Levi, Bence, the knee brace and the trip to Szekszárd

Unfortunately, the meeting fixed up with Levi and Bence on Friday before last had never happened (again). Their lifestyle is even more hectic than ours, and they are here, there and everywhere all the time. I keep trying, one of these days I am sure I'll catch up with them. Postscript: I am having a meeting with just Bence today at 2pm. Should it really happen, I will tell you all about it in the next post. :)

Muggins at the Fritz Winery

I have just been told off by Roy for not ordering my computer before we went away. The little chap, who said he could build it, told me that he had nothing to do this week, so I suppose I should have grabbed him. Somehow getting ready for the trip to Szekszárd made me forget it. I hope to have a brand new desk top computer, as I am heartily sick of this laptop and shops no longer sell them. I will keep the laptop for watching TV and such like, but would prefer a new desk top. We will also have to buy a desk for it, but I have already decided where it goes. I'll chase Roy away from where he is at the moment at the top of the stairs and he will go to the bit outside the box room, while I'll have his place, but with a fitted bench extension where all my junk will go.

The happy owner of the scooter

Before I tell you all about our recent trip, let me introduce to you my latest acquisition: a cute little scooter, which we bought in Decathlon, even though we have only gone in to buy a knee brace. While waiting for the ordered item to be located, we started looking around. FATAL!!! The scooters were nearby and I fell in love with the idea. We bought it there and then, folded it up and took it home. I love it!!

The cute little blue and white chapel

I have even tried it out while going for a cache three quarters of a mile away from the car park a few days ago. There was about 700 metres of hard road, followed by about 400 metres of scrappy woodland path. I used the scooter on the road, then collapsed it and hid it behind a fallen tree. Once I came back from the cache I tried to re-assemble it without success. It was a bit of a bind having to carry it back, but I got rescued by a small truck where the driver was willing to give me a lift back to Roy and the car. Roy gave me a thorough lesson on how to collapse and then re-assemble it, so hopefully I should not get stuck like that again.

The first lookout tower of many on this trip

So now for the trip to Szekszárd and the surrounding area. It is in Tolna County in the South, near the Danube and only about an hour from Pécs. We have never been to that area before, so it was time to go and have a look. The region includes a much protected area of flood plain forest, called Gemenc. That place has a little narrow gauge railway, so we were going to go on that as well, provided it was still running.

An existing monastery in the Szekszárd hills

We bought a motorway pass, so we bombed down on the M6 and started caching very close to our destination. This was yet another trip where churches and chapels dominated the geocaching scene. First one was a cute little, beautifully renovated blue and white chapel quite close to the road. Then we moved on to several villages up in the hills and visited lakes, reservoirs, abandoned monasteries, lookout towers, stages of the cross, some more churches and finally a biggish town on the other side of the hills.

A big fishing lake near Grábóc

Unfortunately, as I hate multi caches, nowadays, after having found more than 2000 geocaches already, more and more places have only multis left. And as I have deliberately left them previously, now more than half of what we did were multis. With weather being in the 30+ range, that was hard going. In the meantime I was trying to look after my poor twisted knee as well, so things were not easy. Amazingly, the knee was coping quite well, although I had to be very careful where and how I put my foot down.

Our B&B

About  5 o'clock we went to our pre-booked B&B, the White Cow, which I had good feelings about. And I was right. It is a delightful, renovated and extended old press house. The owner is a builder and when the building industry collapsed in the credit crunch, he decided to renovate and extend his own press house next to his vineyard to open it as a B&B as a means of basic income.  It is now very popular and they seem to live pretty well on it.

The Takler Restaurant at night

We got the best room in the house where we had a king sized bed, en suite bathroom, TV, WiFi, a little kitchen and a balcony for the princely figure of £40 per room per night. The only thing you had to be really careful about is not to hit your head on the sloping walls, as we were in the attic space. The owners are really lovely, friendly and the place is spotlessly clean and comfortable. I am sure we will be back.

Little diesel engine pulling logs instead of tourists

The second day was supposed to be spent in and closely around the town of  Szekszárd with Karesz and Feri, but something happened and they changed it to Friday. So we decided to go to Gemenc on the Thursday and try to have a little railway trip and look around in that ancient forest. There are red deer and boar there, so I was really excited. Well, the place did not disappoint. The choo choo train was really sweet, we met a lovely Hungarian/UK family and chatted while puffing along and then had a good walk without too much trouble.  Normally the mosquitoes are fierce, but having put on bug repellent, it was bearable.

A curious looking stag behind bars :(

We even got lost a bit, as en route back to the car, the train made an unscheduled stop round the place where they have a lot of deer and boar, so we got off to go to the second cache, which was not far. We missed the right path and instead of walking 200 yards, we did about 2km. Still, it was exciting, especially when we met some wild boar piglets outside the fencing. Thankfully, even my knee didn't complain much.

The lookout tower at Gemenc

After this we went to a nearby town and a couple of villages to get their geocaches and that went off well too. The only problem we had was at the Northern end of Gemenc Forest, where due to flooding the train no longer goes and all the facilities there looked totally dead and abandoned.  It was getting late afternoon and Roy was worried about being locked in, so we abandoned that one and went home.

Roy and my trout

The sensation that evening was the restaurant where we went for dinner. The previous night, on the recommendations of our hostess, we visited the Fritz Winery, where the food and service was good, but nothing out of he ordinary. However, on the second night, the also on the recommendation of the hostess, we walked to the Takler Wine Estate, which was a different kettle of fish. Enormous, large estate with elegant but not gaudy style, extremely good atmosphere, place full of young people, the service is superb and the food and drink just so good that I can't think for words for it.

Roy's rose duck breast

I also re-discovered my love of spritzers. They have a rose wine made on the estate which the waiter said was made of Pinot Noir, which is not good enough for a high quality red wine, so they just make rose out of it. I had a spritzer half and half and the first 2dl did not touch the sides. I had another one and that tasted just as good.

The tower made of vines and wheat above Szekszárd 

Roy had duck breast, which was commented about by Alex as "Oh wow, I never have it that good!" It looked and tasted out of this world. I had trout and an unusual, but delicious mixture of bulgur wheat salad, with rocket, baby tomatoes and a few other great ingredients. The only trouble en route back to the B&B was that we had to walk along a busy road, so after getting a bit anxious the night before, we brought our high visibility vests (a new use for the gillet jaune) and felt a lot safer.

The three disgraces?

On the third day, Friday, we had to have an early breakfast, so that we could fetch the boys from the station by 8am. I dread to think what time those two had to get up, as they had a 3 hour train journey from BP. We started with the hills, as we thought that there will be some climbing involved and it would be better to do that before the temperatures climbed beyond 30 Celsius. As it happened, most of the caches in those hills were drive-in.

This makes excellent Szekszárd red

We had churches (again), chapels, springs, views from vineyards, trips through narrow lanes bordered by 20 foot high loess walls, some more lookout towers, rows of cellars and two long town multis in Szekszárd itself. All of it was both interesting, fun and aggravation all in one. The heat didn't help, neither did the fact that some were hidden so well that we had to be very bloody minded not to throw in the towel through sheer frustration. Still, the boys are exceptionally stubborn, which is good, as I would have given up a lot sooner once or twice during the day.

An old wine related building in Szekszárd

Once we finished the town, we ventured a bit further, met some lovely people harvesting their grapes already, picked a few ourselves and they tasted like honey, and finished by an old chateau, which is now a winery. Long and tiring, but very enjoyable day indeed at the end of which we put the boys back on their train, went home, had a shower and walked to the Takler Wine Estate again for dinner.  This time the place was totally empty, which was very different from the day before. We got a table in the air conditioned inside restaurant, which was much appreciated. The food, drink and service was just as good as the night before and we staggered home full.

Modern church in Paks

And then the final day we got up, had breakfast, packed and departed in the direction of Paks. I looked up 5 caches to be done on the way home, which we duly did. Churches and chapels dominated again, as well as the accursed multis. Paks has a 7-parter which we enjoyed in parts and not in others. The heat was horrendous, but we struggled through it and saw some lovely sites. My favourite will forever be the atmosphere down by the river, with its slow moving water, fishermen, young people canoodling, one young woman just sitting on the bank telephone in hand and the cache was found quite easily too.

Down by the Danube in Paks

Before we left Paks we found a lovely old square surrounded by wine cellars. They were all well maintained and/or renovated and provided a good backdrop to our lunch. There was a pub on site, but it was closed for lunch (only in Hungary!!), but suddenly the publican appeared for a few minutes and we quickly bought a coke for Roy.

Cellars

We got home by 5pm and hit the deck pretty soon after that. Fantastic little holiday, a good few caches found, new territories explored and 2 marvellous establishments: The White Cow B&B and the Takler Wine Estate discovered. We will certainly be back!!