Some more cleaning, the tin man and a bit of an orienteering disaster

The last week or so was busy again as usual. The tin man turned up on Monday and mended the gutters. He said he did turn up on Thursday but we didn't let him in. He could not have been ringing the bell too loudly, because we were in and obviously didn't hear him. Juci came again on Wednesday and did the kitchen, so the Farmhouse is now done. I will have her back to do the Bunkhouse and the Kottage some time, but not for a while. In the meantime a friend of my nephew's rang that he wants to rent the Bunkhouse for a weekend in May, so we will probably have Juci over just before then. This weekend we went to an orienteering three day event and decided to camp. The weather was really good and Roy really enjoyed his time. We got close to a couple we had known for a while, but it was the first time we spent some time with them chatting, drinking and generally socialising. I even went to do some geocaching with them one afternoon, which was also fun. We visited some nearby villages and gathered three more caches while sight seeing nice churches and countryside.

As for the orienteering, well that was another story. I did say that the weather was nice, but the truth is it was far too hot for running. I usually have problem coping with sudden heat in spring anyway, but this weekend it topped out at 30C, which was a bit too much. However, I didn't quite realise on the first day that it wasn't just the heat, it was also an allergy which I must have recently developed to a tree pollen which was really thick in the air at the place we camped and which made me have difficulties breathing. You can see from the Garmin track how I was not only slow but my brain had gone on strike as well. The second day also had quite a few detours in it, but I at least could run more. Now I know that the reason for that was a much earlier start time and strong wind which blew away the pollen. Finally the third day was pretty horrific as well, I felt queezy as well as dizzy even before I started. The final confirmation of my above diagnosis about the pollen was that as soon as I got into the car today to go home, I felt instantly better. Hopefully, this allergy will be gone as soon as this type of tree finished flowering, but I am fairly sure that the trigger was the high concentration of it, at times so thick that it looked like snow.

When we got home we saw a really funny scene: some council workers came to clean the pavements with high powered waterjets. They had so much fun that they started a duel with the jets, making each other and some passers by wet in the process. Finally, seeing that we were cleaning the bonnet of bird poo they offered to hose down the car. That was very useful, although I hope they didn't manage to get the newly sprayed paint off. The day finished with one bit of bad news: Roy's laptop went bust, so he is now anxiously queueing for mine. :-(

The great spring clean

There were so many things to do this last week I haven't realised that my last post was a full week ago. After last weekend's orienteering we decided to come down to the village on Monday to get on with the many things planned. It was quite lucky that we did, on account of the lodgers still being in residence. We could settle all matters with them and lock the Bunkhouse up safely ourselves. Attila, our gardener, has cut the grass so nicely that the garden looked like a park. Juci, our new cleaner, came on Tuesday to start on cleaning all three buildings after what seemed an interminable time. After my illness two years ago we haven't managed to catch ourselves up and all the rooms needed a thorough going over. She started upstairs and in 8 and half hours she just managed to get the three rooms upstairs done, there was so much to do. All curtains came off to be washed, all carpets were soundly beaten and then vacuumed, floor scrubbed, furniture polished and all cobwebs thoroughly eradicated. There were corners where a veritable forest of them hung in artistic dangles, worthy to be photographed. In the morning Roy took the car to the panel beaters to mend both the damage done the other day by somebody hitting the front of the car and the dents from some road debris caused way back at the beginning of the winter. Still on Tuesday I rang the tinman to come sometime in the week to mend the rainwater gutter as promised. He said he would come on Wednesday, which he didn't. It is now Saturday, but no sight of him whatsoever, so I will have to chase him up. On Wednesday I washed all the curtains and did some reading and worked on the computer. Thursday was spent in much the same way, but Friday was very different.

I got up at 5am to catch the 5.40am bus into town. I went to see the Ferenczy retrospective exhibition with two friends at the National Gallery. It was really good and I felt that I got to know the artist a lot better. Afterwards I had lunch and a good chinwag with one of my friends, then caught the bus to the panel beaters, paid him for the work, picked the car up and drove home. That was a long, but fruitful day.

And that takes us to Saturday, when Juci came again, this time to attack the ground floor. Due to upwards 200 pieces of pottery, china, glass and other nick nacks we possess on a variety of shelves she only managed to do two rooms, so the kitchen was left to another day. Roy and I washed, dried and replaced all the displayed stuff ourselves, while Juci carried on cleaning. I do hope that after this thorough going over, when she starts coming once or twice a month, she will finish quicker, or this will be an expensive exercise.

While she was still cleaning I had a call from my favourite little monster from across the seas and he was in fine form today. Very happy, chatty and friendly. Said hallo and we actually had real conversation together. He was showing off at times, but otherwise acted entirely normal and talkative. I also managed to take some amazing snapshots, some of which you can see here. I must go to bed now before I fall asleep by the computer. Night, night!!

New lodger, further mill developments, panel beaters, geocaching, concert, O and some more geocaching

We planned to come in to BP on Wednesday, but had to wait for the tinman to come and assess the extent of the work on our rainwater pipes. He finally came on Wednesday, so we were going to come in on Thursday. At this point it turned out that Jutka couldn't do Friday for the Gallery, so we put our departure off by another day. Which was just as well, because I had a very late notice of a need for the Bunkhouse being open to receive some lodgers from the mill renovating team. Peter arrived on Thursday and as far as we know is still there.

The mill works have shown a fair number of cockups, but they are so used to them that they fix them without turning a hair. The mill mechanism is apparently going to be commissioned on Sunday with radio and television in attendance, so they are working to a deadline. I went up and had a look, took copious new pictures and was feeling sorry for missing the big event on Sunday.

We left on Friday midday and went to see our favourite panel beater. We have not seen him for about 4 or 5 years, but now we need him due to an old man hitting the front of the car the previous week and another injury caused by a piece of brick thrown up by a lorry onto the bonnet a couple of months or so ago. He was so pleased to see us that we didn't get away for an hour. We agreed the price for the works - about £200 - half of which should come from the old man himself. This we followed by a quick geocaching visit to a nearby town, but could not find any of the details or the cache itself, so we gave up. The box should have been between the wheels of this decaying, large steam engine and while it was frustrating not finding the box, we did indeed admire the old rotting hulk. :-( We also managed to meet up with the old guy and get £100 out of him. En route to BP we found a lovely restaurant and had a blowout. We were very hungry and the cooking was great.

In the evening I went to a fantastic concert of Brahms and Richard Strauss, which was not only brilliant with Isabelle Faust playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, but the fact that I was sitting in the second row in a £40 seat for £3, made it even better. This orchestra - quite wisely - flogs its unsold tickets for a silly price to make sure that the auditorium is full. Long may this habit of theirs last!!

And today we went orienteering and geocaching about a 40 minute drive from the flat, which was great. I still can't run well, but the navigating was OK until the end. There is this steep, rocky, overgrown hillside just above the Finish field which I can't manage to find any controls on. The last time I ran here I wasted about 10 minutes looking for one, thankfully today's booboo took only about 2-3 minutes, but it was annoying all the same. I stand 3rd overnight, we'll see how it goes tomorrow!!

After the O we went to pick up two caches and this time it went OK. Both had an ecclesiastical theme, the first being based on some ancient cictercian monastery ruins, the second on an enormous cross and a chapel half way up a mountain. The view from the latter was grandiose and will need to be revisited on a nicer, sunnier day in the future.`

PS: Had a good run on Sunday. Not without mistakes, but good all the same. Kept my third position, got a bronze medal and a nice T-shirt. Picked up another cache by yet another old monastery ruin and got home to watch the Grand Prix. Now I am off to a concert.

Nograd Grand Prix and geocaching

This Easter we went orienteering in the next range of mountains where the terrain is steep, stony but great. There were 4 events of which I entered 2. I gave a miss to the night event and the relay. You can see that on both days I forgot to start my Garmin at the start, but at least I remembered to press the start button at control no. 1. Unfortunately we were not particularly numerous in W60, but I won it anyway, so I am proud owner of a gold medal and a cup.

On both days we went geocaching as well: on Saturday we did two town ones, on Sunday one at a stupa and another one at a well. Selected photographs of these locations are below.

New cache, blossom and the little monster

Busy, busy, busy!!! My second cache, the one that is a multi-point one in Ber and up to Viragos, has gone live early this morning. Here is the link to it:
http://www.geocaching.hu/caches.geo?id=3866
The story was frighteningly similar to what happened two days ago to the first one: kerticsorbi had beaten Pilis50 to it. This time I had a word with the first guy, as I directed him to my house for his first finder's present and we had a cup of tea and a chat. He seemed quite normal, even though we imagined him an absolute maniac finding the one at Ordaspuszta in the middle of the night. It turns out he's an accountant and he had a deadline for submitting some accounts which he didn't finish until 1am. At which point he decided that he might as well go for it instead of going to bed. Mad, I know, but this is geocaching, not exactly a sane pursuit! :-)

Spring has definitely arrived today, the air was warm, balmy and the blossom glorious in the garden.

After the happy cacher, owner of TWO red number 1's, departed I had a call from my favourite little overseas monster on Skype. We had a nice long chat, including Grandad this time as well and we all were in a very good mood. I have watched one brilliant example how to handle a foul tempered toddler who is given to getting his own way but not this time. He pinched his Dad's wallet and when Daddy (who is usually a soft touch for most things) sayd no, bloodcurdling screams resembling two jet engines followed. Daddy was adamant, but very calm and sweet, so eventually said little monster gave up and carried on playing peek-a-boo. The classic case of the battle of the wills, which you don't want to dominate your life, but occasionally you can't give way and he is bright enough to know when the 'no' is really meant seriously.

Our sojourn finished with a fashion show of hats, which really freaked me out in giggles. The black model belongs to Daddy, which was taken in revenge for not having his wallet, the second one is his own, which was bought in the sales for about $8 in readiness for next year. I have always said that the Canadian branch of my family are real life artists. They always buy good stuff, but never at full price. Or hardly ever, anyway.

Must go now to check if there were any further finds on my caches. This is such fun. You don't have to go anywhere, just watch from home and enjoy. By the way, I have already come up with the idea for my third cache, but I'm not letting on until I have done the research, but that'll be good too.

My first geocache!!!

Today my first geocache went live at exactly 11.41am Central European time. Assuming that this link here works (if not copy and paste it into your browser!) everybody can have a look at it.
http://www.geocaching.hu/caches.geo?id=3863

As I have placed the cache up in the hills about 5 miles from here last Wednesday with Roy and Andor and have been working steadily ever since on the web page, finally I submitted the page on Monday morning. Immediately the system told me that quite a few of my coded links were not working. Then started a slow and occasionally painful process of learning how to do it. Sometimes Andris (my nephew) helped, occasionally I re-read the stuff on the site and worked it out for myself. Finally, the moderators pitched in, sometimes really nicely, now and again not so nicely. I accepted practically every suggestion they made and now I am the proud owner of a cache. When I last checked (about 10 minutes ago) nobody has found it yet, but as it is a weekday that is not surprising. On the other hand Easter is coming, so hopefully there should be some keen buggers who will get out there and bag it. Apparently, there is quite a fierce competition amongst cachers for collecting as many first finds as you can. I wonder if the first one will be a walker, cyclist or (much more likely) a lazy sod who will drive within 500 metres of it. We'll see, said the blind man, but I will report back to you on its progress no doubt in the future.

In the meantime I started the second cache's web page, which was a lot easier than the first. Partly because I learnt a lot in the struggles to get the first one right, partly because the moderators have now realised that I am quite intelligent and that I would not argue the toss, but accept their suggestions. The second cache is just outside the village, so it was easy from that respect as well. I have already had 9 moderators accept it so that will go live soon too. There is a rule that from submission the moderators have 48 hours to yay or nay it, after which if it has 4 more yays than nays then the system itself makes it available for publication. The 48 hours are not up until tomorrow evening, so even though it is now totally accepted by the moderators we have to wait until then.

Doing these two caches was extremely time consuming, so I don't think I will do another one for a while. I think I will go back to just finding them, not placing them in the next few weeks. In fact, I fancy finding some in town soon, as I am not so experienced in how to do that. More of them are virtual there for obvious reasons, but traditionals are also available, so I'm told. I will have to wait for this, though, as we are here for another week or so, but after that I'll have a go.

Just to make sure that you have some pretty pictures to look at, like you always do in my posts, please find below a few interesting piccies (taken this morning) that will probably make the web page of the second cache, but you would have had a preview here:

Postscript:
It's Thursday now and my cache went live at 11.41 yesterday. I was watching it all day and there were no finds. I was told that the competition for finding new caches first was fierce and would have expected someone to find it by the time it got dark. Nobody did, so we went to bed hoping somebody will find it the following day, ie. today. You can imagine my amazement when in the early hours of the morning I found that some crazy headbanging cacher logged the first find and thus earned himself a red 1 by visiting it at 1.55am. He is very lucky that the loose and fierce dogs of the area did not tear his butt to pieces. Or perhaps they did, but he has not admitted it in his log. Talking of which, I am really disappointed in him, as in his log he did not write a single thing. No mention of what he thought of the cache or whether he found the present I have hidden nearby. I am sure he did, he is just a rude, ill mannered cacher, of which there are plenty in these parts.

Oh well. Today I carried on working on the next one which now has enough approvals from the moderators to go live any time I like. I could have already put it on the net, but I have decided, that just in case the same person would go and get this one in the middle of the night too, I'll publish it tomorrow morning. I hope someone much nicer finds this one first.

The other event of the day was the installation of the mill wheel and mechanism in the village which Roy and I visited and took copious photographs of, as you can see. I don't think the shaft was long enough, or if it was, then they built the wall on the outside a bit too far. Never mind, I'm sure they will solve the problem, but I enjoyed watching them struggle!!

Tomorrow is Good Friday and on Saturday we are going orienteering. On the way home we are planning to go food shopping at Tesco and that's it.