Day 3, Szigetholm to Dunsnok, 145km, 8hrs33mins

Today didn't start well, we learned our first lesson of the trip, making a detour to a supermarket, and then finding that had we just continued on our way we would have found plenty on the way. I don't know why we were surprised, but the supermarket we would have found was a Tesco.  


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After a few km's on tarmac, we found our route taking us onto a soft track through silty, sandy mud... we didn't last long cycling and when we were back on tarmac we had to stop to remove some of the mud just to get going again.

Nice hey!? We were very pleased to find a garage a few km's down the road that had a pressure washer - I don't think our bikes have been cleaner since we got them!

We then did some long stretches on sandy levees by the river, the surface of the marked cycle path was either grass, or sand, and was very heavy going, although also very pretty. We found that letting some air out of our tyres helped us keep control and keep moving, particularly in the sand. We got pretty rained on, but as the day wore on the clouds lifted and by evening it was lovely.

Here is a picture of us on the levee path, looks lovely, but isn't that fast to ride on and the sandy bits would be very tricky without fat tyres.

We met our first horse cart, and also saw some pretty industrial sized beehives. The fields in Hungary are huge, I mean really huge, although I grew up in Lincolnshire, where I though the fields were pretty big, they are nothing compared to these. (ok, people from Canada or the US might not be impressed, but I certainly was) so with all these sunflowers and what have you to pollinate, you need bees, lots of bees, and some poxy little five hive operation just won't cut it, so they build beehives on the back of lorries.

Keen to find somewhere to eat, we ended up doing about 15km through village after village that didn't have any sort of a restaurant, and just as we were about to give up and eat our emergency tea, we found our saviour in the form of a 'Medeteranian Pub' in Dunsnok. Beer - check, Burgers - check, Crisps - check, what more could you want? ok, this wasn't our ideal meal, but it was all they had, and we were very happy to have it. However, after one each, we were both still feeling hungry so ordered the same again.

Happiness is calories - wherever you can get them!

Again although we didn't have many words in common, the people we met were lovely. The bar staff suggest we camp in the plantation next to the pub, so although it was noisy, and full of ants, we didn't really care and were happy to sleep after a tiring day.