Middle-aged flash packers

In the night, someone removed my legs and replaced them with lead ones. This did not help my progress one bit today as, for the early part of today’s hike, it felt as though a very heavy child was sat on my back.

I also discovered that I had not been told the complete truth about the difficulty level of this walk. Steve had led me to believe this “valley” walk was going to be easier than yesterday’s. After an hour of scrambling and lumbering up steep inclines,I kept exclaiming how I couldn’t understand how this hike seemed just as hard as Rysy. Eventually Steve broke down and said it was the same level of difficulty but I wouldn’t have come if he’d told me that. No comment.

For those of you who like the detail, we made our way along the Mlynicka valley then climbed up to and over the Bystre Sedlo Pass and then along the Furkotska Valley. It was actually a fantastic hike. Absolutely no good for anyone with a fear of heights though. Lots of chains to hang on to and haul yourself up and down sheer rock faces. These Slovakians are mental!

While we’re on that subject, I have never seen such tall men. Steve is 6ft 1 and these guys tower over him. God knows what I look like next to them.

 Haven’t really been able to suss out the Slovakian stereotype yet. They seem quite sombre and wear very strange checked walking trousers with patches on them. They seem understated – the walks we’ve done are categorised as moderate. For crying out loud, what’s a hard one like?!

The tail end of our walk seemed to go on and on. Steve got it into his head he wanted a hot chocolate at the mountain hut near the chairlift. This involved another steep ascent, and guess what? They’d run out! And so had the other one we walked to!

By the time we started our descent, our feet felt as though we’d been walking over hot coals. We literally hobbled back and made things even harder by taking the longest route possible back into town. So near, yet so far.

Thankfully no walking tomorrow as we are driving to Bratislava. My legs are looking forward to the rest.