked flats which would not have been out of place in any new development in London or Paris.

This was very nice but it will not last.

However nice all this middle-class-voter friendly cycling infrastructure was, it was destined to run out and, in due course, it did.

As I remember from two years ago, there was an extensive doughnut-of-shit around Budapest where the stack-a-prole communist-era apartment blocks crumble gently despite attempts to paint them garish colours to hide the decay. Here we were either riding on roads or following confusing and inconsistent signage. I was shouted at in Hungarian at by an unreasonably angry woman for dithering at a junction and then told off in Hungarian by a policeman for…err…turning onto a cycle path.

After traversing what seemed to be the largest youth event in Hungary we got into the city centre proper.

Lots of very busy roads to cross.

There was eventually a riverside cycle path. I haven’t uploaded a video for a while so here’s the final video of the trip. Note the Houses of Parliament on the other bank.

We stopped in front of the Parliament building and took the final selfie of the trip.

Nearly made it.

We were crossing the chain bridge and, as we got there, we stopped and took this photo.

The Bat Bike™ on the banks of the Danube 13th August 2026.

Why this photo? Well, because of this photo taken just over two years before on when I set off on the trip down the rest of the Danube.

The Bat Bike™ on the banks of the Danube 4th August 2024.

I have to say the bike was looking a lot cleaner.

The Chain Bridge in Budapest has a long and interesting history (see here from the previous trip) and very pleasingly, you can ride across it on a bike.

Not many landmark bridges you can ride across and take a selfie without dying.

Right opposite the end of the bridge on the Pest side was our hotel and the end of the trip.

After 14 days of travel, we deserve some luxury and high thread count sheets.

The Four Seasons nearly let itself down when the doorman was very sniffy about letting us park our greasy and dusty bikes but I brought out my Angry Eyes™ — which I had handily packed but hadn’t needed at all during the trip — and explained that we were checking in. All resistance melted in the face of Angry Eyes™ and a Platinum Amex card. Our bikes were whisked to the garage, our luggage — such as it is — to the room and we were whisked to the bar for a celebratory glass of champagne.

A fitting end.

At this point I should give a huge shoutout to Ewa and Ali who arranged to have our bikes bags sent by DHL from Cambridge to Budapest in order for us to be able to bring our bikes home. Every stage of that process is fraught with difficulty and potential for disaster and so it was a huge relief to find two gigantic bike bags in our room. Thanks Ewa and Ali — the beer and wine delivered to the room was also fantastic!

Wrap up.

And so…another one of these trips. What is there to say about it?

Firstly, for much of the journey this was long distance cycling done well. If not “easy-mode” it was certainly on “easier-mode” all the way from Donaueshingen to Vienna and maybe to Bratislava. The German and Austrian cycling infrastructure is superb, the stages are fairly benign and the towns that you stop in are, in the most part, lovely. There’s an opportunity to see amazing historical sights like Passau, Ulm, Regensburg and the food and wine is superb. Although the temperatures were punishing along the way, we never really felt at risk in the same way as I had in Romania. There was always another little village 🎵just around the river bend🎵 where cold drinks and shade could be found. If anybody is thinking of doing this sort travel, the route from the Donauquelle to Vienna is a great introduction.

From Vienna it does get harder. In hindsight, a better plan would have been to take three days to go from Bratislava to Budapest. Although the EV6 cycling infrastructure drops off dramatically after Bratislava, three 75km days would have been a better bet than trying to do one 110km day and one 120km day. Shorter stages do mean that you can recover more easily from unexpected problems like your back brake binding.

For me, this was a special trip to do.  I have now cycled the entire length of the Danube (excepting one train trip in Slovakia and one taxi in Bulgaria).  So effectively close to 2,500 kilometers.  Without a doubt, the upper section is a lot nicer and a lot less dangerous than the Balkans, Romania and Bulgaria but the completist in me is pleased to have done it all on a bike.

Regarding the bikes, I should once again express my wonder that I have travelled over 12,000km and Dr T has travelled over 3,000km on two machines made by me from scratch out of random bits from China, second hand bargain parts snarfed from E-Bay, Gumtree and my “bike bits box”. There truly is something magical about The Bike.

Is there another one to do next year? We shall see…

The Stats:

• Distance: 71km 🙂. Felt longer due to traffic and city junctions but an easy ride.
• Bikes: 🙂. They made it. As “bicycle repair dude” I always breathe a sigh of relief when it’s all over.
• Soft tissues: 🙂. Apart from the traditional completely numb hands, a few twinges in knees and necks and the final day’s bloody finger, we survived pretty well. SudoCrem™ did sterling work…down there.

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