The House at Poo(h) Corner

Lovers of Winnie the Pooh would know about the relevance of the title. Or would they? I am sorry to have to say that this particular corner was called this more due to the 'h'-less variety of the said word than with an 'h'. But let's start at the beginning! We went East last weekend to do some O. It was supposed to be three short sprint courses (one on Saturday afternoon and two on Sunday) in preparation for the Short Distance Championship in two weeks' time. The trouble was, however, that my courses are usually quite short anyway, so they are fairly difficult to shorten much further, so I ended up with three almost full length courses to be done within just over 24 hours. Saturday's event was near Recsk, the site of an infamous Stalinist labour camp. The forest was rough with a fair amount of climb and the temperature was in the high 30's Celsius. Imagine trying to run in that! I nearly died, I couldn't run at all and towards the end I could hardly walk, as it was uphill all the way. I enjoyed the course, it was very good, just could not cope with the heat. Needless to say I came 4th out 4, although another excuse might be that I was the only one over 60, with the other 3 considerably younger than myself.

Afterwards we motored to the town where Sunday's events were held, did some shopping and found our accommodation in the centre of the town. It was in a lovely old 18th century building which is used for high school students in term time. We had to share an 8 person dorm with 4 other orienteers, which would have been OK, but one of them kept shutting the door for reasons of either noise or light and both of us were just suffocating in the stuffy, hot and sticky room. With the door open there was a little breeze, but with it shut we were just wallowing in our own perspiration, which is not my idea of fun. In the evening we went and did some geocaching (again) and had dinner in Old Jack's Pub, which we knew from before. The following morning I managed to strain some muscles in my back, so it didn't look like a very happy weekend all round. And now back to the reference of The House at Poo(h) corner. The finish area was on a sportground with ZERO shade. Roy went on strike and found himself a nice shady corner a 100 yards outside the ground. Which would have been fine, except it turned out to be a much favoured dog toilet, with appropriate little deposits and the accompanying smell. Thankfully Roy's nose is non functional, but mine works just fine. I couldn't really join him after my run for longer than a few minutes, I'm afraid.

After this town run I wasn't feeling too good. We had some more caches to collect and had to do some food shopping too, so I accepted the sad truth with some resignation and gave up the third run. With my back hurting and the promised cold front nowhere near, I really didn't feel like doing any more running. The town of Eger is quite impressive, it has a Bishop and the corresponding Cathedral, it has a famous Castle and a few really beautiful churches. It also has thermal waters, which we didn't have time to visit this time, but got near to doing the gaocaching. The total for the weekend was 4 caches, with a real find of a beautiful Orthodox Catholic Church which is the biggest and most beautiful of its kind in the country.

The iconostasis, which is basically in the place of where the altar usually is in other churches was superb. Lots of hand painted icons set in wooden, hand carved frames, taking up the entire space between the floor, walls and the ceiling. The state of the church is not too good as they can't afford to renovate it at present, and what little money they do have is spent on restoring the icons, rather than the walls and the fabric of the church.

Just in case anybody is wondering what the minaret is doing amongst the pictures: it was one part of a multicache and its origins go back to the 16th century when the town fell to the Turks who then stayed for 150 years. One of the most favourite books I have ever read was "The Stars of Eger", which was set in the 16th century and told the story of how a small band of heroes defended the Castle from the Turks. It didn't fall at that time, only a few years later. Finally, we went to Tesco's en route home and arrived back around 5pm, when theoretically I should have still been pounding the tarmac of Eger, but I wasn't!! :-) Finally, the much promised cold front did arrive, in the form of a drop in temperature of 10 degrees Celsius in a couple of hours. No wonder the Ambulance Service was rather busy this weekend, but at least we have had a really good night's sleep last night - the first one for weeks.

A very hot and busy day

You may be wondering what this lovely old man has to do with our day today. Well, this is a slightly convoluted story: you may recall that I posted the picture of an outside table and benches with a cute little roof over it that we bought on a whim last Tuesday. Well, it got delivered today, which was a saga in itself. They brought it fully assembled and it was so heavy that they couldn't lift it over the narrow steps into the back. The only solution was to drive round the back with the truck, except that the back lane has got very rutted and narrow in the last few years and the truck would not fit. However, this morning Roy spotted - while visiting a neighbour's garden for picking up fallen pears - that it would be possible to drive through their garden and gain the better part of the back lane that way. That is exactly what we did and the guys managed to get round, deliver the furniture and were just about to drive off when they got stuck through our back gate. They came in through there fine, but on the way out the dip just outside the gate got them stuck fast. They tried everything, but to no avail. Until Roy went off and came back with all sorts of gadgets, including an ancient jack he inherited from his Dad. Hence Dad's picture above and the old jack below - and would you believe it? That 80 year old jack got the truck out of the rut and on its way. We then sat down on our latest aquisition, opened a couple of beers and reminisced about Dad, who was a lovely old guy and whom we both loved dearly.

The platform which used to have the swing on it before proved perfect for the table and chairs. Roy decided that we are going to cover the existing rush mat roofing with our old beaver tailed pottery rooftiles, left over from the pigsty and the old stables and sheds. This way it can stay safely outside in the winter and will not suffer from water penetration. Sitting there we felt really comfortable, it is an extremely well spent £400 (incl. delivery)and it is not as if we have been spending wildly lately. Quite the opposite, no major purchases have been made for at least 3 years in the Grant household.

The day was rounded off with harvesting 5 trees' worth of tiny yellow plums for the cefre, which was OK, if somewhat hot in the slowly fading light. The heatwave is back with a vengeance and tomorrow I intend to stay strictly indoors.

Hungária Kupa Day 5

Chasing start on a town sprint - interesting concept! Although they didn't call it a town sprint, rather a shortened distance classic. That it may have been for the longer courses, but my 1.9km decidedly felt like a town sprint. I made no special effort to kill myself in the by now 38 degrees Celsius, so Ágika beat me by about 3 minutes on the last day, but even with this, I was in by the time she started. Roy found himself a nice shady place next to a control about 350 yards from the Finish, right opposite a nice little buffet with ice cream, beer, pizza and chips. He was having a good time too. After the final results ceremony, during which I received a nice pottery medal and a large bottle of Tokaji Aszu for winning W60 overall, we packed up and drove home via Tesco and were in by 7.15pm.

This morning I had another call from Elian and watched him gurgle, smile and put away a large bottle full of milk. He is nearly 2 months old now and getting cuter by the minute. Now we are into catching up with work: first we had to harvest our grapes and they are now fermenting nicely in the fourth cefre barrel. The computer needs attention, in spite of having WiFi where we stayed, I didn't really have the time to spend ages to answer e-mails etc. I have already done a load of washing and plenty more stuff still needs doing.

Hungária Kupa Day 4

Well, I obviously collected up all my mistakes for this day. Control 1 was a children's control and I was in a foul mood already, thinking that if the whole course was going to be like this I would have to have a big row with the planner after my run. Thankfully, the technical quality of the course improved, but I didn't. The long promised heatwave had arrived and my brain never works too well in high heat. Instead of going nicely round the paths to no. 2, I decided to go straight. A few metres into the forest I managed to trip myself up (don't ask for details!!) and landed like a felled piece of timber. The swelling on my right shin was the size of Mount Everest and I also lost my lucky cap, which I had for 8 years. Later I didn't have the energy in all that heat with a large bump on my shin to go back and look for it, but it is fairly certain that I lost it when I fell. Needless to say that I completely lost the plot and made a large detour to no. 2. After this I made a few more mistakes and was convinced that Ágika made up most of my advantage, when it turned out that she made an even bigger mistake on one of the later controls and I beat her again, this time by about 5 minutes. The gap between us was now up to about 21 minutes. No panic for the chasing start on Day 5 then, I thought!

In the afternoon we went to the Museum of the Hungarian Language, which was absolutely fascinating, followed by three caches, one of which was on top of a fair size mountain, accessible by either a long steady climb or a short but horrendously steep one. Have a guess which one I chose? I managed to climb up in 25 minutes, which surprised me a great deal. Mostly for 2 reasons: 1. the large bump on my shin; 2. a still quite bad back coupled with a less than optimum physical state. Well, you never know, do you? The cache was in the neighbourhood of a disused quarry where for centuries they quarried mill stones. It is apparently rhyolite, which is vulcanic in origin and looks terribly like mill stone grit in the North of England. The lake at the bottom of it is rain water, which cannot drain and it was a dramatic scene, where I wished I could have stayed for longer. We had to go for the presentation again for 7pm, followed by another nice meal at the same restaurant Roy liked the night before.

Hungária Kupa Day 3

Day 3 and 4 were based on an old chateau (again), but this one had the size of a palace. Not too bad condition, as it was used as a sanatorium for many years, but neglected nowadays. The park round it gave the terrain for this day and the mountain above it for Day 4. Ágika made a mistake again and I had a good run, so my buffer now increased to about 16 minutes overall.

I picked up a cache in the park itself and in the afternoon went to a Schwäbian Party with wine, food, dancing, brass band and a hillside full of cellars. As the presentations were in the nearby town at 7pm we missed some of the festivities, but what we saw was quite interesting. As we couldn't wait until the cellars opened up, en route there we popped into one in another village and bought a fantastic bottle of Tokaji Aszu direct from the vintner. It cost less than half of what it would have been in the shops and I bet it will taste better. At least judging by the bit that I tasted!

In the evening, after the presentation of a yellow jersey for winning, we discovered a really lovely restaurant where Roy could finally fill his belly with cooked food. He is not a happy chappie eating cold for any length of time!

Hungária Kupa Day 2

Day 2 dawned nice and warm, although the promised heatwave had not yet arrived. Roy and Eszter stayed at the accommodation as it was going to be quite a day transportwise. We were supposed to have been taken up in a chair lift to the start on a steep, big mountain in the morning. Needless to say that there was absolute chaos queueing for the chair lift and finally all start times were delayed by 3o and later 50 minutes. The whole thing was so stupid that it was funny. After all that my run was pretty good again and much to my surprise I beat Ágika by 13 minutes. She completely missed control no. 2 and now I had a nice cushion overall.

As we had tickets for a free concert by a Welsh choir in a far away little village underneath an amazing castle we decided to pick up a couple of caches en route. One of them was on top of a massive rock wall, top of which was quite easy to climb onto from the back. Once in the village of our destination we were lucky to find a restaurant and some food, after which we admired the castle about a thousand feet up above us and listened to some beautiful Welsh singing.

Hungária Kupa Day 1

We had an absolutely marvellous time in the Zemplén. The trip down was fairly standard, except for a slight diversion ending up in spending £365 just on the off chance. I have been looking for a solid, well built and rustic set of table, bench and roof arrangement for ages. Unfortunately I have never seen anything I liked within delivery distance of us. Until last Tuesday, that is. En route to the Zemplén we got stuck at a set of lights and have discovered these by the roadside. Popped in, loved it and bought one. I love shopping like this. Practically all things I have bought like this have ended up treasured possessions used and loved for years. Delivery is due sometime this week and we are planning to put it where the swing was until now at the back of the terrace.

At Szerencs,about 40 miles from our destination we stopped to have a bite to eat and pick up a geocache. The view from the top of the hill was glorious and we sussed that this will be only the first of many such views for the rest of the week. This picture is from the courtyard of the Rákóczi chateau in that town, nicely renovated in the reneaissance style. We arrived at our accommodation in the afternoon with our friends, who we teamed up with for the week arriving in the evening. The only other significant event that day was not a very happy one. I have put my back out somehow (I still don't know how) which was going to make 5 days of orienteering somewhat difficult! :-(

Day 1 was in a really rough and tough forest, which worried me a bit considering my back was a bit dodgy. Amazingly, however, as soon as I got into it I lost the pain and managed to have quite a good run. Perhaps slowing down to look after my back stopped me making mistakes. I ended up second that day (only 27 seconds down on one of my perennial rivals, Ágika) and the weather was also pleasant, sunny, but not too hot. In the afternoon we went geocaching just over the border in Slovakia, but could not find the box. As it turned out later, it has disappeared long ago and now I am awaiting the owner to accept my find based on the photographs. There was another Rákóczi chateau there which, unfortunately, is in a dreadful state. Some enthusiasts are restoring it bit by bit, but at this rate it will take them about 200 years. We managed to get inside, but it is in no better order inside than out.

We were very lucky as the annual Zemplén Art and Music Festival almost completely coincided with our orienteering event. About a week or so ago I ordered some tickets on the internet and were very much looking forward to going. The first of these events was a performance by the Hungarian National Folk Dance Ensemble on the first night in the nearby town. It was absolutely superb. I have not seen them ever since I was a child and even Roy was tapping his tows and having a fantastic time. Their skill and obvious enjoyment of their own art was infectious.

NOCINO

As soon as I say that I won't be posting until we go away, or even afterwards, lots of things happen and one post comes after another! :) The nocino recipe which I found on the net suggested that the green walnuts should be removed after 6 weeks, the liquid strained and bottled. 6 weeks were up and we decided to do it today prior to leaving for the Hungária Kupa, so that we will not have to bother with it on our return.

As you can see there are three bottles in the picture. Starting on the left, the first one is a full litre of Nocino for Alex and Meaghan. I hope they will be brave to put it into one of their suitcases, otherwise they will have to drink the whole lot while visiting us next year! :) Perhaps that's not such a bad idea, anyway, considering how gorgeous it tasted when I licked the few spilled drops and the utensils after we finished the bottling. The second little bottle was the surplus, which Roy put into a tiny Vodka bottle. I suppose that will be the taster. Talking of which, it did taste a bit bitter, but the recipe says that after a year in the bottle that will disappear or will diminish to pleasant levels. Finally, you may want to know what the big bottle is. Well, at the end of one of the Nocino recipes (as I have downloaded about half a dozen before deciding which one to use) it said that the solid stuff - mostly the green walnuts - can be infused with wine for a delicious tasting vermouth. So, after they were drained of the booze, the walnuts got recovered, this time in good quality white wine and we will let you know once we have a go at drinking it what it turned out like. Cheers!

Grandmother's delight

Today was a really good day. The weather was pleasant, the Olympics was interesting with kayak/canoe races, women's cross country cycling, bit of sailing and the men's 50km walk. The Brits had a gold and bronze so far today, no Hungarian medals though. Still, with the paddling races having finished their paddling medal tally of 3 golds, 2 silvers and 1 bronze puts them at the top of all 16 nations that got a medal in kayak/canoe events. Well done!

However, this day so far got really good because I saw both my grandsons. First Alex called and Callum was in fine fettle. He was having fun by screaming at the top of his lungs while building and demolishing a tower. I couldn't hear Alex, he couldn't hear me and the flat looked like a battlefield, but what's new? However, he got a bit more thoughtful and managed to exchange the odd word with me later, when his father gave him his earpieces, so he could hear me. I also managed to turn on my webcam and he looked positively surprised to both see and hear me. He waved, said hello and then went back to demolishing the flat. Unfortunately Alex's android phone is not good enough to produce decent pictures, so no Skype snapshots of Callum! :(

On the other hand, there are plenty of snapshots of little Elian, who is about 7 weeks old now and whose parents called about an hour later. He is growing really fast. He weighs 5.25kg (11lb 10oz)and he is 60cm tall. That is apparently in the top 10% of his age group and if he carries on like this he will be 6ft 3"(1m 87.5cm). Not surprising as both his parents are tall, his uncle is very tall and his Hungarian great-grandfather was about 6ft 5" (1m 92cm).

He is a lot more active during the day now and he even smiled at us while kicking about on his playmat. I can't even imagine what he is going to look like when we see him in November, but hope to see him regularly between now and then.

More Olympics and some preserves

It's been nearly a week since I posted and I really don't know where to start about it all. My time has been dominated by the Olympics, like the week before and most of the excitement and pleasure came from that. Both Britain and Hungary are having the best Olympic Games in many a year, so there was a lot to get excited about.

The medal tally with three days to go stands at 8 golds, 4 silver and 3 bronze for Hungary, while Britain stands at 25 golds and 14 each of silver and bronze. These dry statistic, while tell you some of the story, get nowhere near even suggesting what this is all about.

The real pleasure is in seeing the flesh and blood athletes struggling, fighting, winning, losing, having fun or just enduring. The smiles of pleasure or the grimace of pain at the end and the interviews which give you insight into their psyche, especially if conducted straight after the finish.

I am not into the jingoism and the nationalistic hoo haa, in fact, I feel sick on occasions listening to the chauvinistic crap that can come out of commentators mouths. I have been known to get rid of the sound and just watching without commentary. But the genuine achievement, pride and pleasure in that achievement by athletes and fans alike has been a joy to witness. Some of the athletes I enjoyed watching in no particular order have been:

Usain Bolt(200m sprint), Charlotte Dujardin (ind. dressage), Eva Risztov (open water 10km swim), Rudolf Dombi and Roland Kökény (kayak doubles), Mo Farah (10,000m).

Obviously we have not only watched the Olympics, but got on with life in general as well. Roy managed to pick all the available plums off our trees as well as Laci's and now we are without plums. Except those on a tree that produces absolutely tiny ones and therefore useless for the cefre.

So, the other day Roy made 2 litres of jam out of them, while on the same day I decided to use up all the peppers, onions and tomatoes we had to make some lecsó. Lecsó is a bit like ratatoullie without the aubergines and courgettes. It was gorgeous, we ate one potful and bottled the rest.

As you can see the jam looks very dark. Roy used our ancient, Mrs. Beeton type, cookery book for a Damson Jam recipe and the little bit I tasted was delicious. So I don't care what it looks like if it tastes that good. Next post might be a while, unless the WiFi works where we will be staying for the Hungária Kupa next week. TTFN!

Saturday, 4th August 2012 the day of the 6 British gold medals

The last couple of days watching the Olympics has become a full time job. First thing every morning I print out the program for the day, the likely important races and competitors with times. Some I can watch on the TV, but most of it I watch on the net. Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger rowed to gold in the double sculls yesterday with such joy, that it was delightful to watch. Grainger was the perennial bridesmaid, never the bride, but this time she had gone all the way.

Other golds on Day 7 included the men's team pursuit in cycling and Victoria Pendleton in the women's keirin, also in cycling. Victoria Pendleton missed the handover the day before in one of her cycling events and got disqualified, which was a shame, as she was in line to win it. So she was rather fired up and produced such fantastic speed and power in the keirin that even I got much impressed.

Today, at the time of writing - the gold tally is 4: 2 in rowing - the men's four and the women's lightweight double sculls with Kat Copeland and Sophie Hosking. The latter two were delightful and the picture of Kat Copeland's face when she realises that she won will stay with me for quite a while.

The velodrome provided another thrilling competition after the men's pursuit yesterday when the women not only emulated the men, but did it in emphatic fashion. In fact, the men's yesterday was much more exciting, because their advantage over the opposition was only slight and while they did build it up gradually it wasn't that big. The women, however, made mincemeat of the Yanks, which was great, but it was a forgone conclusion from practically the first circuit of the Velodrome, so therefore it was less exciting.

Finally tonight all this was topped by a commanding performance by Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon. A petite little woman, she was a powerhouse of delight in the way she just got on with it and stamped her authority on proceedings. A worthy and very popular winner. I loved it. So, today's total took England to 12 golds, 7 silvers and 8 bronzes and the day is not yet over. Even if there are no more medals for the day, I think it is quite good. I think we can hallmark the British golds with BOATS, BIKES, GUNS AND THE TRACK. I was looking at the official predictions for which sports are likely to bring the medals and how many. Rowing has already surpassed all expectations and the athletics had just started. After a ponderous beginning, this might still turn out to be a good Olympics for the Brits. Other than sport, the only event recently had been a visit to Tescos and the market. We bought some lovely peaches, apricots, raspberries and blackberries, plus a lot of good vegetables. Now we have food for a week to 10 days, after which we are off to the Hungaria Kupa in the Zemplen.

PS: The medal tally is now 14 gold, 7 silver and 8 bronze. The two I didn't know about were Greg Rutherford winning the long jump and Mo Farah winning the 10,000m. Yippeeee!!!

Day 6 of the Olympics and the garden (again)

Today's was a mixed day at the Olympics. I managed to miss watching every single successful athlete on the British side. Like the canoe slalom gold and silver (see photo!), then Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes in the velodrome,finally the double trap gold by Peter Wilson, but in spite of this I was very happy and proud to note these fantastic achievements.

The main reason why I missed the above successes was that I happened to concentrate on exciting, but not so successful bouts by a variety of British and Hungarian athletes, including Gemma Gibbons just missing out on gold in judo, Abigail Joo not making it to bronze in judo and the lightweight fours in rowing losing the gold to South Africa by some thousands of a second. They were all fascinating, exciting and worth watching, but I was getting quite down until I heard of the good news as well. Natuarally Laszlo Cseh getting a bronze behind Phelps and Lochte in the 200m individual medley in swimming also counted as a great success and I watched that from start to finish.

After all that TV and internet watching I went to pay some attention to the garden and took some lovely photos again. We managed to grow some amazing tomatoes right from seed, I harvested the last of the plums, the grapes are looking great, so is Roy's cefre and the roses are as magnificent as ever.