The weather was fantastic, blue skies and a view. The High Tatras to the north, and some other bits to the south. On a day like this names are not important, I won’t bore you with the superlatives describing the view. If you do nothing else of this walk – do this bit.
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It was a short haul so we took our time and admired the view. Our guest was happy that it wasn’t as up as yesterday. There were lots and lots of people. From all over the world we spoke to an Australian with a Slovak wife who both lived in London (carrying a little dog each in a specially designed pouch – unfortunately we don’t have a picture. But despite, or maybe because of, the dogs they were nice people.)
The south side of Chopok was being destroyed by bulldozers – to make the skiing better I guess. It might look OK when it is finished. But who gives planning permission for such things. Unbelievable.
We sang “Nellie the Elephant” by the Toy Dolls with the dance (try YouTube – British Punk at its, let’s say, best) at the top of Chopok. It’s our current walking anthem, if you’ve watched the video you will see why it cheers us up. We didn’t all know all of the words – but we knew the tune. And what it meant to us: a lot of very strange looks from what we take to be very nice people.
(Source: John Nicholson)Dr. Suess famously said “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened”. To today is the last day on this section of the walk. Tomorrow Day 21 will actually take place next year. So we are having a rest day. It has taken us 144 hours of walking. A journey of 3:34 in a car. But we have had fun. We’ve seen some beautiful parts of Slovakia that we would never have seen any other way.
But no bears.
Distance walked: 12km (436km in total)
Meters climbed: 749m (17,182m in total)
Walking time: 4:49 (144:47 in total)
Start point: Ďurková chata
End point: Kamenná chata pod Chopkom
General comment:
Beautiful. Simply breathtaking.
One of the best ridge walks in Slovakia.
We have climbed 8.5 times the height of the mountain that we are standing on – Chopok 2,024m.
By John Nicholson
