Callum this morning

 Mummy was still in bed, so Alex and Callum rang us to have a chat. Poor old Azriel takes a fair amount of punishment, but usually puts up with it with good grace.

 Callum was showing me some of his birthday presents.  This is a lovely phone that makes funny noises.

 There is no Skype chat with Gran and Grandad without the occasional watching of TV in it. I heard that they bought a new settee, but forgot to ask if it has been delivered yet.  In case it has been, that must be the new sette he is lying on.

 He's got an ouchie on his mouth.  Daddy put a bit of Vaseline on it and it got better.

Another birthday present, this time a drawing board. We had lots of fun and enjoyed watching him playing and bossing his Dad about.  Ahhhh!

Some more visitors, The Hungaria Cup, more heatwave and a victory!!

Serena and Tony (mentioned in last post) have turned up on cue. They apparently couldn't find a campsite in or around Sopron, so went back into Slovenia for a couple more days and then came last Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I took them up to the andesite outcrop, which was quite a nice hike in good weather.  The heatwave was unfortunately coming back, which did not augur well for the orienteering, but we still had a good time in the village.

On Wednesday afternoon we went into town and had a lovely dinner together at the Regos. On Thursday morning they left early to get a good camping pitch at the Event Centre, while we pootled slowly as we had a room booked at the same place. The army camp looked OK, but the heatwave radiated back off the pampas surrounding the EC which had more shade than the desert looking terrain all round it.

The first two days were around Bakonybel, a delightful mountain village in the high Bakony. There was plenty of climb and on the first day I managed to make reasonable route choices and no significant mistakes. (see above!)  Day two was another story. First of all I forgot to put my GPS watch on in time for it to find any satellites.  Once I pressed the ON button I was in such thick forest that it never got going after that.  It kept asking me if I was indoors. So no trek for Day 2 I'm afraid. There were other things wrong with both the forest and me. Of the latter I must say I was not all there.  It could have been the heat and/or the kerfuffle with the watch, but it was not one of my better runs.  My friend Ildi caught me half way round and then a couple of controls later (which I had apparently missed by only a few meters) she left me behind. As for the forest, it had some beautiful parts in general, but most of the shorter courses (mine included) went round in very steep, rough, stony, walk type vegetation with a lot of undergrowth and brashings. As a result, I was not a happy bunny on that day. Ildi won the first day from me by 33 seconds only, but on Day 2 she took 8 minutes out of me.  However, the winner was Jean from Ireland, who went AWOL on Day 1, but was her usual express train like self on the second day. I was still second overall, trailing badly.

The third day was in the nearby city and for town O it was quite interesting.  I have run in this city before, but my course on Day 3 hardly covered the same ground. This time, instead of the boring, modern city centre, we were involved with the historic centre, where the start was, then went straight down to the river and a restored mill area, then straight back up to the castle from where we went down to another riverside park and into the finish around a ruined monastery. The weather was terribly hot, but I managed a reasonably good time for me. Jean won again, beating me by about 6 minutes.  I never knew, but she used to be an international track and field athlete in her youth, so that would explain her speed zooming past me by the river earlier on. The surprise of the day was a missing Ildi. Apparently she only entered the first two days, so one rival was out of the running.  Jean, on the other hand, was very quickly catching up her 20 minutes wasted on Day 1, and I was pretty sure that she would be the overall winner. Another two ladies, who I often spar with were still behind me, but not by a lot.

And then, with the heatwave approaching 40 degrees Celsius we arrived at the last two days, both of which were run on almost open terrain in what felt like a desert. I took a lot of water to keep me hydrated on the way to the Start (1800m in fierce sunshine!) and then went to the bowser and poured quite a lot of water down my head, cap and T-shirt.  That felt good and I took the way to 1 very carefully. I got it no bother. All went well until control 6 where the heat finally managed to discombubulate my brain and I turned down one path too soon.  Wallowing in an abandoned sand quarry with not a soul around suggested that I was in the wrong place, but 4 whole minutes went past by the time I got out and got to the right place.  Drat! On the run in to the finish I was going all over the place as the trek shows. The final blow was that once I arrived back at the bowser (positioned about half way between the Start and the Finish) there was no water.  It didn't run out, just the plumbing had broken down and nothing was coming out.  We only had to wait a few minutes for someone to fix it, but it did seem like several hours, we were all so hot and bothered. Due to the mistake at 6 I wasn't the winner again, which I could have been, because dear old Jean went AWOL again, taking 16 minutes for control 1.  The lady, one of my usual rivals, who won, now started getting very dangerous and was within less than 5 minutes of me for the chasing start on Day 5.

Overnight a cold front arrived which managed to blow down most of the tents and marquees of the event.  The download tent was so bad that the team moved into one corner of the food and entertainment marquee and they put away the pump up finish arch for fear of more damage to it.  Rain, thankfully, didn't come with the storm, but the temperature dropped nearly 10 degrees, which was most welcome. I went out in a warm, dust laden gale, which pushed me on for the first half of my course and was in my face on the way back. For the first time in many years I actually managed 9 minute k's, which is undoubtedly attributable to Dobos Ilona behind me in less than 5 minutes and Bircsi a minute or so after her.  By the way, Bircsi caught Ilona on the run in and  came up to second place by 4 seconds. I wish I saw that, but at that time I was still trying to recover from my sprint in the windy desert. They did't give out medals this time, but we all got a lovely big white china vase with the event's emblem on it and a small white towel also with the emblem on.

To sum up this event:
1. It was probably the most eventful HK I have ever been to.
2. It was definitely the hottest I have ever been to.
3. It was the first ever multi day event I managed to win overall while not winning any individual days at all.
4. And finally, it was an event where my tendency to be 'miss consistency' proved to be useful again.

English guests, heatwave, gardening, heatwave, housework, heatwave, Dutch friends, heatwave, scones, more plums and no internet for a day and a half!!

It's only a week since I last posted, but it seems like it was months ago.  Is it that we both aged considerably due to the heatwave or is it that we were that busy? I think it is probably both. On Sunday around 4.30 in the afternoon Christine and Ian, our newfound friends from the Slovenian campsite, turned up. They spent the rest of the day and the night with us and departed the following morning after breakfast. They are very nice people and offered that if any time in the future we need housesitters they would be only too pleased to do it. They were off to Eger and then into Slovakia, followed by Poland.  Since then I received an e-mail confirming their route and that they are OK.

In spite of the horrendous heat of never less than 20-22 Celsius at night and around mid-30's or more during the day, Roy and I had to do a lot of housework and garden work, due to both having been neglected while we were away. Especially the garden needed a lot of attention as the high heat and no rain whatsoever seemed to take their toll. The grass was slowly getting yellow (it's now nearer brown!!) and started to crack up.  Never before in the 15 years we had this property did we see such wide and long cracks everywhere.  Thankfully the roses suffered the least, probably due to their deep tap roots. The tomatoes and peppers were still alive, but with shrivelled up lower leaves.  The geraniums looked a bit worse for wear, but after a good dousing and deadheading, they started to cheer up too. The reason why the garden is so labour intensive at the moment is partly because of the watering and partly due to having to pick up every bit of fallen fruit so that Roy's cefre barrels fill up properly.  Unfortunately there will not be enough fruit for all four barrels, so we will have to go round scrounging again from others. Last year's source of extra plums have dried up, so new sources are being sought.

On Monday we went over to our Dutch friends in the village to do some interpreting.  One of their neighbours wanted to rent the upper half of their garden for his pheasants, but I told him even before Monday that it is not likely that they will agree.  I was right, they didn't. However, the two pheasants that he brought them as a sweetener got roasted and as their table is not big enough for 6 we relocated to our garden pavilion for dinner.  I quickly cooked my salmon and it was a fantastic evening with good food, good booze and excellent company all round.

On Tuesday the heatwave was getting worse.  The forecast was now for temperatures touching on 40 degrees Celsius in the afternoon and we decided to hide from it indoors.  All garden work was now done before 7am and after 6pm. It was on Tuesday that we heard from Serena and Tony, old orienteering friends from England, whom we also met in Slovenia, that they were coming our way too. We did invite them to come and see us either prior to or following the Hungaria Cup, which both them and us are attending next week. So, we will have another English couple, this time for 3 days.

Wednesday was the day of the mysterious odour in the kitchen, which then resulted in a thorough scrubbing of the fridge and other nooks and crannies. For the first time ever we actually separated the glass shelves from their frame and that was a fight and a half in that heat. As I said on Facebook that day, the designer must have been a man who either had never been to a kitchen in his life, or if he had not to clean it. That day I also harvested some more tomatoes and peppers and made a lecsó. That is a delicious vegetarian dish that even Roy likes. In the afternoon we were back to our Dutch friends to say good bye as they were going home the following day. Roy also thought that if we ask them we might be able to pick up a few bucketfuls of their plums to fill the cefre barrels with.  They said yes and Roy happily picked one large bucket full, which made him rather happy. We will have to get back and pick another bucketful before we disappear to the orienteering event on Wednesday next week and hopefully there will still be some left to pick when we get back.

Thursday was made infamous by the disappearance of our internet connection.  It took them 30 hours to fix it and neither Roy nor myself were happy bunnies at all.  I also made an uncomfortable discovery about my data connection on my smartphone. It didn't work! With the WiFi gone we were down to my aging old netbook with the mobile dongle, which was as slow as a sloth on cannabis. Thankfully I discovered that the extreme slowness was due to not having updated Firefox, so after I downloaded the latest version it sped up a bit, but was still aggravatingly slow compared to my broadband. The heat was by now decidedly around 40 Celsius and with no internet we were doing other things indoors, like filing and reading books, which was also very enjoyable.  (not the filing!!!)

They were promising a cool down on Friday with the approach of a cold front.  I didn't believe it, as I have heard this before a few times and nothing ever happened.  Well, the West of the country had some rain - apparently - but nothing got as far as us. Roy heard some thunder and saw some lightning at night, but I was out for the count and heard and/or saw nothing.  However, the air was a bit fresher in the morning and in the afternoon the sun didn't shine so fiercely as recently.  The internet was back by early afternoon and somebody found us an old lady with lots of old, neglected plum trees in the neoughbouring village, whom we went to visit.  She really does have a large number of old trees, but surprisingly very few of her plums were ripe yet. We agreed with her that after the Hungaria Cup we'll start picking and hopefully they should be ripe by then.

You may have noticed by now that I decided to illustrate this post with my roses.  However, this little squatter, that grew from a seed probably dropped by a bird is definitely not a rose.  It is growing through the edging and is hanging onto dear life. It looks like a petunia, but I am not sure what exactly it is.  As it is quite pretty, we decided to leave it alone. And then finally today, we woke to a much cooler world which also had some wind, occasionaly quite fierce. We might have to take the big parasol in tonight as the front is definitely approaching and it did produce some wild weather in other parts of the country.

I pinched this photo from Facebook - I thought it was fantastic, although I am glad I was nowhere near this lightning storm last night. As the house was a lot cooler and because I was reading a travel report from the UK on Facebook, peppered full of pictures of cream teas, we decided to bake some scones today. We have never attempted anything like this before and had an additional problem of a few ingredients missing, but they turned out fantastic. They looked good and they tasted good. Now that we have a good recipe (it was from the BBC website!) and the confidence to do it again, we should definitely provide visitors with a traditional English cream tea in future. And finally, in the evening I even managed to sort my problem with data on my smartphone. I phoned up the technical advice people of my network and one very kind and easy to understand young lady explained which settings I failed to set on my phone and after a few minutes the internet was back, even without my WiFi on. Since then, I tried to work out whether I have been paying for my data connection totally unneccesarily for about 5 months or perhaps it was set properly initially and then got itself unset. Who knows? The main thing now is that I know what to do in future, should it start playing silly buggers again.

And on this happy note I say good bye.  Next post probably after Hungaria Cup, unless there is WiFi in the Event Centre.

Postscript on Sunday:

Roy managed to put the engine back into the tractor and while it is a bit noisy, the cutting head shakes like there was an earthquake and it occasionally backfires (which it didn't do before) IT ACTUALLY GOES!!! And it only cost £60 for both parts and labour!

Slovenia: before, during and after

I haven't posted for more than a fortnight, which doesn't happen to me too often.  After the family went I was hellishly busy and knackered and busy.  Did I say I was busy? The garden needed a lot of attention and then we started getting ready for the trip to Slovenia. On the day before we went I had the news that I definitely have Lyme's Disease.  Once we arrived back in town I went for the paperwork at the lab, managed to grab an appointment with my doctor, who then prescribed 3000 milligrams of amoxycillin a day for 3 weeks.  Let's hope that that'll fix it!

And then we left with Andor in tow. We decided to go for a couple of geocaches en route and they provided a delightful detour and a break from motorway driving for Roy. The first one was near an old watermill, the second one on a lovely big hill full of vineyards and valleys (see above!) where the village was called Jeruzalem. We found both caches easily and carried on happily for several more hours.  Our base was in Bohinjska Bistrica, at the end of our 550km drive, where the campsite was great, the mountains impressive and the natives friendly.

This was the view from our favourite restaurant on the first night. The Julian Alps, with Triglav, the highest mountain in Slovenia was on our doorstep and apart from the orienteering many other pleasures awaited us.

Well, the first day was many things, but pleasure - NO!! It was very hot, well above 30 degrees Celsius. It was also very, very difficult, both physically and technically. You may be able to spot that I went AWOL several times, so I was down in 12th place out of 17. I have run on very intricate, rocky, karst before, but this seems to have been beyond my brain powers. I suppose the long trip the day before as well as the heat didn't help, so now the target was to get back the 20 minutes I was behind my usual rivals.

The second day was altogether better.  The terrain was still intricate alpine karst forest, but I could cope with it better and brought myself up by 2 places overall to 10th by being 6th on the day. The only person not an altogether happy bunny was Roy, who was worried about the car's clutch plates, gear box and brakes all at the same time. The gradients, the hairpin bends, not to mention the rough forest roads with no ashfelt in sight put Roy into his worrying mode, only finally realising that in the one way system he could not turn round, but had to go round on another 5km loop of some more rough forest road to get out of there. I could tell at the end of day 2 that I will have to use all my persuasive powers to get him drive us back up there on day 3.

Well, Roy made it and so did we.  I had yet another good(ish) run, 4th on the day and one more place up overall and Roy had a lovely place under the trees to hide from the heat and have this view of the assembly field. Unfortunately, due to the heat we didn't really feel like going sightseeing in the afternoon, but at least we managed to swim in the Sava Bohinjka river, which formed one of the camp site's borders.

Day 4 was back in the fiendishly difficult forest from day 1 and while I coped better than 3 days before, it was far from a good run. I was 10th on the day and dropped back to be 10th overall as well. Just as we finished our lunch - around 3pm - the heavens opened. It was a full blown cold front that was going through and it rained on and off until the early hours of the following morning.  That put paid to another bout of sight seeing we were planning, but at least it cooled the air.

And then came the last day, which really gave an otherwise already great week a proper ending.  The weather was still beautifully warm, but the edge was off the heatwave.  There was also a pleasant breeze and the courses were mostly downhill.  We actually came down on a ski slope and in the neighbouring forest.  It was fast and furious, but you could make big mistakes if you didn't concentrate.  The map scale changed to 1:7500 and I enjoyed it a lot. On this day I was 3rd and overall came up to 7th place.  Considering the heat, the difficulty of the terrain and my general physical state I was very satisfied with 7th. In the newly cooled down fresh air we decided to go on an outing to the source of the Sava river, which is an interesting waterfall and to Bohinj Lake, both reasonably close to our camp site.

We had a look at this lovely old church and found some gorgeous frescoes inside.  The church and the bridge are at the head of the lake, providing a thousand photo opportunities from a variety of angles.  This is actually Andor's photo, but the setting is so pretty, you have to be really hopeless not to take a decent photo around this lake.

The statue of an ibex was right next to the lake the other two photos are of the route to the waterfall and the waterfall itself.  Recently there has not been the usual amount of rain, so it didn't show itself at its best.  Apparently, if there is a lot of rain the waterfall comes down in several stages and can be as high as 600 metres.  Currently it is nearer its usual 85 metres, not exactly impressive.  We were actually very glad of having taken a fleece, as it was positively cold up there. After another night's sleep we woke early, packed up and departed for home.  The trip was fairly uneventful, although there was a motorway closure - presumably due to an accident - which forced us to make a short cut between two motorways and while the jam and the windy small roads have added about 45 minutes to our journey, it also shortened it by 25 kilometres.

Roy found this funny sign at a motorway rest stop and I hope I don't need to explain what it is about. The trip home seemed a lot longer, not only because of the detour, but because Roy was tired and we went round on the motorway all the way in that corner near the border, which on the way down we cut off for the geocaching. We stayed in town only one night and arrived back in the village yesterday. Since then I have been washing clothes, deadheading flowers, watering the garden, picking up plums for Roy's moonshine, visited our Dutch friends and had tried to catch up with one whole week's of e-mails, FB messages and other computer matters.  We did make friends during our last few days in the camp site with a semi-retired English couple, who we had invited to stay with us, should they come this way on their travels.  They might turn up at the weekend or soon after.  So I think I should go to bed now and carry on sometime next week.  Taraaaa!!