“SANDY TRAILS”
Part 1
Since riding a dualsport motorcycle I haven’t made much experience with sandy riding conditions. My old girl Чернотa and I have been a few times within a sand pit, but there was never a constant closed sand surface for proper practicing. That was one of the reasons why I’ve chosen this part of the TET for this journey. On one hand side it is easy reachable from my hometown, on the other hand side it is providing a very long sand part. Here is the first part about solving my deficit in sand-riding on the third day of our journey along the Hungarian Trans-Trans-Euro-Trail …
On this day of riding, our route went from somewhere in Hungarys southeastern flat lands to the city of Szeged and further southwards to the Hungarian/Serbian border. In the south of the city Szeged the sandy trails started and reached up the whole way close to Hungarys capital city Budapest. There the riding conditions along the Trans-Euro-Trail changed back to dried out soil and clay. At the end of the day, in the north-east of Budapest, we also rode some forest tracks, single trails and pretty steep slopes along the hills there.
Around half past five in the morning I was totally awoken. It was raining the first half of the night, what meant that I slept very well. I have no idea what the reason is behind this deep sleep, but I always really enjoy the astounding recovery after such a rainy night.
The rain last night had also its disadvantages: The tent was still wet and the harvested straw fields changed in a sticky clay desert. It took just a few steps til I had about five cm / two inches of glitchy clay sticking under my boots.
After shaking the water drops of the tent sheet, I enjoyed the morning view and did the morning toilet. A glance at the weather forecast showed me, that this days weather was going to be hot and moist. After the tent, which was still wet and the other camping gear was stowed, Чернотa and I started into this day of riding. Luckily …
the mud/clay wasn’t as bad as the riding day before. Only a few times we came to such …
dirty mud holes like this one. We passed another …
meadow. Near this …
old little raft and I dont know, maybe an old boiler aside it, was the …
cable ferry over the river Tisza located. After twenty minutes of waiting …
the ferry boat came over and I went with Чернотa onto it.
We passed the river Tisza. On the other side, we …
continued our ride, which brought us now…
close to the city of Szeged, which we passed …
in the west.
*kaboom*
South of the city Szeged the soil tracks changed into hard packed sand tracks, which have been easy to ride.
Such a big lake is a seldom thing …
here in the southeastern Area of Hungary. A few km after that lake …
we reached the heavy fortified border between Hungary and Serbia.
This double fence was build from Hungarys government during the European migration crisis in the year 2015/16. Just at the moment when this photo was taken, a border guard from Hungarian police came out the container. He showed me to come closer to the fence. Standing between the fences he prompted to me, that I’m not allowed to take any pictures of that area. He also gave me the order, that I should erase the image. I surely will … -_- . I told him that I’ll do, and I’ll leave the border surveillance point immediately. He nodded and off we went.
Now the ride turned to the north. Whilst doing a few miles of backtracking I found a black and new looking jacket on the track. I remembered an old man, …
which I came across 20 minutes before along the ridden trail. Back then he was dragging two heavy jerrycans on each side, which looked way too heavy for him. Maybe he has lost the jacket while doing this. On
I took the jacket with me and on my way back I kept an eye aside the track. Fore sure he was living somewhere nearby.
Indeed, I found him on his property just a few hundred meters further northwards close to the trail. Because of my Hungarian speaking, which is still not existent, I just showed him the jacket, which he instantly identified at his own.
He was very thankful that I brought it back to him. Because he was hard of hearing I shouted a few sentences in German to him, which he understood. But also his German was hardly understandable for me.
He was interested in the motorcycle and I also showed him my planned route, which gained some interest. After a few minutes of “small shout” ^_^ , just when I was going to leave, he rattled at the empty water bottles mounted at the back end of the luggage bags. He told me to wait and came up with one of the jerrycans, which he was carrying, when I came the first time across him.
He intended to fill up one of my water bottles. I told him to stop, because he was working hard for this water early in the morning. He just pushed me aside and filled up one of the empty bottles. After he was done with that he let me understood, that he was feeling sorry for filling up just only one of my empty bottles, needing the rest of the water for himself.
I was overwhelmed from the kindness of this old man, and thanked him a lot. After that nice social moment Чернотa and I continued the ride.
We now crossed the reed belt of …
of some swamp land where a Mother-Water-Buffalo was grazing with its calf side by side. The trail now came close …
to an old airfield with two old double-decker planes. When you look at their sunken wheels you can imagine for how long they were standing here.
With still a bit of bad conscience regarding the generous old man, I filled up my water supplies at this leaking irrigation tube.
The sand got deeper now, …
and …
Чернотa was wagging with its front, which tried to follow the ruts in the track. The first km on sand have been very tricky to ride for me. I often thought to myself: “Wow! That wobble was a close one!” As a consequence I deflated the tires down to 1,5 bar or 21 PSI which helped a bit.
Here within, the Pannonian Basin the tracks are …
very remote. After riding a few hours along …
lonely farms, …
big culturized forrests, …
plenty of spiders (again *eek!* o_0,) …
and overgrown tracks, …
Чернотa found this old building close to the Tans Euro Trail. Only the first floor was walkable, because the stairs within the building was removed. But even the entrance floor was enough for me …
to realize, that this building is a shelter for homeless persons and / or drug addicted poor souls. Plenty of empty alcohol bottles, modified coke cans for cooking Heroin, tine plastic bags with some crumbles of weed and other such disgusting stuff has been lying around. What a mess! After a glance into …
the “pressure cabin” it was time to leave this unpleasant abandoned building.
Near a gasoline station where Чернотa got a big slug of petrol, this two eastern …
made lorries have been seen.
*a cool wooden gate at the entrance to an old buffalo range*
Here is another photo of a surprisingly big lake which was seen this day. The …
route followed another long sand trail. After a few hours along this sandy conditions, I got some kind of good feeling for riding wit Чернотa on this surface. The trick was …
to get enough speed. When we reached a velocity around 55 km/h or 35mph or more, the front wheel “floated” and got very stable along the long straights. Just the tail was wagging constantly from side to side. With balancing my weight slightly forth or back the wagging was well manageable. This way I was able to ride along the sandy straights with around 75 km/h or 45mph. This equals my own maximum speed limit, which I prefer when riding alone in such areas. Safety first! *yes,I’malittlechicken* ^^
Riding the sharp sandy corners with some speed was another story: Riding with speed along straights was easy. But at the moment, when speed was decreasing somewhere below 50km/h the front wheel was instantly sinking into the sand and got higly instable while riding through the bend. I was surely falling down five times or more often, until I found out how it worked:
When coming close to the corner a back brake maneuver brings some weight and stability to the front wheel. This way the front is also sinking into the weak sand, but there is enough compression of the sand beyond the tire. Because of the additional weight the front get stable. Also putting my own weight close to the handlebar short before reaching the corner, is gaining this effect.
Then it gets tricky: While leaning the bike into the sand with still some speed on the odo, it is important to get the right point for proper accelerating. When getting this point right, the bike will slide with a stable front wheel and the spinning back wheel into the curve at the right angle. When the curve is over, I just had to accelerate less or to put my weight back to the back wheel and the bike stays stable while bringing it back in upright position.
If I was doing it wrong –> most of the time I was too slow –> the bike simply was falling over to the bend-inner-side.
It was really hard to find this little sweet spot between being all too fast or being slightly too slow. Sometimes, when being too fast, I didn’t get the corner. Two or three trees along the route I strucked this way. But that wasn’t a problem because the trees had been small and the sand was soft and was forgiving me my errors. Also Чернотa had patience with me. ^^
At this sandy junction it was time for a break. Here also the first part of these days ride report finds its end … .