Home again Part 2. - Easter at Monoszló

PART 2:

First of all some follow-up comments on part 1:

The strimmer is still with us, due to a serious lack of service centers for the make. The nearest I found was 200km away, so this project is still in progress. And I didn’t mean the repair, just to find a place where they might be prepared to repair it. Ahhhhhhh!!!!

Geodesic tower

Church in Balatonfűzfő

The caching trip with Karesz and Feri did not materialize, mostly due to a very sick pussycat, owned by Feri, as well as our need to come down to Bér to mow the grass (again). Hopefully the trip can be reorganized for a time when the cat is better and we are a tad less busy.

In the meantime we had a phone call from an orienteering friend who needed accommodation for the junior team in his club while attending a nearby orienteering event, so we have 13 people coming to stay this coming weekend. It will be Roy’s job being host as I will be in town attending the geocaching AGM and possibly doing some extra caching on my own. The walking distances between car and cache are severely reduced when I don’t have Roy with me, who is much more touchy about Dusty than I am.  I love the old thing (not him, the car) and trust it to take me anywhere, including up mountains.

View of Tobruk

The lakeside at Balatonfűzfő

The topic of this post is primarily about our 4 days away in Monoszló during Easter, staying with our good friend Pityu, plus friends, plus his family. En route down we managed to get 6 caches, which were quite an adventure all round. First was a geodesic tower, next was a nice little town by the lake, then a hike up a hill for a big view down to the lake and the town, followed by a gorgeous little village which originally was settled by Germans and the lovely old, by now beautifully renovated, Germanic long houses looked a million dollars. Having written that about Roy not climbing mountains in Dusty, I must admit, this time round I managed to get him drive me up to within a few hundred yards of an amazing little mountain, on the top of which there was a stone carved cross and some very exciting cliffs.

Fishng boats at Balatonfűzfő

Romanesque door

After all this we arrived in good time for dinner at Pityu’s place and had the soup on the table as we fell through the door.  He is such an amazing host; he puts all of us to shame. The rest of the invited friends and family were slowly arriving over the next 24 hours, and I have to say that I was very happy to see some of his family I have heard a lot about in the past but have never met. His son Gergő with his wife Flóra and little 3 year old son Henrik were such a find. I have met his daughter Sara before with her partner László and their daughter Kitti before, but never realized what marvellous company they were.

Roy at the top of the Roman Guard Tower in Vigántpetend

The Guard Tower from the road

I was, as usual, put in charge of hikes, but before that on the first full day there, they were all either cooking or doing chores in their vineyard, so Roy and I went out to do some more geocaching. I discovered that a church ruin, which on the map looked like quite a big hike, could be reached by car on a concrete road among the vineyards. So Roy was very happy about that and we loved the ruin. Then we drove to a nearby village for another cache, which was nothing special, followed by one that was. A new look-out tower could again be approached on a somewhat made up road almost all the way to the top.  So that was again not a long hike for Roy. The view from up there was 360 panoramic.

Pityu and Henrik en route to Királykő

Henrik, Flóra, Pityu, Laci, Sárika, én és Ági

Once we were back to Pityu’s it was non-stop eating, drinking and playing bridge, which is the usual program when there. The following day all of us (minus Roy and Palma) went hiking to Kapolcs by car and then up to some amazing volcanic rocks on a nearby wooded mountain. Even the 3 year old came and he was such a poppet. The geocache was down a rock face, but Kitti went down first and I followed watching where she put her feet. It was fun!

Ági and David in front of the Devil's Hole cave

The Devil's Hole

All, but Ági and David went home after that, but the four of us (Roy was only the driver) went for another cache which was a real adventure. There are lots of volcanic caves in and around Kapolcs which were formed by the lava cracking and some of it sliding off and stopping at an angle, forming caves with the rest of the lava. In spite of all the maps we looked at, all of which showed a path to the cave, there was nothing. We had to rely on the GPS and the description on the cache page. We got lost at one stage, but that little detour, which we made to avoid some windfall, got us to a beautiful clearing from which the views were heavenly. Finally we found both the cache and cave and came back down on our bums over the rocks. Fun indeed and I didn’t even twist my ankle. Unfortunately I did manage to collect two ticks on me over the weekend, which is worrying and at times painful when Roy is wielding the tweezers.

David on the Balatonhenye plateau

Flóra, Henrik and Gergő on the Balatonhenye lateau

The last hike was on the following day to the plateau above the village and to shorten it we drove to a neighbouring village and walked from there.  We got onto the wrong path again, this time due to the stupidity of the waymarking, but the advantage of that became clear, when we realized that this way we could do a circuit and not come back the same way we went up.  The cache was under a sadly fallen 400 year old beech tree, which was thriving just a few years ago, until some vandals set a fire inside its trunk. It didn’t go up in flames, but dried out in about 2 or 3 years afterwards.

This was the longest stay at Pityu’s we have ever had and it could have been even longer, but Roy was too worried about the Easter Monday traffic, so we came home on the Sunday. We stayed in town on the Monday and then drove down on the Tuesday.  Currently we are doing garden work and catching up on stuff that our insanely busy schedule stops us doing.

On Saturday I am off to the geocaching AGM and Roy is staying to look after the visitors this weekend. He will follow me in a day or two after and we are planning to stay in town for about 10 days. I hope to be able to post after that.