#8: [25-Dec-16]

#7: [11-Aug-15]

#6: [11-May-15]

#4: [15-Jul-09]

#3: [25-May-08]

#2: [19-Aug-02]

#1: [21-Jun-01]

02-Sep-2011 -- Again I had a couple of days off and I wondered what to do. Not willing to sit at home at this beautiful weather I wanted to go out in nature and visit some Confluence Points. Last year I wanted to visit the points east of my home Confluence Point 49°N 012°E, but due to unfavourable weather and flooding I decided to go to the west and visit the French points. Thus it was a good opportunity to visit the eastern points now. My goal was to go as far as 22°E, which is close to the Slovakian border to the Ukraine and visit all my unvisited points until 49°N 015°E.

After my review of the reports of these points it turned out that 49°N 020°E would be the most challenging point, which requires at least a couple of hours hiking. I planned and re-planned a lot in order to squeeze all visits into four days. Finally I decided to drive on Austrian and Slovakian motorways until Liptovský Mikuláš, spend the night in a hotel and attack 49°N 020°E next morning.

I had an early start, made good progress through Austria and saw on my car navigation that 48°N 017°E is only 4 kilometres away. But my focus were the 49ers and thus I continued my journey without this little tempting detour.

It turned out that I made good progress on newly built Slovakian motorways and would reach my destination Liptovský Mikuláš quite early. Thus I decided to insert a visit to 49°N 019°E. The route led me through the scenic Váh valley until I left my original route at Martin and drove to Belá-Dulice. The road changed into an unpaved forest road, which I followed. Passed a house close to a reservoir, where some people enjoyed the sunny evening. In hindsight this would be the best place to park the car. Instead I drove a bit further, down to the muddy banks of a creek and parked there, 470 metres distance to the point.

I changed my shoes, grabbed my gear and managed to ford the creek without getting wet shoes and also avoided the muddy areas at its banks. An overgrown way leads right towards the point. It was quite difficult to get a good GPS reception and to minimise the distance to the point, which was on the steep slope of the adjacent hill. I finally managed to come as close as 40 metres to the Confluence Point and was not in the mood to climb on the slope and zero my GPS receiver out.

With my first successfully reached Confluence Point on this trip I returned satisfied to my car!

I drove back to the town of Martin, continued the planned route and reached my hotel in Liptovský Mikuláš about one hour later due to the unplanned Confluence Point visit. During a good night sleep I dreamed of tomorrows demanding Confluence Point: 49°N 020°E.