The Tatra Ranges

In Velky Kamenec, I woke up early, took a picture of the castle ruins above the town and started riding – making an involuntary detour, somehow I made a wrong turn and after riding for an hour or so, I saw a sign “Velky Kamenec 5 km”. Not a good start, but there was nothing to do. It did help a bit that the weather was getting better that day and the landscape go ever nicer. I actually rode into the High Tatras, seeing ever higher hills, many with castle ruins, the hills turning into mountains. I was actually on a quite busy road, due to the mountain peaks, there are only a couple of roads going across Slovakia from east to west and this was the one north of Kosice. Due to my not-so-good experience on another biking trip earlier this year, I had no plans to ride into the town, as the surroundings were anything but pretty.

Instead, I rode into the town of Presov (Eperjes), also not offering a great ride in the outskirts, but the historical center of the town was really impressive, it could easily have been somewhere in Germany. I had a nice kebab there, took lots of pictures and was ready to roll on. The builders of this road had no option in this mountainous landscape but to design some crazy inclines, there were climbing lanes that went straight uphill for 2 kilometers, with a gradient of about 15%, then it was downhill and it was a repeat again (and again). To make matters worse, a huge thunderstorm raged above me, I got soaking wet. Even worse, while there was a motorway next to the road I was riding on, it is not continuous, meaning the entire traffic was diverted onto the smaller road I was on. While I was happy that the rain stopped, the passing cars splashed the water all over me, as so much rain had fallen that there were huge streams of water crossing the paved surface. Oh boy.

In Fricovce, things got better, no more rain, no more traffic – as the motorway yet again continued – however, what was ahead of me was a pass – and as I had ridden about 160 kilometers (on a roller-coaster road that far and got soaked), every meter of elevation was a pain. The pass was just 750 meters high, but I was quite beat by the time I got to the top. Down the other side of the mountain, I had the first view the ruins of Spisske Castle, very impressive, under UNESCO protection, but it was well after 8 pm, I did not even attempt to ride up the high hill to enter; so I just took a number of pictures of the castle.

My final destination that day was the town of Levoca, also a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2009; the town has a historic center with a well preserved town wall, a Renaissance church with the highest wooden alter in World, and many other Renaissance buildings. It could have been in Italy, with the historic town center being surrounded by thick walls – and right in the center I treated myself to the luxury of a 4-star hotel, though it cost only Eur 35. I did a nice walk at night, seeing a lot of youngsters the pubs, chatting with some of them, and after doing some 190 km’s and who-knows-how-many meters of elevation, went to sleep.