......Sunday morning rode to Zakopane....It was quite a tough slow road into the mountains....Helped make up our mind not to cross the Alps.....Despite the ride to Nordkapp, we've hardly encountered any steep hills on this trip......The first time I was here was nearly 20 years ago......Back then it was a really quiet sleepy ski resort with a handful of Russian traders doing their business on the market...I think I was last here four years ago but I'm shocked how the town has changed since my last visit.....I know it was getting commercial but it now has a Tesco, at least two McDonalds and sadly the centre now has the feel of Blackpool....There are now so many cars here......So Monday we escaped the hoards and headed deep into the National Park....

....The campsite in Zakopane was great.....The chef is Scottish and makes a great Schnitzel & chips & salad which has become my current staple diet washed down with beer.....On Monday night three Germans turned up, two on Russian sidecar outfits and a 150cc MZ.....the guy on the MZ loved the MT, had never seen one before and is now smitten!......They had arrived via Slovakia and suggested some good roads for us.....

.....So after some heavy nighttime rain, we headed West firstly for Slovakia....It threatened rain at first but turned very hot again as the day progressed.....We've not had much of sleep this last week and Ruth was getting very sleepy on the back of the bike......We stopped just short of the Czech border for Ruth to have a snooze.....Sadly her snooze was cut short by the village drunk who started giving her directions to the nearest hospital.....I meanwhile visited the motorcycle breakers there, run by a guy in a wheelchair, to see what spare parts were to be had.....He did have an Aprilia 350 crammed in amongst the XR's & the KLR's & the Teneres.....

....no guns, no ice creams!....

.....It felt a bit wrong just driving through Slovakia and not contributing to their economy but we were soon in the Czech Republic......We landed in Roznov mid afternoon and found an inexpensive hotel......Only 170 miles to our friends place in Czech......