Fri05Aug16: Balatonalmadi - Keszthely, Hungary (104.2km, 2,930.8km YTD)

No matter how tired you are, when the campground bar doesn't close until 11:30pm there isn't much chance of quiet.  Gradually getting quieter but several kids still riding bikes and running around, electronic music from out in the distance, suddenly at 12:35am a distant and familiar voice shouts out "Shut the f*** up!".  Apparently Chris is not happy, so I'll probably hear more about that in the morning.  All told I get maybe 3-4 hours of sleep before the sound of tent zippers tells me that TDA riders are getting active and packing up their stuff.

wooden arch, Lake Balaton Bike Trail

Breakfast and then a slow start to the day.  Gergo says its only 75km along the lakeshore to a hotel at Keszthely so Peter - sweep rider - and I leave well after the crowd has departed.  We catch up to the first stragglers - John & Peter (USA) - at a coffee bar on the peninsula, Peter stops and I start climbing the bike path on the hill up to Tihany.

Tihany Abbey, Lake Balaton

Nice views from the summit, and then a long glide down to the ferry terminal, before turning back along the lakeshore and heading back towards our planned route.

Several other TDA riders pass by before I catch up to John & Peter (USA) with Wayne (Australia), we stop for lunch, meeting a parade of three elephants (the circus is in town!), and finally pull into the Hotel Helikon in Keszthely about 2:15pm and a temperature of about 33C.  Ouch! and a sore butt to boot.

atrium, Hotel Helikon, Keszthely

Tron (Norway) is my roommate tonight, and hopefully for the remainder of this trip because he's also going as far as Venice.  Shower, laundry, a small walk in Lake Balaton - a dirty brown body of insipid water with pieces of weeds floating on the surface.  Want to estimate the coliform bacteria count?

  




Then things start going wrong this afternoon.  Small things.  First thing is that I starting getting leg cramps while I'm lying on my towel after the swim; hasn't happened before, not enough salt?  Then I get back to the room and find that my shower towel has blown off the balcony railing to places unknown.  When I finally convince Reception to give me a new shower towel, I slip in the bath tub and yank down the shower curtain.  Then when I turn on the shower again it's pointed a Tron's towel and soaks it completely.  When I go to edit my photos, I find that I've deleted that editing program in trying to create enough space to download my photographs, and I can't figure out how to upload and replace it (from now on my blog may get unedited photos).  After supper I realise that my grey shorts have been ripped off by the thunderstorm that struck during supper, so now I've got nothing except full length pants to replace my cycling shorts a ride.  Then the internet goes dead because of the storm.  Heading for a triple zero evening...