I had 30 kilometres to walk today and a boxed breakfast, so with no need for delay I was on my way by 6:30 am. Leaving Bytča via a suspension bridge for those on foot, I was soon passing people walking their dogs or jogging in the suburbs. New houses mingled with an area of decaying buildings with smashed windows or collapsed roofs.
My route this morning was up a long valley, its sides covered with conifers. After a length of track beside fields on the valley floor, I joined a road at the village of Petrovice. There was little traffic. It was Sunday, people were walking to church. The houses were a mixture of modern, rendered buildings often in pastel colours and others made of timber, of logs roughly cut and jointed. Roofs tended to be of metal sheeting but sometimes tiled. A little outside the village, under a shelter beside a taped off rectangle of grass, people were preparing for an event. Beyond the houses, where the forest came down to the road, there were a few boards with slits in. I had seen them before and wondered what they were. Google told me they were Ridex slit traps, which use a pheromone to trap bark beetles.
The smooth tarmac meant I was making good time, 4.1 kilometres per hour compared to as low as 2.6 when following ridges recently. Despite favourable conditions underfoot, my left knee was refusing to bend and generally complaining. I took an Ibuprofen and maybe this helped me reach today's destination. Inevitably there was a point where I needed to leave the road and climb up a track. Despite being uphill the route was good, the tracks not destroyed by forestry vehicles. Today was not a ridge walk but a means to cross the mountains from one valley system to the next. Although I was walking through conifer forest, there were plenty of gaps to see the view back, to the south. On reaching a ski tow, I could also see in a northerly direction, down towards Makov. On occasional meadows, the sparse, long grass was dotted with yellow, pink and blue from the buttercups, clover, speedwells and forget-me-nots. A few people were about on a Sunday ramble or bicycle ride. Despite a light shower which lasted long enough to put my waterproofs on, most of the day was dry and sometimes sunny.
I had left Bytča on the green trail and later switched to red waymarks. Signs gave me the wrong impression of how far it was to my Penzion in Makov, a consequence of Makov being strung out along the valley, with a sub village called Makov-Kopanice for which timings were given on the signs. My accommodation was in another part of Makov a few kilometres further on, along a road frequented by cyclists and motorbikes.
Arriving too early to check in, I had lunch at the nearby "Motorest", a traditional Slovakian dish of potato dumplings with a sheeps' cheese sauce and bacon and sausage bits. It was fortunate that I had a good lunch as when I returned to the restaurant at 7 pm for some dinner, I was told the kitchen was closed. The waitress kindly checked to see if anything might be found for me, and the answer was tripe soup, there were no other options. Although not my favourite this was my supper, followed by an ice cream, which did not require any cooking.
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