Weekend at Roberts + orienteering + geocaching + the little monster

We left on Thursday after lunch, picked up a cache in Gödöllõ and shopped in Auchan. We were very glad to discover that Auchan had real Greek feta, which seems to have disappeared from every other shop in the last few months. The flat was very stuffy but after a few hours of every window and door open it smelled all nice and fresh again.

Friday we decided to pootle down to Robert's slowly, picking up some more caches en route. The first one was in Gorsium, which is an amazing place. It was first a military camp, then a place of emperor worship, finally just a settlement and it even had medieaval churches after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately the money had run out for further excavating and the fabric is suffering from neglect, but it was still imposing in its scale.

The next two caches were quite nearby, the first being an imposing old tower, which originally was built in the XIIIth century for collecting taxes on the river, later fortified against enemies and finally used as a grain store. In the same village there was a lovely little lake and park where a romantic little bridge created such a beautiful vista. We had our sandwiches at Gorsium and after the other two we journeyed on. The next three caches were all around the Balaton, the first of which was quite difficult to find, but it was worth the bother.

Even Roy got totally enchanted by the environment and history of the lovely old ruined church with plenty of evidence of the past in its walls. The cache was in a big hole up in a tree and the description was so good, we found it straight away. The GPS doesn't always work accurately, not to mention those silly twerps who give incorrect co-ordinates just to make it more difficult. That is one aspect of geocaching I do not enjoy.

The next cache was by an old water mill and the last one in a fascinating old cemetery with weird looking heart shaped graves. I have seen these before, but they are so unique that I enjoyed looking at them again.

Finally we arrived at the place where I had to register for the orienteering, which actually I couldn't do because they wouldn't let me do it just for myself and I refused to pay for everybody in my club. As it happened, it was all sorted later, so there was no further hassle. We managed to pick up one more cache in the vicinity of the orienteering, so that made the total haul for the weekend at 8 caches, which isn't bad. We are planning to pick up two more en route home on Tuesday, so that should make 10, which I will be very happy with. We arrived at Robert's bang on 7pm, as agreed, after a delightful fish supper in a lovely rustic restaurant close to the lake shore. Robert and Volker were very hospitable, as usual, and we chatted well into the night putting away copious quantities of wine and palinka.

The orienteering on Saturday was less successful than usual. As you can see from the map I made no mistakes and went fairly straight to most controls or only a bit round. The trouble was that I am still seriously suffering from a variety of allergies which make it difficult to breathe when I am running (or trying to run) fast. So, no mistakes, just a lack of speed that made me miss the podium, coming 4th out of 12. Not bad, but could have been better. On the other hand, not having to hang around for the medal ceremony has its compensations, in that we managed to get to the same lovely restaurant as the night before in good time. This time I put away some lovely bread crumbed mushrooms stuffed with ewe's cheese, yum, yum!! On Sunday morning we got up, had breakfast and departed in time to get home for the Grand Prix. I never thought that the boring old style Monza circuit can produce as many excitements as it did today. Lewis won and there were a few very eventful break downs and overtaking moves. Finally, I even managed a little chat with Callum after the Grand Prix, although his majesty did not honour me with a good bye at the end. He was busy making a birthday card for Michael, one of his friends who lives on the estate. Obviously, his Sunday afternoon was then spent at Michael's birthday party.