Keszthely - Ptuj

So, Ptuj. Slovenia is evidently yet another country which reaches for the Scrabble bag when trying to think up names for its cities, though at least it's not quite as profligate with the letters as some we could mention (but not spell).

Set off at 9am, the weather having changed back to be sunny but not too warm. I don't know if it's because I've had a few fairly easy days, but I was really ready to go this morning, and I didn't stop other than for a quick glug of water for about 50 miles, when I had some goulash in a restaurant just before the Slovenian border, as much in order to get rid of some forints as because I really wanted it.

The road out of Keszthely was busy, but not unbearably so, and after about 25 miles I turned off it anyway to go a slightly longer way on a minor road through some villages. This was much better, a quiet road with no steep climbs and pleasant weather

A couple of other roads came together just before the border, and these must have been carrying all the traffic, because there were a lot of HGVs on it, queueing up to get over the border. They came from all over - Russia, Ukraine, Poland

The bit of Slovenia I crossed into (at Redics on the Hungarian side) is a narrow tongue that sticks in between Hungary and Croatia. It's obviously an embarrassment to the Slovenians, because they're trying to turn the whole thing into a motorway as far as possible. I don't know why, because neither the Hungarian nor Croatian bits with which it shares a border have motorways, so presumably traffic is going to scream along a multi-lane highway then come to a dead stop at a bottleneck. It's the A14 all over again.

They've not got that far yet though, so all the traffic is on one carriageway. I didn't much fancy sharing the road with all these vehicles, so I chose a different route. This involved about half an hour in Slovenia, the same time in Croatia, and then back into Slovenia, being held up at each border by grumpy jobsworths who wanted to check my passport

Not to worry; I finally got into Slovenia on a much quieter road, and at the first town I turned off onto an even more minor road. This had a pretty good surface and almost no traffic, and went through rural areas with a bit of gentle up and down. The farms here seem to be about as mixed as you can get - one farm might have maize, a pear orchard, sheep, turkeys, chickens and a couple of horses. The farmyards looked as if they might have been franchised by Old McDonald, but in general there was an air of orderliness about the countryside - not as organised as say Switzerland or Germany, but less of the impression of being just about held together by bits of string that you sense in some of the former Eastern Bloc counries. I suppose Yugoslavia was always a special case, and Slovenia was a bit semi-detached even within that federation.

So just as I was thinking what a marvellous country Slovenia is for cycling, with no traffic and gently undulating roads, I came round a bend to be confronted with a 15% slope up, which I suppose is about 1 in 6 or 7. That did hurt a bit, but not as much as turning off at the top, speeding down the hill, finding out I shouldn't have turned off and having to go back up again. Never mind, I'm sure I'm a better person for having suffered.

Finally to Ptuj (easier done than said), where I was pleased to find the Tourist Information stays open till 8pm. The girl seemed slightly bewildered at being asked if there was a hotel in the town (it was next door), but I made it there without further losing my way. Almost a pity really, because I'd been relying a bit on meandering round the town to push me just past the 100 mile mark. That's the second time I've fallen just short.

The town itself was a complete surprise - I'd headed for it because it was about the right distance and looked big enough to have a hotel. In fact, it's about the oldest town in Slovenia, with a castle in good nick, lots of old cobbled streets and some celebrated buildings. It was a sunny, warm evening and the river was completely still as I went for a wander around. In adition, the girl on reception at the hotel kindly lent me a copy of the Lonely Planet uide to SLovena, so I knew what I was looking at.

Pictures

Updated 18 June 2008