Some more Callum piccies

Cute, innit?

Callum's latest hits

Meaghan's latest pictures of Callum appeared on Facebook. He seems to very much love his paddling pool, a present from his Canadian granma.
Enjoy!!

Visit to Zsambek

No orienteering this Sunday and all my friends are doing something else, so we decided to go out for a little drive. Where we went was prompted by a book I bought the other day about village churches. As I was reading it Roy said, why don't we visit one of them, but I said that they were all a long way away. Until I got to the very last one (they were in alphabetical order) which was only about an hour away. So today we went to see it. It was built in the early years of the 13th century. It was a monastery church, later a village church, damaged by all kinds of invaders from Tartars to Turks. Burnt down more than once, finally abandoned and then further damaged by earthquake. For a couple of centuries its stone was robbed and used for building houses in the neighbouring villages until it was saved from complete ruin by a benedictine monk/teacher, who saw its beauty and suggested that what is left is restored and safeguarded for future generations. It was even damaged in the Second World War by cannon and small arms fire.

There is very little left of the monastery buildings, but the church itself, even in its ruinous state is majestic. It was lovely, peaceful and very photogenic. We drove back a different way across the hills and enjoyed every minute of it.

Roses

The recent winter has done considerable damage to my roses and most of them had to be cut back severely due to frost damage. The South facing side has recovered quite well, but the North facing less so. However, as you can see there are still a few really nice blooms on now.

Stephen and Lucy in Oz

I have just found this picture on Facebook, proving that happiness is good for you. It is so utterly delightful to see Stephen and Lucy this happy. This was taken in Australia, but I gather they have since decamped to Singapore. I hope they are really having a good time and will get home happy and relaxed.

Pete's second week

After the weather has improved in Ber and we had a few outings and a hike we returned to BP via the Matra. The picture with the nice long view behind the tall trees was taken looking North towards Slovakia en route to BP.

Pete has become quite independent by the second week, so while Roy went with him to Szentendre on the HEV, all other trips he did on his own. His love of art, architecture and all things in museums came into its own. He discovered one which I will have to go and see one day myself. It is called the Bedo House and I have been an admirer of its beautiful Art Nouveau exterior for years. It is opposite my old bank branch where I watched for years the process of its renovation. The gallery and exhibition are on the ground floor, but you can visit the basement and the first floor for some more furniture, furnishings, pictures etc.

In the meantime the planned boat trip had to be cancelled because of the floods that stopped all boats sailing this week. Roy found some pictures on the Internet about the floods but they turned out to be last year's, so this is an annual event. Except, last year they happened at the end of June, this year all this monsoon rain we had brought them forward.

As you can see Pete revisited Heroes' Square, this time in the daytime, and took some lovely piccies of the 9th century Hungarian chieftains at the bottom of the column. He was also much fascinated by the mosaics of the other museum opposite the Fine Arts one, which sparkled in the sunshine. The big church in the picture is that of the St. Stephen's Basilica which is now looking spectacular after its multi-million forint facelift.

I hope Pete has a good trip home. I have just looked on the Internet and his plane left Gatwick nearly half an hour late en routws to BP, but that means it will be bang on time as it never needs the scheduled 2 and half hours in my experience. In fact Ferihegy has just put it up as expected 2 minutes late, so that should be OK.

Hike to the Andesite columns

The weather being really nice again Pete and I took a trip up the Andesite columns today. It was really high humidity due to the heavy rain earlier in the week. After some trudging on a very slippery path we emerged by the side of the famous Ber Andesite columns, which look like a big wave. After climbing to the top of them we had the 200 degree panoramic views, which were very impressive. This time, the novelty for me was that the vicinity of the rocks included a carpet of wild flowers, including iris, pansy and bluebells. In the final picture Pete is seen pointing at the twin peaks of the hill of Szanda on the right and the disused quarry on the left. These lovely mountains are affectionately called The tits in our family.

A day in Hollókõ

After the current period of monsoon, which imprisoned us for days on end, today has dawned with some sunshine, so we braved the elements and attempted an outing. Pete has been with us since Monday and we were trying to show him a good time, which the weather kept sabotaging. However, as you can see today was most successful and we all had a good time.

We left home just after 10am and drove to

Hollókõ via Kozárd where there is a lovely restaurant. Unfortunately it wasn't open yet, so we took pot luck on the way back.

Hollókõ is a World Heritage site with lovely, olde worlde peasant long houses, a lovely wooden church, lots of history, pottery and other artefacts.

We visited the 13th century castle first, which has been a bit over restored for my liking. Still, it was quite photogenic and the view from its ramparts was to die for.

Then we walked, slid and tiptoed down to the village where we had some soup. The boys had the local delicacy:

Palóc soup, which consisted of pork, white beans and sour cream with tarragon. Yummie, yummie!!!

After some further photo opportunities we walked back to the car and then drove to Kozárd for the rest of our lunch. Kozárd is a an interesting little village which some years back decided to specialise in apples, cherries, pears, apricots etc. They now have a thriving community with a lovely village hall, nice restaurant, 6 places where you can stay and a friendly demeanour. Shame we don't go that way too often, but every time we do, we don't regret it.

The sun is still shining, which is amazing, let us hope that the grass and the ground with dry a bit and Bandi will be able to mow the garden soon!!