A concert and a lot of geocaching

Last Wednesday's concert was brilliant. Kristóf Baráti and Barnabás Kelemen were superb. They played some interesting pieces, most of which were new to me. Added joy was that Hulk and Haggis were also there, after my phone conversation the week before mentioned the concert to Haggis and then miraculously she managed to get 2 tickets at the last minute. They were sitting on the podium, which explains the late purchase as the organisers must have decided to offer seats on the podium at the last moment.

Barnabás Kelemen and Kristóf Baráti

Thursday was spent getting ready for my departure on Friday, packing and preparing the cache lists for the weekend.  As it happens, I found out later that Mariann forgot to send me most of the lists, but at least I had Day 1. On Friday I met Mariann and Gabi at Keleti Station and we departed on time in a clean and reasonably fast train in a Southerly direction. We arrived bang on time, the girls have departed with a friend in her car and I hung around waiting for the bus. We got to the hotel about the same time, only to find that Gyuri and Évike have already arrived about 15 minutes before us.

Guess who's up a tree getting the first cache?

We managed to leave by 2pm or soon after and a day of interesting, and still sunny, geocaching started. The first cache was up a tree and apparently I have promised the girls that I would climb up there for it.  Gyuri gave me an initial push, but afterwards I was on my own up high in the branches. It was fun and I got the cache for all of us.

Medieval church no. 1

The next few caches were mostly in nice villages by lovely old medieval churches, after which came one in a forest.  Unfortunately, Gyuri was already in a strop over something or other, and when in that mood he listens to no-one. He drove past a left turn, so I ended up having to wade through 10 metres of jungle before getting to the nice bit of the forest to the cache. I did find it eventually, but if only he listened at the crossing and turned right, I would have had no such problems. Scratches and bumps were my punishment for his stubborn stupidity.  Unfortunately, this set the tone for the entire weekend, which deteriorated as time went on and tiredness set in, but more of that later. The cache was actually quite cleverly hidden and was surrounded by a field of lily of the valley.

Lily of the valley

The next cache was down a deep valley, (about 100m vertically down) just above a spring in a deep ravine. Gyuri stayed up in the car, so Mariann, Gabi and I went down for it.  The GPS signal was very weak, so we spent some time looking for it. Finally, it was I that spotted it up a steep slope and got it for all of us (again). The walk back up was a bit strenuous, but we survived it.

Mariann and Gabi climbing back up from the spring

Next was a forest school, where teachers take classes for hiking trips, zoology projects and just general fun. The one we went to see also had an aerial walkway and other interesting places for adventure. The next cache was near a medieval church which was decommissioned by the church and has been used as a smokehouse for a long time. Now it is closed, but the outside was really pretty and you could tell how old it was.

The smokehouse that used to be a church

Friday night we had dinner at the hotel, which was in a room decorated in Art Nouveau style and the food wasn't bad either. In the evening we were all pretty tired, but logging our finds and, in my case,  uploading photos and extending the logging texts took until nearly midnight.  The following morning we got up fairly early, had breakfast and then departed for the Geocaching Festival and Competition in Ófalu in the heart of the Eastern Mecsek.

Beautiful mosaic work in the dining room

There we met up with Judit, who was joining us for the day and soon we started to visit our lot of caches listed by Mariann and of which I was not given a copy. En route to the village I managed to take hasty notes of her list, so at least I had the coordinates and the merest of descriptions. Most of our caches on the Saturday were either up in the Mecsek hills and forests or in villages in valleys between the different peaks.

Lookout tower above Ófalu

The first two of the day were close to the Festival's base in Ófalu. In one direction there was one about the trout lakes up from the village, in the other direction we climbed to a lookout tower which provided a good view of the entire village down in the valley. After that we got back into the car and moved to see an old abandoned chateau, followed by a visit to some stages of the cross, topped out by a cute little chapel, both in the same village. Eventually I realised, when I tried to log two of the caches that day, that I have already found them 2 years before. The reason why I didn't remember them was that back then both caches were approached by not the same route and looked very different due to that.

A giant pine tree with the cross and one of the stages

The next cache hid itself underneath a concrete and steel built viaduct, which carried Route 6 across a wide valley.  Apparently that bridge still has the widest span of any concrete road bridge in the country. Unfortunately the rubbish dump that we found near the cache did not endear the place to us, but that is nothing unusual in the countryside nowadays.

Under the viaduct

By this time we were all so tired that tempers were getting short and I had to go on strike for a while, lest I say something I shouldn't. Gyuri's funny moods we have all become accustomed to, but what surprised me was that Mariann was a bit wound up too. She is normally quite laid back and does not rise to anything, but I think even her nerves were rather frayed that day. I have to say that she is being a bit stubborn over her PTSD, (unwilling to go and see a specialist), which I am absolutely convinced she is still suffering from as a result of her car crash in November.

Gorgeous iris in a church yard

The latter part of the day took us to a disused, but beautifully cleaned up, quarry where they installed a strange statue of an ancient chieftain, then we went high up into the hills and visited big locators, towers, abandoned quarries and a spring, all on or near mountain tops.

Hetény, the Chieftain

En route back to the hotel we still managed to visit yet another medieval church, a lake, several memorials to the mining industry and another memorial, this time to martyrs of a miners' strike who were shot by the military during a strike back in the 1930's. We managed to get back to Pécs in time to meet up with Évike, but due to Gyuri having to take Judit back to Ófalu and thus being rather late to dinner, Mariann, Gabi and I went to eat long before the other two.

Mining memorial in Komló

Medieval church no.3

They knew a place, which had Middle Eastern food and had a name like Tehran. Obviously, we thought they were Iranians, but the friendliest guy, who chatted to us a lot, was from Algiers. They were really sweet and the food was delicious and extremely cheap. I even had a nice big mug of tea, while the girls had beers. The plan for the following day was all of us getting going in the car in an Easterly direction, doing some caching en route, then followed by the three of us being dropped at a station to go home by train and Gyuri with Évike driving home to Békéscsaba.

We all had some doubts whether this plan was realistic at all, due to Gyuri and Évike bringing so much stuff that there would have been no way of squeezing everybody and everything into a not too large car, like Gyuri's. As it happens, the weather solved our dilemma as it got very cold, windy and rainy on Sunday, so we all decamped home, us by train, and the other two by car.

Vasas spring

At home I collapsed and am still a bit zombified. Still, I since then finished all my logging and uploading of photos, answered loads of e-mails and today went out with Ian and Ros to lunch. They came up with our post and we had a really good chinwag, followed by lunch at the Dobrumba. As expected they loved the food and we had such a good time together and all of us talked non-stop for at least 3 hours.

Mariann and Gabi having Persian food

Algerian guy in the Iranian Restaurant

Tomorrow I will have to do some typing up of yet another cache list, this time for Veszprém and its environs, where I am due to go this weekend. There are some question marks over the weekend, as Edit's car had broken down and she is not sure if she'll get it back by the weekend, but I can take the Duster, if necessary, or we can postpone it, we'll see what happens.

Hope to post after that and at this note I love you and leave you as it is nearing midnight and I want to go to bed.