26/7 Tuesday

The B77 from Allersdorf to Krenhof

Leaving Hotel Wasserfall

Leaving Hotel Wasserfall

Today really made us aware of why Southern Austria is such a popular destination for bikers. On our route today, taking us from the Grossglocknerstrasse to Pecs in Hungary, we stuck to our rule of using motorways only when essential, apart from the first and last days of the tour when we need to really munch the miles. Today's ride, like all the others, was planned back in January using what looked like 'good' roads on maps. Whatever has gone before, we rode two roads today that eclipsed them all; the B99 from Radstadt to Mauterndorf and the B77 from Judenburg to Koflach. The B99 was brilliant because it had an excellent surface and loads of flowing, sweeping bends, but was a particularly great experience as we followed a very fast local in a car, reaching speeds of over a ton. He obviously knew the road like the back of his hand and, apart from some blind, tighter corners at the top of the mountain, we felt totally safe keeping up with him. Danke Sehr, Johanne! We stopped for a fag and a chat at Mauterndorf, both agreeing that this was probably the best ride we'd ever had, better even than the N260 from Le Seu to Sort, in Spain, which we both loved. Then we encountered the B77 and can't really express how fantastic it was - it really was the dog's danglies. Austria, we love you XXX. We rode through Slovenia to Hungary, sticking to small B or local roads. Hungary seemed like a very poor cousin compared to Austria and, to a great extent Slovenia, too. The roads in Hungary seemed very tired, with tar having leached through the surface on many roads, whilst others had appalling ruts and potholes. As we arrived in one fairly poor-looking village, it seemed obscene to find English hoardings advertising luxury houses and apartments for sale at a "Luxury Golf Resort Development." We also came across a very skinny stray dog in the road, lucky we didn't have a cage or we would have picked him up. Later on, we saw a little Dachsy, in really good condition, running along the road miles from anywhere. We'd have grabbed him, too. The highlight of our trip into Hungary was seeing a motorcyclist stopped by the police, one of whom was a six-foot blonde amazon who was nonchantly smoking a cigarette whilst writing out a ticket. Will Romanian roads be generally even worse than these? To be fair, the last 50 miles or so, approaching Pecs, had good surfaces and visibility so could be ridden at well over the legal speed limit. In contrast to the impoverished looking countryside we'd traversed earlier, Pecs seemed like a really wealthy town. It has a lot of churches and a lot of tourists but, at present, we don't know what it's attractions are. It may seem Philistine, but we were only there as a convenient place to eat, shit and sleep, on our way to the Transfaragasan Pass. Having said that, the Hotel Patria where we stayed, was much more opulent than anywhere else we've spent the night, or are likely to, on this tour. They let us park our bikes under the canopy at the front of the Hotel, adjacent to the reception desk, which was very nice of them. Final thought for today - the Transfagarasan will need to be as special as it's supposed to be, if it is to be a better road than those we rode today!!!!!

We have arrived! Parked under the canopy at the Hotel Patria.