Tuesday, May 28th 2024

Distance Ridden – 586 kilometres

NOTE Because of the weather, we forgot to stop “recording” the route ….

The above map stops at Podlehenik – but shows the distance all the way to the the Plitvička Lakes.

We had decided to take a trip to Croatia and, as usual, Lucie did all the planning. Also, as usual, Lucie kept an eagle-eye on the beloved weather radar Apps on her iPhone. To be frank, it did not look good ! As the date of our departure neared, the weather prospects began to look grimmer and grimmer. Even when her packing was three-quarters complete, Lucie still was not sure. With less than twelve hours to go before our departure, we had a very serious conversation about whether, or not, we really wanted to go. Fortunately, although it did not initially seem so, we decided that we did.

The day of departure arrived and we started early, as is our practice. We were loading our Harley-Davidson, on the pavement outside of our house, well before six-thirty in the morning. We wanted to be away before the rains, threatened in the weather Apps, arrived in Prague. We did, at least, manage that, although it was already quite grey. We rode away, in a southwards direction, on a dry road.

Because we were, for once, heading slightly more to the east, we took the D1 motorway as far as the beginning of Route 3 and then took a more southerly direction towards Linz in Austria.

We came to Benešov and, soon after that, the towers of Konopiště castle appeared above the tree line on our right. Konopiště was once one of the residences of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. In 1914 they made the ill-fated decision to visit Sarajevo, where their joint assassination helped precipitate the First World War. We were going close to those same parts ourselves, hopefully with less dramatic consequences.

On our left, we passed the Hotel Benica. It always gets a smile from me because, in 2013, on our tenth Wedding Anniversary, Lucie and I parked there before taking an early-morning flight in a hot-air balloon, which took us right over the top of the nearby castle.

Traffic, at least out of Prague, was quite light at that early hour and we made steady progress. Route 3, like Route 4 is undergoing substantial upgrading, but near to Prague, these are largely complete. Route 3 is less picturesque than our usual choice, Route 4 and it has no storks to see, but the continuing roadworks on the latter still make it a nightmare. We were, in my opinion getting on quite well, but the skies ahead were growing steadily darker and more ominous. On any trip, we like to stop every one hundred kilometres or so, ostensibly to stretch our legs, although Lucie usually manages to smoke while she is walking. Our first calculated stop, at a service area on a stretch of the brand new highway, was a blow out because, although marked on the maps, it was not yet there. Needless to say, before we reached the next marked one, which luckily was there, the heavens opened and we were soaked long before we made the forecourt.

This station too was obviously brand new and the staff hardly seemed to know what they were doing. Paying for my petrol was an exercise in patience and I think they may have had to grow the beans for Lucie’s espresso …. Outside, the pounding rain actually rendered the wait the more pleasurable of competing experiences. We realised it was rain-gear time – and we had only gone 125 km. We waited for a bit – but it got worse, not better and, in the end, embarrassingly luminous, it was out into the deluge to continue our journey.

We had to drive through the town of České Budějovice. The highway which were were then on now neatly circumnavigates that historic town and the final loop was recently opened. Sadly, it had to be immediately closed again because some bright spark had forgotten that there was to be a new railway tunnel underneath it – which now still has to be dug ….. If I was a tax-payer, I would be furious, I am not, so I limited my feelings to those of despair …

The rain slowed us somewhat and it was not until almost nine forty-five that I gummed my Austrian highway sticker to the windscreen in Dolní Dvořiště and we slipped damply across our first border having covered our first 207 kilometres.

The word for rain may be different in Austria, but there was no difference to its intensity. We wound our way through a succession of small towns and villages until we came to the start of the motorway that one day, rail tunnels permitting, will join directly to the one we had initially been on.

It is an impressive piece of work. The Austrian modus-operandi is to go under obstructions and not around them. This includes both hills and towns and the endless trips beneath the earth at least kept us drier for a time. Sadly, once we left Linz in the direction of Graz, there were no more tunnels and we were treated to the full delight of a wet motorway in driving rain. To be honest, we have had more fun ! Sadly, given their obvious civil-engineering skills, the Austrian road resurfacing techniques left a LOT to be desired ! There were often considerable ridges at the edges of repairs which were invisible in the standing water and spray. These would have been unpleasant on a dry road, but on a wet and greasy one they, several times, caused the Harley to lurch alarmingly off line.

We droned steadily, if slowly, south and eventually came to the A9 motorway, also known as the Pyhrn motorway and the E59. We came upon a series of yet more tunnels, four in all if my memory serves me rightly. These were all of quite enormous length, five kilometres seemed to be the going in position and the one under Graz, when we got there must have been close to double that. The first three, from the Linz direction, go right under parts of the Alps, beneath mountains of such magnitude that the rain intensity on either end was markedly different – but sadly, it was always present.

In two of the tunnels, but I am not certain which two, it was so warm inside that our visors instantly fogged to give zero visibility.

There are two toll sections on this stretch towards Graz and the total, at time of writing (May 2024) was 10.50 EUR. I well remember my first trip in that area before the tunnels – believe me, it is well worth it !

The urge to just keep ploughing on was great but, in the end, we just had to stop. We found a service station at last, they are surprisingly scarce in the mountain areas, where we could park the Harley under the roof while we had a much needed cup of something warm and a hit of candy for some much needed sugar. I was a little dismayed at the slowness of our progress, I had hoped to be quite a bit further on – so it was out into the downpour yet again as we headed towards, a still distant, Graz.

Finally, Graz did come and go (not that we saw it, because we were in yet another a tunnel) and we began the descent out of the mountains towards the Slovenian border. In such awful conditions, one is inclined to clutch at any crumb of comfort and the distance to destination on the SatNav, which had begun at 576 km finally dropped to under 100 km. The fuel gauge dropped with it and, about twenty kilometres after that we pulled into what was billed as the last services in Austria, at Spielfeld, to fill the tank for the final push.

When Lucie was paying, she noticed that there was a small cafeteria attached to the station where it was possible to buy goulash soup and a roll. We had not eaten for hours so we did just that, with the added bonus of a salty pretzel. Motorway food it may have been, but boy, was it good. We also purchased an electronic highway sticker for Slovenia (7 days for 8 EUR) and out into the downpour for the last time we went.

Now, we had been riding in rain of varying intensity for over 400 kilometres – but the last 77 were, genuinely, the very worst of all. In half a century on two wheels, I do not think that I have ever ridden in worse conditions. The rain finally infiltrated into my boots and, worse still, behind my visor. I could hardly see a thing, not a problem apparently shared by the Slovene drivers screaming past in the outside lane and adding to our problems with walls of spray. Even when we left the main motorway, which had become the E57, after Maribor, for what seemed to be a lesser one, this did not change. The “new” motorway, which did, admittedly, lead to the Croatian capital, Zagreb, was again the E59.

Finally, finally, finally, we came to our turning and the couple of kilometres of country lanes that led to our destination, the Gostišče – Penzion “Ob ribniku” (Dežno pri Podlehniku 6a, Podlehnik). A ribnik is an artificial fish pond and, as I gratefully pulled up outside, my huge sigh of relief wafted out across a damp, but pleasant scene indeed.

But (and there is almost always a but) our problems were not over. There was absolutely nobody there at all. It is at moments like that when your mobile phone is worth its weight in gold. Lucie called the number on the door of the reception and, in only about 15 minutes a young girl drove up and let us in. We swear by booking.com but they pulled a fast one there. It seems that the place is always closed on Tuesday afternoons – but that fact does NOT appear in the blurb ! Even worse, the on-site restaurant (one of our key reasons for staying there) is not open on Tuesdays either …..

We were told there was a place about 2 kilometres away but, by then, physical violence would not have got either of us back onto the Harley and we could not face walking there in stuff that was dry and would not be by the time we had gone fifty metres.

I rolled the Harley under the roof of the terrace dining area and we retired to our small, but adequate, room to do the thing with the hairdryer.

I was totally exhausted and, although it was hardly five o’clock, as soon as I sat on the bed I dropped off to sleep. Lucie did wake me briefly, an hour or so later so we could take a Tuesday Night Drinks photo for our friends that were in a nice, snug pub in Prague (where they had beer and FOOD) – we had to pretend with glasses of water.

Then we both went to bed, with no supper. I dropped into a dead sleep until the morning whilst my admirable and long-suffering lady continued her ministrations with the hair-dryer ……