Saturday was extremely busy with doing a lot of preserving. First of all we stoned about 14lb of Morello cherries. That took about 2 hours. Then we cooked it into jam which filled 9 1 litre bottles. We then put it into what in these parts is called the “dunst”. This presumably German word means putting the bottles into a box wrapped in a duvet to make them cool down slowly, thus creating a vacuum around the lid and helping it set. When we left on Sunday afternoon they were still warm. The next job was to start creating a delicacy I have dreamt of having for years. This involved preserving fruit in strong alcohol. We used palinka and the first big bottle had Morellos, peaches and cherries in it. We poured half a litre of palinka on top, closed it down and put it away in the cool and dark. The next, even bigger bottle just had cherries in it, the rest is going to be filled in later on in the summer when the other fruits: apricots, more peaches, pears etc. come into harvest.
Sunday we watched the European Grand Prix from Valencia which was dead boring. A monotonous procession most of the time with very little excitement. We left for town around 4pm, went via a guy who finally sold us a left hand thread screw for the strimmer (huirraaahhhhh!!!!) and just arrived in time to dish out some Morellos to our neighbours and have Jutka over for a chat and some more Morellos. She brought my bronze medal from the Middle Distance Champs and the T-shirt, which is quite nice.
On Monday morning the car went into the garage for its yearly service: about £240 later we were home again. Philip arrived on Monday night and we left for WMOC on Wednesday. Just outside town we stopped at the Statue Park where Philip enjoyed his photo opportunities with the heros of the past. That particular statue stood at the foot of the big female figure holding up the palm frond on Gellert Hill and is one of my favourites. Yesterday and today we have been busy in and around Pecs. Yesterday we went into Pecs, registered and went for a walk in town. As the temperature hovered between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius with 80%+ humidity I was soon flagging, but Philip managed to suss out the quirks of the town for Saturday's sprint qualifier. The pictures are: Philip with the Russian soldier, Philip in the crypt of the Cathedral, the altar of the Cathedral and the County Council building in the central square.
The last picture was taken today when we went to suss out the sinkholes on one of the training areas, which proved to be very useful. Philip has only ever seen sinkholes in Croatia which are very different. The one in the picture is a double dolina, see if you can work out where they are? He had a good time working out how they were represented on the map and I had a useful reminder as I have not run in the Mecsek for 2 years.
Currently the boys are on a little walk into the village and I stayed in the cottage to do this blog. The only bad news of this week so far is that my Flip video camera has died and as Flip as a company does not exist any more, there is not much hope I can either have it repaired or even that I could buy another one. :-(
Tomorrow WMOC starts with the sprint qualifier. I'll post when I get a minute sometime between races.
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