Recently our friend group set out on the „Man on the Dam„ tour, which is the Mindszent – Szeged route along the embankment, about ~50 km. We decided to do it by bike, since walking 50 km would have been quite a lot (I’ve done it before, it really is a lot) without any preparation.

 

We took the 17:21 train from Szeged, which consisted of three carriages. Currently MÁV has a promotion where you can transport bikes for free on weekends. This was a bit problematic, since the three carriages could barely fit 8 bikes. Those who arrived after us (another group) couldn’t board the train because their bikes wouldn’t fit. (you could see on the poor conductor lady that she was about to cry from frustration)

Anyway, we arrived at Hódmezővásárhely’s népkert station, where we transferred to the train heading to Szentes, and got off at Mindszent. There’s a really nice restaurant at the Mindszent beach, we popped in for a beer, then about an hour later we set off on the dam (already in the dark).

We basically didn’t want to use flashlights, since we wanted our eyes to adjust to the darkness. We managed this until about Mártély, since the sky was cloudy and the moon provided no light. After a short break at Mártély we continued.

Along the way we kept passing hikers, greeting them and wishing each other luck. (nice to see that people can still behave normally toward each other 🙂

After the Hódmezővásárhely road (which comes from Vásárhely up to the embankment), we stopped a few km further to rest and spent about half an hour there. We continued, and from this point the embankment was paved, so we could move faster. We got to the Algyő bridge pretty quickly, where we pushed our bikes across, then continued cycling on the other side of the Tisza. Here we were getting a bit nervous, since we could see lightning fairly often from the Szeged direction, and the wind was starting to pick up. We stopped once or twice to rest, and ran into cyclists and hikers heading toward Mindszent. (poor things, I’m almost certain the storm caught them on the way) We nicely made it to Tápé around midnight, where we stopped in at the bowling pub, then went on to the dock to grab some food (not the nightclub). By this point it was pretty obvious the sky was about to break open, I told the others I didn’t think this was a good idea, but hunger won, so we ate. When we started heading home, after a few hundred meters the downpour caught us — and so heavily that we were soaked to the bone in half a minute.

Anyway, we survived, made it home, and today everyone can massage their thighs 🙂

I recommend the tour to everyone, by bike it’s quite manageable, you can do it in 3 hours at a relatively comfortable pace (on the dirt road you can’t go as fast as on the paved sections), if you don’t stop too often.

The part to watch out for is the Algyő bridge, since you can only push your bike across on the main road, and there’s only a sidewalk from the middle of the bridge. (fortunately around 11 PM the traffic isn’t that heavy, and we were well lit up.