Trying to cover two days cycling.
Kormend is about 10km off route and the first thing was to get back on-route. This was level cycling, but once on the route again, it was another matter.
The uphill started in Heilingenbrunn, where we asked the way in a hotel and were both told the way and given coffee on the house. We went up and down on a string of very neat and tidy Austrian villages, with EV13 clearly signposted, until we ended up on a dirt road through a forest that took us to the church of St Emmerich in a clearing, exactly on the Austrian-Hungarian border, with evidence of when it had been closed. The church had been partly destroyed but later completely restored. The whole area was moving. Several groups, by bike or by car came by. In the last one we talked a bit and were told that earlier in the history of the closed border, the main church entrance being in Hungary and the sacristy on Austria, quite frequently people escaped to the West by going in the main entrance and leaving by the sacristy door. This stopped when an exclusion zone began on the Hungarian side.
After the church, EV13 took us on a remote forest trail for some distance, eventually to Szengotthard, where we paused for iced coffee.
Finally that day, on to Apatistvanfalva, where we stayed in an excellent hotel. We are going up-market this year with (so far) no camping but always overnight in a guest house, hotel, etc.
Next day took us into Slovenia, soon after starting off. It also took us steeply down hill, which was nice. Ebikes are making uphill much easier to cope with, but nothing beats a good downhill!
It was only a day in Slovenia. It included a visit to an old mill, and lunch in a churchyard in remarkable heat, opposite a bee tenement - a stack of hives - across a small stream. Then we arrived in Lendava and into a total middle looking for a bike shop and also somewhere to stay, in both cases with no success. We continued on the route, finding nowhere: even a campsite was defunct. It got dark and we trudged on and came to a roadside hotel a bit before Nagykanisza, where we could stay and did. Good supper
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