Last night I came up with the idea of going to Slovakia for two days or so while waiting for my parcels to arrive in Budapest. At the same time András offered to take me to Eger where he would go for work reasons. I decided to combine the two things and go from Eger to Budapest via Slovakia. András suggested a visit to Bükk National Park and we decided to camp there for one night.
So we took the car and drove over to Eger this morning at quarter to 7am. I started cycling to Szilvásvárad at 10 while András went to work. The sky was clear with about 30-35°C in the sun and the road was a bit hilly. Szilvásvárad is about 30km north of Eger and I arrived there at noon. Our meeting place, Bankut, is about 20km inside the national park on the Bükk high plateau at about 850m altitude. It took me 2.5 hours to get there. The ride was lovely, on deteriorating roads with almost no traffic, even though at times I wasn’t sure I was still going in the right direction.
Shortly after András arrived it started to rain and hail quite heavily and we fled into the car and stayed there for almost 1.5 hours. Then we did a 500m hike up Bálvány peak (956m) and enjoyed the amazing vista from its lookout tower. Eventually I cooked some pasta for dinner and we decided to pitch our tents right on the platform.
Cycled: 53km
