TCRNo6 part 4: Chasing the Sun

I may be chasing the sun south but by early evening I’m once again wondering where to sleep. With few hotels and big miles to cover it's looking like a bivvy night. I start looking for an evening meal, searching every village main street for a bar as I roll through. The first bar I enter is full of locals but no-one speaks English one of whom helpfully rings their brother so he can translate for me. No luck with food though so I cruise on to the next village where I find fresh pizza and draught Czech beer, perfect.
Twenty miles later I stop at a bus stop and unroll my sleeping bag on the concrete floor, a clean, dry floor is all I need tonight.

Early dawn the next day is once again damp and misty, I’m glad I was under cover for the night. By midday I’m crossing back into Austria near Vienna with my 'Best of The Allergies' playlist turned up to full. Riding south east into Vienna I follow a bike path along the River Danube’s shores. It's good to be back in Vienna, my last visit was in 1992 when I studied at the Theresianische Akademie for 2 months although my main memories are of spending long days smoking liquorice rollups in the city’s parks and enjoying the Viennese nightlife. I cross the river to an island in the river; the Donau Insel. To my surprise it appears to be a nudist camp judging from the naked old men swinging saggy skin in the wind. At least there’s a water fountain to fill up from and I’m soon sprinting between traffic lights across the city centre and out the far side towards Hungary.

I’m forced off road at the Hungarian border when the road I ride becomes a motorway. I booked a hotel earlier in the town of Sarva and I’m soon facing a 60km time trial to reach the hotel in time to check in. The sun drops from the sky and I’m left spinning my way south through twilit Hungary. I make it for 9.15pm and with some relief wheel my bike into the hotel’s reception. The proprietress looks horrified and tells me to remove it, apparently it must be left in the car park. I’m exhausted and soon fuming, I explain that it’s valuable and will be stolen outside. She won’t budge and after weighing up the possibility of finding another hotel at this time of night I hide the bike under a staircase in the car park, remove the bags and lock it to a fence. Following a quick change of clothes I find a restaurant for pasta and a beer where I’m “entertained” by the local crooner. My stay is completed with a telling off the next morning for my noisy shoes on the wooden reception floor at 5am. 

Hungary is probably great for time trialling but it bores me, the morning passes slowly on flat straight roads and I can’t wait for the Croatian border where there is the promise of hills. 

By lunchtime I’m climbing up through wooded Croatian pastures passing small holdings every few hundred metres. It looks idyllic; piles of chopped wood, fruit trees, goats and sheep. I need to find myself a house here.

The index of a civilisation is not how many poor people sit in cars, it’s how many rich people ride a bicycle - Anon

At 8pm I reach the Bosnian border where a couple of riders appear to be waiting for me, they suggest I ride with them. It turns out they are dot watching and are planning to take me to a restaurant. I follow them but get concerned as it gets dark and I remember that it's 11 hours since my last proper meal. “Its only 6km” says Aleks. We pass several more restaurants and I’m about to split when he stops at a pizza place. He orders for me and spends the next 40 minutes questioning me about my bike setup.

Aleks is desperate to leave Bosnia for western Europe where there are jobs and money, he paints a bleak picture of life in Bosnia. I politely decline the offer of a bed for the night at his parent’s place, I need to get away from here. I find a 5* bivvy spot in a hay barn nearby and wake up at 4am covered in sticky buds from the hay.

Back on the SH1 highway the next morning I take advantage of the early hour to cover some distance before the truckers get going.


The road into Banja Luka is a long US style strip of shops and warehouses, it’s only when I reach the ornate striped stone mosque in the centre of the city that remember what country I’m in.

The city bustles with early morning deliveries; refuse wagons, newspaper deliveries and all that other stuff which normally happens whilst you are still in bed. I remember to check my route on the south side of the city having heard that No 2 rider Bjørn Lenhard rode a lengthy diversion near here. It’s OK, my route is very different. Escaping a narrow valley I climb up into the Bosnian highlands, a beautiful quiet area that appears alpine at points. I spot a roadside bar with a car park full of tractors and vans where I can get a proper breakfast, I’ll need it to reach CP 4 today.

Using the international language of pointing I order omelette, coffee and orange juice. The locals are forestry and farm workers, they seem amused by my arrival, perhaps they don’t see many visitors here. Father and son emerge from back of the cafe carrying a skinned pig on a spit, they take it to a brick hut next to the bar where they light a fire and lower the spit over it. That’s going to be good by lunchtime.

The locals clear off to get on with their work and I throw my leg over the Croix de Fer once more, bound for Sarajevo via some spectacular gorges and summits. That is until I hit a major road 100km from the city. Trucks and taxis brush past until I find an escape route through the hills, climbs are the price of avoiding the convoys of buses and trucks threading their way along the main roads. It suits me, I get a better feel for the country from the back roads. My map shows that I’m nearing CP 4, I didn’t know whether I would get this far and yet now I’m nearly on the home straight. Climbing through tight switchbacks towards the checkpoint I can make out the call to prayer floating up from a mosque in the valley, now I really do feel like I’ve travelled.

Roadside trees sport red signs warning of the danger of mines, a rude reminder that this was once one of the twentieth century’s most bloody battle grounds. Abandoned houses and hotels complete the picture. It’s hard for a generation who’ve grown up at the peaceful end of western Europe to imagine the horror of what happened here.

A sign at 1100m marks the col before a descent into an alpine basin where the air is thick with the scent of barbecued meat as families picnic beside their cars on lush flowering meadows. Round the corner are alpine style ski lodges and CP4, I roll in to be greeted with enthusiastic whoops by the Apidura crew. They stamp my brevet card at an open air desk under the generous wooden eaves of the ski hotel and snap a Polaroid for their ‘Apidura wall’ - a notice board with Polaroid snaps of riders pinned to it. “What are we writing on this then?” They ask. Feeling good from the last climb I reply “the legs are still on it”.

It’s 6.45pm, i need to climb the gravel parcours before nightfall. I know it’ll be tough, it’s a good 1000m of climbing from here on loose gravel and I’m riding deep section wheels and carrying luggage. It’s not as bad as I feared in the end and the sight of a couple of riders high above on the zig-zagging track keeps me moving. I meet ‘Hippy’ aka Stuart Birnie on the way up, he’s having less fun than me and has resorted to carrying his loaded bike down the mountain. The loose gravel of the hairpins does make this parcours particularly challenging but I’m loving climbing the track through the golden light of magic hour, every turn rewarded by a new alpine vista.

For the first time in the a week I’m glad I spent the summer training by riding off road epics rather than grinding big miles on the road. I'm not too tired to laugh either when one of my wheels digs in and slaloms pitching me off the bike. As I reel in the rider a couple of hairpins ahead of me I’m distracted by the view, it reminds me of the Little Peru area on the Torino Nice Rally, magic hour light reflecting shades of pink and orange on distant limestone peaks whilst closer by the grass is on fire with the golden glow of sunset. I reach the top soon after Bryce who’s out of spare tubes and nursing shredded tyres, he’s not relishing the descent. At the summit of the Bjelašnica there's a shot up wedge shaped concrete building, an eerie relic of the 1984 Winter Olympics and stark reminder of a tragic past. Looking west the sun is setting and I don't want be stuck up here fixing shredded tyres in the dark. I ride back down more carefully than I’ve descended any mountain in my life.