Weather: ☀️☀️🌤️🌤️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, unexpected pizza and pinsa in Nizna Mysla)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰 (2 out of 5, bit boring track along the river Hornad, followed by an ok track through the forest. No water along the way)
Milestone: 3750 km!
Campsite: ⛺⛺ (2 out of 5, flat spot in the forest)
Name of followed trail: Red and yellow cycle trail, E3, + detour to get water
After a nice breakfast we leave our appartment in Kosice and head to the Hornad river. We follow the river on a cycle path, varying from tarmac in buildup area to dust road through dry shrubs and some trees. This 16 km trail is not really interesting, exept for our 3750 km point. Definitely over halfway now!
We have an unexpected lunch break at a restaurant that doesn’t exist according to google maps, but it does have nice pizza and pinsa!
We continue from Nizna Mysla, after a bridge which has railway sleepers as decking. The trail goes up the hill, into a more forested area. In about a. hour, we gain 500 meters of elevation. The trail is easy going, but it’s still a sweaty job. When we are up, we look for the spring to get our water, but the spring is dry. We continue to find the next, also dry. After that, we walk to a point in the trail where a river crosses the trail. Again, dry. No water to be found here. Unfortunate, because we do need water, and we’ve already walked well over 25 kilometers today. We look at the map and decide on a detour through the village of Slanska Huta.
With some navigation skills we get down to the valley, and have a beautiful view over the valley and the mountains in the evening sunlight.
The watertap at the cemetery (our best guess in any village) is dry, so we ask at a house. A friendly man gives us a bottle of sparkling water. It takes a while to make him understand what we want, but we get there in the end 😅. With all water blatters filled, + the 2 liter bottle, we now have enough for tonight.
We hike the green trail back, on a forest road towards our planned route, until it’s about 19.00. It’s slowly nearing dusk, so time to pitch our tent. We find a nice, flat spot not too far from the road. There is even a little creek down here! We’re to tired to use it for washing ourselves though. After 38 kilometer, all we do is make dinner and get into the tent!
There, we make a toast with our Telgart drink to our last night of camping in Slovakia.