Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Picnic:🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, wraps and blueberries in the ‘blueberry maze’)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 (4 out of 5, mountain trail through the forest. First 22 km were tough but pretty, last 10 km was easy but a little boring)
Track intensity: 😯😯😯😯😯(5 out of 5 done when we got there, yet proud that we made it!)
Milestone: 3500 km
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌 (3 out of 5, nice room with good beds, good restaurant)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail
We have a great night of sleep and wake up well rested when the alarm goes at 5.00. We leave early today because we want to try and reach Kralova Studna in 1 day. This is a 34 km walk, instead of the planned 22 km. After 22 km we reach the road, but there is nothing there. And today there is only water after 7 km, at Skalka.
So we start packing in time.
This morning my luck is in a strawberry mug. The fact that I can drink from a large stone mug, that there is plenty of water and plenty of gas, so I can drink a second cup of tea! Little things…
We leave at 7.00 and hike the first 7 km up to Skalka. Here we drink some Kofola and fill all our water bottles. With 4 liter water each, we should make it through the day.
The trail is nice today, and quite gradually it takes us up and down through the
forested mountains. We have lunch in a maze of blueberry bushes, where we forage and eat our wraps.
A bit further the trail starts to get steep and takes us down the hill. On our way we see a himer coming up the steep hill with in one hand a can of bear spray and in the other he hauls his backpack up the hill on a 2-wheeled (shopping) trolley. We greet him, but we’re to surprised to ask him about his carry system or to take a picture, but after he passed us we have SO many questions about this way of hiking!…😅🤔
The trail continues steep up and down and is quite tough at places. somewhere in the middle of an ascent Mark starts laughing and says:”I really wonder how he did this with his trolley going down….” 😂😂😂 I think we’ll remember the trolley man for a while.
After a long way down, we get to the road. From there it’s another 10 km to Kralova Studna, where we booked a room. It’s 10 km easy going track. Our 3500 km celebration is also in this part. We make our 3500 with the wood on the spot, although we later think we could have written on our dusty calves aswell… We are now definitely over halfway!
The easy going track is great at first and boring after a while. After this long day, it would have been nice if it was a few km shorter…. But the bed, a shower and a good meal were all worth it. And the view here is amazing 😍.