A bit of caching, a fair amount of hiking, some proofreading and enjoying the garden

The day after I last posted Roy and I drove to Bercel to place the moving cache that had to be placed near a chateau. Bercel has 3 of them, so I thought that might do it. It turned out quite hard to find a place where the box would be safe and the chateau that relates to it is visible from. Finally, we hid it between the front wall of the chosen chateau and a lamp post covered by stones and grass. I was worried about it getting nicked, as it was in the middle of the village, but thankfully it only had two finders and the second one moved it on, so I will not be held responsible for it disappearing.

The chateau where the moving cache went

Currently I am eyeing up another moving one which is on a mountain about 40 miles from here. I don't want to drive nearly 80 miles for just one cache, so I am waiting to see if it could be done from town on public transport next week.  That would be much less effort in driving, much more environmentally friendly and a lot cheaper too. Apparently it does not move too often, so there is a chance that it will still be there next week.

The cover of the new edition

The rest of  last week until Friday afternoon was mostly spent by doing some proofreading for my comrades in London. A new edition of Trotsky's Stalin is coming out and I took on some proofreading, which is hard work, but very enjoyable.  It will be a fantastic new edition, free of the falsifications by Charles Malamuth, its original translator/editor and with new material recently translated from many of the original Russian documents in the Harvard Trotsky archives.

On Friday afternoon I took the 3.55pm bus into town again for yet another theatre visit.  This time Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still was on at the same theatre where I went on Monday.  I love that place, they put on stuff I usually enjoy with good directors and actors. Friday night was no different.  I had just as good a time as I did on Monday and learnt about a playwright whom I have so far didn't know.

The two main characters from Time Stands Still

Some time ago the plan was that I'll go hiking and caching with my girlfriends on Sunday in the Pilis, but then we took on some guests from the Mill and I thought I ought to go home on Saturday morning to help out. In the last minute the guests have cancelled, but by that time I was in town and thought that while I didn't want to wait until Sunday, I still felt like a nice caching hike myself. Also, the route I planned would have been much easier to do from top to bottom, which the girls wouldn't do as they always insist on going by car and then you have to return to the car at the end. Not to mention the fact that they are not that good on getting out of bed early, so with them we always start far too late and well into the hottest part of the day. So, cut a long story short, I decided to do my planned hike on Saturday, on my own and travelling to the start and back from the finish by public transport.  This way it became a linear hike with 4 caches and mostly downhill.

The one bridge over the stream before hopping on rocks started

After catching two buses, I was at the trail head quite high up on the mountain by 8.45am.  Other than a rather slow young couple, whom I have caught up and then left well behind, there wasn't a soul on the mountain. The first half of my hike was through an ever narrowing, much storm damaged, exciting and very romantic valley, which ended up tight enough to be a gorge in places. I had to cross the stream in the middle of it at least a dozen times and only once on a bridge. The rest of the time I had to balance on wobbly rocks, which was definitely exciting. Took lots of photos, although the light conditions were not optimal in such a narrow and deep valley.

The gorgeous view from the lookout point

There I had to find 4 places, 3 belonged to one multi parter cache, plus a standard one near a spring. Once those were done and lots of photos taken, the valley started getting wider and more people and finally cars have appeared too. Once I got to the main tarmac road I had to decide whether I would go for the other two caches or not.  It was pretty hot by then, but I decided to go for it. I had about 3km of hot, busy, uphill  road to contend with, but at least it went past a gorgeous lookout point where you could see all the way down to the river and across it to the next range of mountains. It was breath taking to stand there and I even managed to ask a complete stranger to take a picture of me, which was unusual.  I am not particularly photogenic, but what the heck, Rene always complains about me missing from my own pictures, so I went for it.

Muggins at the lookout point

At the top I had an ice cream and a litre of water at the restaurant by the castle.  I did have some water with me, but the weather got so hot that it  ran out earlier than I expected. Decided not to visit the castle, as it was full of wall to wall tourists by then and quickly disappeared down a steep and wild path to my next cache. Originally I only planned three, but I discovered later that my route went past another one, so I got 4 at the end.

By the last cache, the Matthias Spring

The last cache was by a lovely old spring and there I made an attempt at a self portrait with the delayed exposure on the camera.  I keep forgetting it has that facility.  It worked a treat, so Rene should be happy. This time, when I had nobody with me I had taken more pictures of myself than when I have friends around me.

Once I got down to river level I quickly found the bus stop and amazingly it came in about 3 minutes.  Considering that there are only 2 buses an hour and they go within 5 mintues of each other (don't ask me why?) I was lucky. That day was magical.  I rediscovered the beauty of being in the wild on my own. I will have to do this more often, as being your own master, deciding your own speed, your own rest times, how long you spend looking for a cache and when to stop, is a luxury only afforded to single hikers. I loved it and want to do more of it.

One of the gorgeous two tone roses

Come Sunday I could have stayed, but I decided to go home on the 7.20am bus.  It was OK, although it wasn't as modern and comfortable as it looked from the outside. It looked big and new, but its suspension was shot and foolishly I sat at the back, so the ups and downs almost made me seasick. Roy looked pleased to see me and I must admit I was pleased to be back.

It seems to be a good year for whites

Since then I have been either enjoying the sun or hiding from it.  The pattern seems to be that we do some gardening, harvesting, photographing in the early morning or in the late afternoon.  The rest of the time is spent indoors on the computer, especially for me as this proofreading is a slow business. My eyes are really tired and I seemed to have slowed right down because of it. Staring into the screen the words start getting jumpy, out of focus and my eyes get very tired. Alternatively, I do have a paper copy now, but the print is tiny in that, so the same problem applies.Still, the deadline is 1st July, so I plod on, but I very much doubt if I will be able to do the lot. Such is life!

The garden is in full swing now.  The strawberries have finished, the raspberries are ripe and so are the cherries.  The peas won't be long, neither will the Morello cherries.  This is going to be a good plum year, the trees are so laden with fruit that we had to prop them up. Let's hope we won't have to buy too much extra fruit for the cefre! The apples look OK too, let's hope no disease, insects or hailstorms take them from us ahead of their time!

They look pretty enough to eat!

Oh yes, we had all these on our cornflakes this morning.

The roses are also at a stage where the first flush of blooms have given way to the second swathe. The deep reds and the whites are gorgeous this year, but the two tone ones are not bad either.  I love sitting out in the yard, reading or working and being surrounded by their beauty and fragrance.

Today and tomorrow I will still be doing as much proofreading as my eyes will allow and then on Friday Ros and Ian arrive and we should have 2 or 3 lovely days with them,  going on hikes, just hanging out, eating, drinking and having fun. Will post again sometime next week, which will be spent in town, seeing a variety of people, shopping, doing a bit of family history research and caching.