Visiting Bela, the village nearest to our vineyard, is one of our favourite trips in the neighborhood, because there is everything one needs for a nice daytrip. You can find a world famous castle here, where you can spend a whole day picnicking, petting animals, walking, spending hours on the playground or in café, tasting world-famous wines and gourmet food, or just admiring the hotel. However, Chateau Béla is not the only attraction here, but rather just a very elegant gateway to a spider's web of cycling and hiking trails worth taking.
It was a beautiful day, and there was nothing to stop me from getting on my bike and setting off on one of these rides. My first stop from Muzla vineyards, after having climbed up to the hill of Bela, was right at the Castle. I arrived here hungry for breakfast, but the café would have been closed for a long time (it's worth checking the opening hours beforehand, isn't it...), and I couldn't wait.
I love coming here, not only is the service always immaculate, even though I visually never really belong in its milieu - sweaty (that damn hill always gets me...), in biking suit, hair messy from helmet, but also the food and drink are delicious and I can spend my time in a five-star environment at a reasonable price.
A bit disappointed, I drove on, but the local shop Jednota always saves the situation. I bought some breakfast there, cycled a bit through the tidy, flowery streets of Bela, then left the village for Mariin Dvor. Two fish ponds waited for me here, where I found a nice terrace and, with the owner's permission, had breakfast, admiring the scenery.
Here I checked the map app, because the road gets really complicated at this point, but if I did not get lost, no one will 🙂 I chose the asphalt road north towards Luba. Being only a hobby-cyclist, I can only push the bike up the hill, and my slowness is helped by the fact that I stop every few metres to take dubious quality phone photos, naively thinking I can capture the beautiful moment...
The asphalt road leads to Sarkan, and when I saw that the turn-off to Luba was going to be a dirt road, I hesitated for a moment whether I should go on to Sarkan, but in the end I found the dirt road was relatively well tamped by heavy agricultural machinery, so it was easy to ride on. I mean, if the road wasn't going uphill, when I had to walk. (Or downhill for a while, because the road was so steep!) Needless to say, the beautiful scenery, the forests, fields, endless vineyards, were worth every step and every effort! From here, at the top of the hill, at the end of the pretty woodland, the landscape opened up to reveal another plain, and from here you could see the roofs of the houses of Luba.
Now Luba is a 10-pointer village for me, I like it very much, it's a quiet and tidy, winding little village. On Luba´s main street, I let the bicycle roll down the road towards north, and I laughed at myself, because I knew that I would have to pay for this fantastic feeling of born-to-be-wild freedom on the way back up.
I reached the crossroads, from where, if I had had more time (and strength 🙂 ), I might have continued left towards Sarkan or right towards Kamenin, and from there to the end of the world, but there was a lot of work waiting for me in the vineyard, and I still had a long way to go, so I turned back towards Luba and Bela, from where I took the EuroVelo6 back to BarBar.
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