Time to move on but first we took a last walk into Esztergom to change our Hungarian Forints into Slovak Koruna (crowns). This meant a late start but we only had a short trip to our next destination. We drove over the Maria Valeria Bridge without any sign of border controls, indeed one of those little tourist trains was taking a full load through what used to be the customs on the Slovak side, heading for Hungary.
The very friendly Austrian couple that we had met in Romania recommended a number of places in Slovakia that they had enjoyed. We headed for the first of these – Banska Stiavnica. You know how it is, you have every intention of doing one thing and end up doing something totally different. This can often be put down to senility (as is often the case with me at home) but this time it was different. We drove into Banska Stiavnica , past the first part of the town is modern and uninteresting, looking for somewhere near the old town to park the van. By the time that we discovered where the old town was, we were in it and there was nowhere to park. We then found ourselves going up a steep hill out of the town with no options for turning around. Further up the hill, well out of the town, we came across a mining museum and ended up visiting the gold, silver, lead and copper mine. It was fascinating, even though the underground guided tour (all 2 hours of it) was only in Slovak. The strangely named 'Open Air Mining Museum' is in part of the very important Banska Stiavnica mineral deposits. The area once had a large number of volcanoes and heavily mineralised water was forced under great pressure from very deep under ground and crystals of different minerals were deposited at different levels. Gold and silver deposits were found close to the surface with lead below and copper at the lowest level. Mining started with small surface pits and, as these deposits were exhausted, deeper shafts were dug accompanied by sophisticated drainage tunnels under the shafts. It was one of the most important mining areas in Europe and lead the technology in many areas, including the drainage, and it was here in 1627 that they first used explosive (black gunpowder) underground, a technique subsequently adopted throughout the world. In our hard hats and waterproof coats, with lamp in hand, we walked a long way through a series of both recent and old hand-hewn tunnels, past exhibits showing mining techniques from all ages.
We drove on to strangely named Recent Sol campsite at Kovacova, just north of Zwolen. The site was quite busy although there was plenty of space for us. We discovered that we were in another spa resort with three spa pools. The waters are apparently good for “motion inconveniences and neurological diseases” but given that we fortunately do not have any problems in that area, we decided not to bathe.
Photos: There were all ages visiting the mine – these are minor miners!; This gallery was hewn by hand, hence it is very narrow.
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