My father came to visit this Easter weekend to do some biking. We did 2 rides, each over 100 km. The first one was just to the SW from my farm mostly located on the somewhat misnamed Krupinska Planina (Krupina Plateau) as the word Planina (plateaou) invokes an image of a flat surface. This is apparently true only to some extent as in the course of our ride we made an elevation gain of 2000 meters. It is likely this area was flatter in the past, but to enjoy biking on that flat surface we would have to go back in time some 20 million years when the Javorie volcano was spewing volcanic ash the tuffs the plateau is built from. But then we would have probably encountered a different set of problems.
The Sunday ride was a different beast as it was much flatter. We drove to Slovenske Darmoty and biked along the Ipel river – up stream on its Hungarian side and back along its right bank that is located in Slovakia. The weather both days was nice, albeit windy. Temperatures were just right for biking. Below are some pictures, statistics and downloadable gpx files.
Krupinska Planina
The ride map and profile.
The small piles of dirt on the picture are anthill colonies. There were so many of them they reminded us the termite colonies of Africa.
Even Krupinska Planina is home to Slovak biggest predator – the brown bear. The table reads: “Attention: Entry to the forest at your own risk. Presence of bears”
Around the Ipel river
The ride map and profile.
The broad valley of the Ipel river narrows south of the Hungarian village Litke.
In the village Mula on the Slovak side of Ipel we found this interesting-looking church. It reminded us of a Turkish minaret so we hypothesized it could have been built while this part of Europe was under the rule of the Otoman Turks, but an internet research revealed the church was built in 1910 in a secession style by architect Istvan Medgyaszay from prefabricated reinforced concrete. Supposedly this building method was not used before anywhere else in the world at that time. [source]
Another view of the Ipel valley
Job well done being celebrated by my father in a pub at the end of our trip in Slovenske Darmoty