Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, wraps with peanut butter and Nutella)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰(4 out of 5, tough but pretty forest trail into the Slovakian hills, with beautiful views)
Milestone: 2000 miles!
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, flat spot in the forest)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail (heroes of the Slovak national uprising)
We have had a tough, sweaty, beautiful hiking day today.
Our first 7 km take us 3 hours. the track is rocky and steep down and then it goes up the hill. It’s tough, but also rewarding to get to the top of Vápenna. The view is great and there is a cool summit cross with a Slovakian flag. We meet a nice couple there who take our photo at the top.
We walk down on a rocky trail until we get to a slightly easier part and have lunch.
From there the trail is quite easy going down the hill, with some short uphill bits. We enjoy the views we have at a more open part. What a pretty trail. Not sure if this will be the standard for the upcoming days, but for now, we’ll rate it above average niceness 😅.
On our way down we meet Daniel and Jana, a Slovak couple that are on the SNP trail in the other direction. They speak English, so we have a chat with them. It’s good to get some information on the trail ahead! They give us a useful website and their address and phone number, in case we need anything. We are even invited to come and stay the night when we’re on the SNP trail close to their home. What a great offer! We are definitely going to check if we can make that work! Jana and Daniel, thanks for your kindness to 2 random hikers! We continue to the spring where we are going to get some water. We find the sign for spring in the trees, and the spring, but there is no water running there. There is another spring, slightly off trail in 6 km. We only have one liter of water left. Not ideal, but it could be worse…
We walk 6 km to the next spring, close to a hut. We are hoping for a cafe in the hut, so we’re slightly disappointed to see the ‘hut’ when we get there…
We do celebrate 2000 miles here by, once again, playing the Proclaimers song.
We walked 500 miles and 500 more, and 500 more and 500 more. Pretty cool, if I may say so! 😁
The spring, that we really need by now, runs very slow. It takes 10 minutes to fill our 1 liter bottle. So we end up having dinner there and a 90 minute break ….
After that, we hike the last few kilometers up the hill. Well rested with a full stomach, we make good progress. T forest we walk through is almost magical. Tall old trees with a winding path…this is where fairytales come alive. We climb up the hill until we reach the top. From there we follow a rocky trail through the green shrubs, with some nice views. We continue for another kilometer and pitch our tent at a nice flat spot near the second top. We’ll leave the downhill parts for tomorrow 😁😅.