Happy Birthday Roy!!!

We had the usual hiking crowd descend on us for Roy's Birthday weekend. There were 31 of us on the Saturday hike, although Roy did not join us. Still, he helped with making the fire for the couldron gulyas, which was delicious. He enjoyed his cake, which looked very sickly, but it turned out to be made with cottage cheese and it was very yummy. He also contributed to the meal by making two trays of crumble and some baked apples. We had a good weekend all round, especially that the weather was unseasonably warm, in spite of the Met Office promising us a 5-6 degrees drop in temperatures.

The piccies are: the couldron over the fire; Andor and Lajos carrying it into the cellar to keep it safe from enquiring wildlife (including Böbe the dog) overnight; Andor trying to work out why his GPS is showing the wrong way, (dying battery!!!); a nice old chateau in one of the villages we hiked through, now a school; some of the crowd after we managed to find the spring in the woods.

There is quite an interesting story over this: in the old days these springs were properly looked after by the foresters or water bailiffs, so they were kept clean and free flowing. In the last 20 years (along with lots of other nice things) these were allowed to fall into disuse and now there is just mud there and the whole area is overgrown and neglected. Shame, because the forest around it looked glorious. We also lost a few of our group who insisted that it was too hard to carry on in the forest and returned to the cars on the path. Shame!! It was their loss.