“WEATHER”
Being alone on an adventure trip is sometimes a risky thing. You have to overthink some decisions twice before making a final choice. Hence, your choice should be a good one, because you have to deal with the consequences on your own.
Most of the time such decisions are related to simple tasks like where to go back on road for the next stop for fuelling up or to buy some food. Often also an estimation is needed regarding if a track is ride able without taking too much peril (slope, dense vegetation, road damage …) for you and your bike.
But none of these listed points is so difficult to calculate in advance like the dynamic factor weather is. On this last riding day of the Iron Side Ride 2018 this unknown factor in the adventure-riding-formula was steadily growing during this day’s riding progress …
The weather conditions forced me again, like at the end of “THE LATE SPRING RIDE”, to make a few little unwanted decisions and track adjustments. -_-
The last riding day of the Iron Side Ride 2018 followed the planned track along the no man’s land between Hungary and Austria. The starting point was a huge meadow in Hungary, just a few kilometers in the south of the Slovakian capitol Bratislava. Main goal of this riding day was the three country border corner between Hungary, Slovenia and Austria. There we left the track along the border and went on homewards to Vienna. Let’s start!
I really like it when the first glance out of the tent door offers a sight like this! During the last night one short but heavy shower streaked the camp.
I stowed the camping equipment quickly in Чернотas saddlebags and we went off. This days ride …
started and followed the huge Hungarian weed plains. We arrived …
at this old rotten bridge. Before I drove over it, I had a closer look to the old wooden beams. They seemed to be a bit brittle. So I fired up the LC4 engine and walked the bike over it. I walked in the middle of the bridge directly on the beams, while I rolled the bike along the right hand side planks. The idea was to spread the weight of the bike on the beams. This worked without any troubles.
The ride along this huge plains continued and was seldom …
disturbed from a remnant of the Iron Curtain. Here you see a single concrete pole which was part of the fence. On the left side Hungary, in the middle the no man’s land and on the right side of the border an agricultural used Austrian field.
The huge fields in Hungary often forced us to follow the field-splitting little water channels to the next bridge. Here at this place probably some basement work was done, for building a new bridge over such a mentioned channel.
While following the planned track we found a few of these …
ripped folding tents along the track. First I was wondering about it, but then I found out what the reason behind this lost tents in the middle of nowhere was. We have been riding through an area near the border to Austria where each year the Nova Rock Festival takes place. Loads of people following the call of this Festival. Many of them are camping at the festival and often some rubbish is left behind. This plains in eastern Austria are famous for the strong wind and so it happens, that such tents and other rubbish get blown away.
The track conditions changed sometimes from open fields …
to overgrown, barely visible trails.
In Hungary only seldom some animals have been seen like this cows. A day before along Czechia, we saw many more of them.
Officially Hungary and Austria are both members of the Schengen Contract. That means that all EU-citizens are allowed to pass the inner borders of the Schengen Member countries without any controls. Due to immigration fled in 2015 Austria started to control its borders. This happened especially along some big international roads and also …
in the back country. Therefore, the Bundesheer (Austrian Army) got the job to control the back-country-border-tracks to prevent human smuggling from Hungary to Austria. This is one of a few army tents which I passed along this ride. This photo always makes me smile. Thats because back in the good old days, when I absolved my duty at the Army, we haven’t had any of these “Pipiboxes“. We only had a shovel and digged a hole before doing the big business. Being a soldier nowadays seems to be a more comfy job. ^_^
Short after the sky turned dark …
heavy rain started. I pulled on the rain gear and short after that, I had the first soft slide out/fall down. Nothing serious happened, so the ride went on. It led …
into the woods near Lake Neusiedl. The vegetation …
got denser. Because the track was still good visible I rode with good amount of speed along this track. “Expect the worst”, is a good saying which you should always keep in mind while riding such overgrown tracks! Following this dense grass trail in its middle I nearly had overseen …
this little bridge with the hole in the middle. I don’t know how, but I got It managed to balance Чернотa over it. Here’s an overview how I passed this hole:
I’m sure that riding one inch/a few cm more on the right side would have caused a fatal accident. The space between the two planks of the bridge was just enough that a bike with foldable foot pegs can fall through it. It’s easy to imagine what’s happening to the riders legs, when he and the heavy bike fall down into this hole/get stuck in it … . *pheeewww*
After that little shock and an over-thinking the safety of my solo-adventure-rides, I continued …
the journey through the wet woods in the east of Lake Neusiedl. After the woods we came to this bridge:
It´s the “Bridge of Andau”. It’s crossing the channel “Einser-Kanal” which is the main outlet of Lake Neusiedl. Besides that it’s also a historical place. During the Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet occupation in the 1950tys many of Hungarians fled via this bridge to Austria.
Lake Neusiedl’s southern shore …
is impassable due to many reed areas and boat channels. Because of that Чернотa and I followed some tarmac roads through classy Hungarian villages. In the west of Lake Neusiedl …
soft hills raised. The fatty heavy clay soil there is perfect for growing wine, but it is …
not suitable for 50/50 tires like the Mitas E07, mounted on the back axle.
After a short brake and a great view over the reed shore of the lake the ride went on …
along this greasy soil. Now we went on through an …
another village near the Austrian border. The tarmac road led us to …
a memorial area between Hungary and Austria near the village St. Margareten. It is called “Paneuropean Picnic Memorial“. The story behind this is very interesting:
Back in August 1989, because of an unstable political structure in Hungary, the officialls there allowed people from the east to flee into the west. Hungarian border guards have been instructed to put down their weapons and to open the border for a few hours. This way they let many people pass through to Austria. Only a month later Hungary opened its borders completely and more than 70000 Germans from the East took the opportunity and fled to West Germany via the countries Hungary and Austria. Hungary was the first country of all bloc countries, which opened its border to the west. With this border opening the spark was ignited which finally resulted in the end of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union.
Чернотa and I stayed at the Hungarian side of the border and followed …
the tracks there. Because of the bad weather the …
conditions got worse. It wasn’t easy to drive a straight line along this clay. It was to slippery and let the 50/50 back wheel spin.
The ride went on through a little …
apple plantation, and we also rode a short distance on tarmac along on the Austrian border side to …
get some cheap fuel there. Short afterwards, …
back in Hungary, near the border dividing hill …
called “Geschriebenstein” this impressive panorama picture was taken. The camera was pointing southwards and it was obvious, that the before mentioned hill was dividing the incoming weather front.
While I was rethinking my planned track, which was originally leading onto the top of the “Geschriebenstein”, a lightning struck hit the church on the right edge of this picture. After hearing the bone shaking thunder I instantly made the decision to stay on “the sunny side”. So we rode a bit more east than planned further southwards through Hungary.
Lesser Rain was …
the result of this decision. But after …
riding a couple of miles …
further south and getting some …
electric shocks of this pasture fence (due to my total drenched gear and wet handles of the fence ^^) …
it was obvious, that it had rained here before really heavily. I rode to far since the last junction. I also didn’t want to track back for avoiding this deep mud.
So I took this hurdle and followed this mudslide for about three clutch abusing kilometers. The back wheel was spinning permanently and I had to use my …
feet ongoing for stabilization. Surprisingly this mud track ended directly in …
a small village. There I made a short resting stop and …
made a closer look to the dirt collecting vehicle “Чернотa”. Whilst …
accelerating to 100km/h or 60mp/h Чернотa shaked of the dirt from its wheels. We now followed a good amount of tarmac …
for avoiding …
further heavy mud tracks like this one before. I was too exhausted for doing this any longer with this sort of tires, mounted on a “heavy” 690ty. It didn’t take long before …
Slovenia was reached. There we rode the last piece of dirt on this ride, …
which brought us after a few slippery forest tracks with a good amount of slope …
to the Three-Country-Stone. It is located at the three country corner between Austria, Hungary and Slovenia.
I read some information about the story of this stone …
which has an Austrian, …
an Hungarian and …
an Slovenian side. A chocolate bar later …
we continued our ride now northwards back to Vienna. We took some …
back country roads …
along finest tarmac whilst riding homewards.
The rain was still with us. We passed the hilly area …
called “Buckelige Welt” or “Land of thousand hills”. After another …
brake at the parking lot of castle “Forchtenstein“, I hopped onto Чернотas saddle, and we did the last few kilometers back to Vienna. The weather had no mercy with us.
In the south of Vienna it was absolutely bucketing down. After 520km oro 330mi this day I was totally drenched, exhausted and happy to be back at home. The total covered distance of “The Iron Side Ride 2018” was 1405 km or 875 mi.
Retrospectively it was a good decision to bypass a few planned dirt tracks in the southwest of Hungary. Along such muddy conditions without proper tires it wouldn’t have been fun/wasn’t save for me to try it on my own. For that Чернотa is a bit to heavy and I to little trained. ^_^
Over all this self planned track was a great little adventure. I enjoyed it a lot and was surprised often with things along the track, which I haven’t seen during the planning phase.
Despite many voices out there which are saying that it’s not possible to ride in Central Europe such tracks and dual-adventures because of harsh local laws I have to say: “That’s wrong.” Along this 900km no man’s land ride which surely led me through 650 to 700km (400 to 430mi) of gravel tracks and worse, I hadn’t one problem with any person at all. Besides that I always tried to stay on still existing tracks/old overgrown trails. When that wasn’t possible I rode/push-walked the bike very carefully through the forest. The last thing I wanted was to destroy the environment.
I’m not the dirt biker which is getting a boner when he is able to spin the knobby back wheel of his bike as much as possible in the middle of nature.
Since more than four years I’m riding according this attitude, which is in my opinion a good compromise between legal/illegal adventure-bike-riding within over-regulated Europe. That´s just has to be said.
Servus, Tom.