I had hopes of seeing some ex-soviet brutalist culture when visiting Slovakia. In that regard I was disappointed. Slovakia, despite being very far to the east – just about as far east as Europe goes, is best described with just one word – beautiful…
Jana & Ed’s Place…
We travelled with Ed & Jana arriving in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital city, quite late at around 9pm. Our onward travel was to be via bus, which Jana had already pre-booked to Zvolen. But the earliest bus wasn’t until after 11pm, so we hung out at the airport, and enjoyed a cup of tea. From Zvolen we had a further 40 minute car journey. Hana, Ed & Jana’s daughter, had conveniently left a car parked near the bus stop for us. [Ed & Jana had travelled from the Lakes to Manchester airport by train, so for them it was a proper ‘trains-planes-and-automobiles’ journey!]
So it was very late, well gone 1am in the morning, when we finally found a bed at their Slovakian home.
The next morning we got to see where we were. What a great setting! Sitting near the top of a hill with views in all directions across open fields, woodland, and hills including an ancient extinct volcano, Polana. A feature of Slovakian agricultural land seems to be a distinct lack of field boundaries. There’s almost none of the hedging and walling that defines the look and feel of the UK’s countryside. Even though Slovakia is only a fifth the size of the UK it only has one fourteenth of the population at around 5 million people. So largely the place feels quite empty and quiet. And also I guess there’s far less need for angry landowners to assert, “Keep out, private land!” or shout “Ge’ orff my land!”
The house was also quite special, a proper lovely wood cabin. Absolutely everything (except the galvanised roof – although it was wooden shingles when they bought it) is made from wood.
And of course the weather plays a part too. Being in the middle of the ginormous European landmass the weather is stable – deep cold winters and a long pleasant summer. Enabling, for our stay, a very outdoor lifestyle with breakfast and dinner taken outside sat in the sun…
Climbing
The main activity of our trip was of course rock climbing…
Before we travelled to Slovakia I had tried to find a guidebook, any guidebook, to the climbing. There was nothing on offer at any of the UK guidebook outlets. So we were very much in the hands of our local experts!
They of course do have guidebooks…
The pace was very relaxed! After a leisurely breakfast sat in the sun planning the day we generally departed most days well after 10am. Then we more often than not stopped for a coffee on route, which was also commonly accompanied by a cake…
Kalamarka
Kalamarka is the local crag, approximately 30 minutes away. In fact it’s been Jana’s local crag from when she was a teenager! A very large number of the climbs (and indeed most of the ones we climbed) were first climbed by Jana or Stano (who we’ll met later). We were climbing with local legends at the local crag! 😀
The rock is andesite, a very hard and compact volcanic rock. In terms of climbing style it was little gritstone-esque, with many holds being quite rounded and of a very rough high friction texture. Many of the routes at Kalamarka were traditional routes of their day, but almost all are now sport climbs – albeit being often very ‘sporty’ with some very big and dangerous (close to the ground) runout sections of climbing.
Drevenik
Over the weekend we decamped to another wood cabin, Ivo and Dasa’s family retreat in the woods. Another amazing location!
We had planned to have a big BBQ on the Saturday evening, but a massive storm complete with deafening claps of thunder, lightning, and a BBQ extinguishing downpour left that plan soaked through. We retreated indoors and cooked our food more conventionally.
Nearby is the gobsmacking Spis Castle. Unluckily for us much of the castle was closed for conservation works, so we didn’t pay the €10 entry to look around.
But the parking for the castle is also the starting point for the approach to the Drevenik climbing area. Climbing here was on mildly metamorphosed limestone – that is, not quite marble! So it had some of the features of limestone (i.e. steep, positive holds, etc.) but some less welcome features of marble too (i.e. a lack of friction). Laetitia and I thought it was quite tough!
As we left the Drevenik area we called in to Levoca to see the famous Basilica of St James…
Tatra
A major objective for me was to try and climb in the Tatra Mountains. It was the main reason for bringing a full rack of climbing protection and twin 60m half-ropes with us to Slovakia. So we planned a day-trip in what looked like a perfect weather window for an alpine style big (ish) mountain climbing. We aimed for one of the routes on the south west face of Lomnicke Stit. The routes on this face are around eight pitch long traditionally protected climbs.
Lomnicke Stit has the great advantage of offering an approach that makes use of the mountain’s ski lifts. Much more expensive than walking in, but way easier!
When we set off the weather was indeed perfect…
However, as we reached the end of the ski lifts and started walking towards the Lomnicke Sedlo (col) we quickly felt the wind building from a light breeze to a strong and cold gale. Then we saw the wall of cloud coming our way…
The climbing started above the cloud base. With poor visibility, everything getting damp from the heavy clouds, and our hands getting cold in the dampness and strong wind, we adjusted our plans… I think Ed would have carried on with plan-A and tried to climb, but he was out voted by Jana, Laetitia, and I. So we opted to do a kind of scramble non-via-ferrata route around and over the mountain as a consolation. Of course Ed was right, the weather did clear and we could likely have forced our way up a climb. However, by the time it did – when we were well in to our descent back to the lift station – it is worth considering that we would also have been quite a bit later and almost certainly would have missed the last lift. Leaving us with a paid-for but useless lift ticket, and a very long walk back to the car in the dark. 🙁
Climbing plans cancelled, the non-via-ferrata and scramble to the Lomnicke Stit summit was a really good day out. We bagged a proper Tatra summit, and even if I didn’t quite get to step over the Slovakia/Poland border my mobile phone did connect to the Polish cellular network. Which welcomed me to Poland with a SMS message. 😉
Mountain Biking
Before we travelled out to Slovakia we had spent a couple of days introducing Ed to techie mountain biking. As a result Ed was super keen to share some of the trails around his home. But we didn’t have much in the way of bikes to play with…
- A borrowed basic Decathlon hardtail with really poor tyres, insufficient gears, and narrow handlebars – far too narrow to properly control the 29″ wheels on any technical off-road terrain.
- An approximately 25 year old borrowed Specialized full-suspension bike with 26″ wheels and other ancient MTB technology.
- A bang up to date, but also borrowed, full-suspension Scott bike.
As Ed had become quite taken with technical mountain biking after our trips out in the Lakes he wanted to use the Scott bike to see if it might be the kind of bike he might buy. That left the crappy Decathlon for Laetitia, as it seemed to fit her best despite being an extra-large sized frame! Which says something about just how awful the Specialized I was left with was. 😉
Ho hum. As I say, essentially you can ride any bike anywhere…
Mushrooming
In my experience parasol mushrooms are a rarity in the UK, but it seems that in Slovakia they are common all over the open meadows!
Jana & Ed’s dogs Bobik and Zofa accompanied us on our mushrooming excursion. [Prana the cat is not pictured, sorry. She was wiser and stayed home prowling around the house. 😉 ]
Banska Bystrica
We made two more trips to Kalamarka, visiting the upper and lower rocks, in the following days. But our third distinct climbing venue was the Jelenec sector of Banska Bystrica, a limestone sport climbing crag.
We were accompanied by Hana, this being Hana’s local crag. She and her husband Kubo helped produce the guidebook to this area. So again we were climbing with another local legend… 🙂
Good-bye, until next time…
Our flight home to the UK was fast approaching. The flight was at 11.30am from Bratislava. So we planned to travel the evening before to take the sting out of making an early start, and have a quick look around the capital city…
Jana & Ed had it planned to perfection. They would come with us, show us the beautiful town of Banska Stiavnica (where we could have a swim) and introduce us to Iveta who would let us stay in her Bratislava apartment for the night before catching our plane home. Amazing. 😀
