After taking a bunch of pictures at the ossuary we returned to the road 38, to finally reach our destination, the village called Provodín, and the Riders' pub Dřevenka in it. We took one more stop to get food, and while eating we saw a pack of bikers rolling along the road, some of them with Scarvers. We caught up at a gas station, and rode with them - until I took a different turn. I followed my own thinking, instincts, anything, even though I didn't have any knowledge about the place
Did I say that I'm stubborn?
Well, the direction I chose was right too. The only problem was getting out of the middle of Mladá Boleslav
Really, I used the bypass on the way home
But after leaving the town the road and the scenery got nicer again, forests, hills crowned with ruins, to rest our tired eyes. And the end of the road, the pub and the assembled bikers and their horses. We found Bure, gave him the Tokaji wine we brought (the bottles didn't break on the way here
), set up our tent, and went to talk and eat and drink with the others.
The pub, Dřevenka, is a very nice place anyway - the staff and the prices were really friendly, the food and the beer tasty (we drank Svyjani and Bernard), they didn't mind that the participants brought some cakes and drink too (like the plum spirits they offered to us). They didn't know much English, but it was enough to order simple things, and we had a great guide, Bure, to help us with the specialties
In the morning everyone was resting... we had a walk around (we were late from the grocery store too
), taking pictures of Provodín, the bikes, and so on...
Soon the dead were up too, and went to the nearby lake to treat their hangover. The lake in the woods looked cute, and some were crazy enough to really swim in it, though the water felt freezing - of course it wasn't, but it wasn't exactly warm either
For me it was enough to walk in knee deep...
Later at the pub we took the mandatory Scarver group pictures, and... well, other photos too (the life of the pub didn't stop just because of the Scarver meeting).
That box is for a dog:
After the group shots came the ride in the nearby hills, small villages and roads (there were some so bad ones I began to feel at home
), fields and forests... unfortunately I couldn't concentrate on the landscape enough, group rides always need a lot of attention (especially if you want to drive efficiently while keeping the formation).
But we could at Sloup! There's a sandstone rock, with a castle carved in and built on the top of it, with great view:
It seems that someone else learned it too, earlier in the history:
These sandstone rocks host another riders' pub too: I don't know the original purpose of this grotto, but it is large enough to let you drive into the pub. If you want to know how it feels to ride your bike in a cave - here you can try.
On the way there was a little accident involving some gravel and Ciliegia (shiNIN's Hyosung GV250) and now we had a footrest with a broken screw to fix. The resourceful Czech guys found a quick fix for the problem: they patched the part with a piece of wood, carved with a swiss army knife
Then I checked the suspicious clutch cable, and... broke it while debugging. This was the point they learned that the word 'kurva' is part of Hungarian language too
But these guys helped with the cable too, and Ciliegia was ready for the road again.
Of course we just had to drink after this experience. Just gingerly, to be sober early in the morning, when we planned to leave. We wanted to get home in one day, so we took a lot of main roads and motorways, except for some picture hunting at the Pavlov area, some cute villages in Hungary, and the twisty road 82 at Csesznek, very close to where we live.
Stats:
The distances were somewhere close to 400km on the first day, near 300 on the second, and around 600 on the way home. The Saturday local ride must have been like 80. No more exact numbers here, sorry...
The tanks (Teresa/BMW F650CS vs Ciliegia/Hyosung GV250):
2.99 vs 2.69l/100km (78.7 vs 87.4 US mpg): Different route, different weather, I got rain and much strong wind riding Teresa before this trip.
2.86 vs 2.74l/100km (82.2 vs 85.8 US mpg): Same route, from South Moravia to the meet and the Saturday ride.
2.76 vs 2.68l/100km (85.2 vs 87.8 US mpg): Crossing the Czech Republic on the way home, with tail wind.
2.66 vs 2.64l/100km (88.4 vs 89.1 US mpg): Crossing Slovakia and the Northwest of Hungary, and another trip before we had to fuel up the bikes.
So my little Scarver (in good hands) is still almost as efficient as a modified (a bit taller gears) 250
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