Still in Bér, flu still with us and the geocaching festival

We have now been in Bér for nearly three weeks, but the flu is not shifting. It is not unduly debilitating, but neither are we well. Roy is still coughing quite badly and I am feeling week on occasions and sleep really badly. I have been attending my meetings online, which is fine with the reading group, but not so much with the actual branch meeting, which I am supposed to be chairing. Whatever happens, we are going in to BP tomorrow for a few days, for me to attend two meetings and to get my medicines for the next three months.

My favourite salmon rose

Apologies for the lateness of this post, but last week got really crazy, I had so many things to do that I completely forgot the blog. Still, I can hopefully catch up this month, which is also looking rather busy, but we can all but try. The online meetings were quite successful, I managed to sort some awkward issues, although the scatterbrained membership and the chaotic organisation (a contradiction in terms) is still bugging me. I think I will either have to accept that they are like this, or be patient and work at it slowly and persistently, so I might even succeed in the future. We'll see!!

The Királyrét (King's Meadow) narrow gauge train

One success was without a doubt the organisation of the next geocaching hike. I put it on the 6th anniversary to the day of the very first one I organised back in 2017. We are off to Szekszárd on the 11th November, to walk round the hills behind the town, full of vineyards, woods, hills and loess lanes with 15ft high walls round very narrow lanes. As Roy and I haven't been away geocaching for  nearly 5 months, I have booked 4 days in the White Cow, which is a lovely old B&B, we have been in before, to do some caching before and after the walk. Let us hope the weather is good to us. It was quite OK on the inaugural one back in 2017, so we might get lucky again.

The banner I made for the walk in November

I paid out nearly £5000 for our Christmas jaunt out to Bratislava, so now the half of the villa is paid for, all the flights of the kids and grandkids are paid for, as well as some future costs of the kids. Stephen is dealing with the airb&b booking and is also trying to find a restaurant to book for the family for Christmas dinner. This is proving difficult. I have written to Jana, who promised to help, but then forgot about it. I don't want to bug her, so let us hope Stephen comes up with something. Alternatively, of course, we can cook it ourselves, but I would prefer not to.

Bratislava Christmas Market

The comrades' outing to the Pilis was a success, although there have been some grumblings about lack of organisation (SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!!), and uncomfortable beds. I missed it, trying to rest here and get better, but by all accounts I haven't missed much. My main purpose for resting up was not only to get better, but also to get strong enough for the geocaching festival, which happened this last weekend. In the meantime, I managed to watch some TV and Netflix and such interesting things as The Real Crown, which was a weird mixture of criticism and adoration of the British Royal Family.

The Real Crown poster

The star event of the last 12 days happened on 27th, which was Roy's 82nd birthday. I promised him a good dinner and as we were running out of food at home, we combined food shopping at Hatvan Tesco with a  birthday dinner at the Eden on route 21. Well, it was a fantastic day. The Eden is still as good at producing good food for the table, as it was in the past. Thankfully, it didn't go bankrupt in the pandemic, mostly because I am pretty sure that the owners own it outright, without a bank loan on it, as well as being on a main route, they had a regular clientele that kept coming.

 

The happy birthday boy in the Eden

Our waiter was a very nice bloke, who managed to talk Roy into having a T-bone steak, which cost an arm and a leg, but he enjoyed it tremendously and that is the only thing to consider on one's birthday. We stuffed ourselves silly and came home happy. I had lemonade, so I can drive home and Roy was having a rest not having to drive. This issue is now rearing its ugly head and I am working on convincing him to give up driving. It will not be easy, but I hope that by the time his driving licence needs renewing, he will accept the ugly truth and doesn't renew it.

Another basketful of apples

I also did a bit of ringing round to find out what the vaccination situation in Hungary is like at the moment. There isn't any, which is the shortest and simplest answer. The government refuses to purchase any of the new Pfizer, which safeguards against the latest variants, but I at least found a really nice nurse at the Salgótarján hospital, who promised to vaccinate us without an appointment, if we come in on a Tuesday between 8am and 4pm. What with, I asked. The last batch of Pfizer from a year ago they still apparently have a stock of and it works against Omicron, she said. The last variant? - I asked. No idea, she answered. Well, it would be better than nothing, but we are not going. Mostly because of Roy's reluctance and I, having had the latest variant a month or so ago, don't need it.

Another favourite, this time the deep red

The next good thing that happened recently is called: Nyakdoki. This has been advertised online for months and I have been considering buying one. Basically, it is a good quality, hard, but comfortable piece of plastic, in the shape of your neck. You spend 10 minutes a day lying on it and it straightens your neck. Well, straightens is not quite the word, as the trouble with my neck was that it is straight, rather than bent, which is the natural shape. Lying on it stretches the vertebrae and that helps it get back to normal shape. It arrived last Thursday and it really works wonders. I can recommend to anyone, and while it is a bit expensive, it is worth every penny.

The neck soothing and stretching device

 

Another good thing is happening in Canada. Alex is working on setting up a kayak training business, and I have offered to help with the paperwork. As all of it is done online, I can help from here and he was happy to accept my offer. He had done a business plan and started advertising his services online. I looked at his questionnaire, which was pretty good and he also sent me the analysis of 46 answers, which are promising. Obviously, it will not get going until next spring, but working on it now, he might have the bookings organised over winter and ready to go quite early, which is when the ice had melted on the rivers and lakes next year.

Alex in a kayak by a rather large duck

I have also offered to finance some or even all of it, if he wanted, but he declined, suggesting that I loan him the money, which he can pay back once the business is going well. OK, I said, which basically means that if it is successful, I will get my money back, if not, then I am no worse off than in the beginning. I have confidence in my sons, both of them had trauma in their lives, one way or another, in the last few years, and Stephen has successfully come out of his, and so will Alex.

One of thousands of picturesque lakes in Canada

 

And finally the story of the last few days. Geocaching Festival and Competition in the Börzsöny and an extra day beforehand was spent geocaching with my good friend Viktor and while I am still walking like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, it was fantastic and I loved it. On Friday Viktor drove over to us and we went together in the Duster, with me driving, arriving around 8am. We were lucky, as we managed to avoid the much heralded expensive parking in that part of the National Park. It was supposed to start around the time we got there, but we found that the charges only apply at the weekend, so it was free on Friday. A similar situation happened on Saturday, when we also managed to avoid paying, by beating the guy who takes the money by the barrier across the road by about 10 minutes. Even the reputedly very expensive car park 3 miles up into the hills was totally unmanned, so, for once, the parking cost us nothing.

Muggins sporting her new poles

Friday we did a hike up to a lookout tower and to an abandoned mine about 2 miles away and back. We also searched and found another cache on our way back to Bér, but that did not include much walking, while provided a magnificent view of the village of Szokolya to take photos of. That day we only walked about 7 kilometres with about 260 metres of climb, but as we started quite late in the morning, that was fine. The tally of caches was 4 for Viktor and 3 for me, and we got back to Bér happy.

The lookout tower we climbed to

Saturday was a different kettle of fish. We got up at 5:30 am and were there by 7:45 am to start caching. In the meantime, 4 new caches went live, which I knew about, being a moderator, so the details were printed out for us to look at, although I didn't know when they would be published. Thankfully, the owner made them available to find by Friday afternoon, so we started on them first thing Saturday morning. The first one was a 4-parter, showing the remnants of the iron ore mining history of the area, then we went for 3 abandoned quarries, which were all quite spectacular. 

An exceptionally pretty tree on our hike

 

We also dropped in Geocaching Headquarters, to log the event cache, chat with friends and pick up our ordered T-shirts. We never compete, as we prefer geocaching without the pressure of competition. We met many friends we know, although missed a few, especially Ica, whom I like, but we went before they arrived, and by the time we got back to the centre, they were out competing. 

The Geocaching Festival's event centre

 

After our visit to the centre, we then drove to the far car park and started our big hike of the day from there. The first abandoned quarry was in a most exciting, rough, really abandoned part of the forest, where even the forestry seems to do no work whatsoever. Paths were overgrown, fallen branches everywhere, but it was really fun getting there. The cache was easy to find and we even had a little cachers' meeting there, having been caught up by many others. We are really slow, but I was happy to make it at all, never mind at what speed.

My friend Viktor by an abandoned iron mine

For the second abandoned quarry we had to return almost to base, and then walk up to it on a wide metalled forestry road. All in all we walked 12 km with 420 metres of climb that day, which made a total over the two days of 19 km with 650 metres of climb. For an old, arthritic girl with heart disease, that was not too bad. Mind you, I am still walking like a crippled duck, as the lactic acid is very slow to disperse in my muscles, but I was happy as Larry at the end of the day, to have succeeded in my goal of hiking again. The total tally of caches for me was 10 and 13 for Viktor including some moving caches en route home.

Bajdázó-lake near Királyrét

Now we are preparing to travel to BP tomorrow and hopefully also arrange the pickup of about 200 kg of plums in our usual plum orchard in Galgaguta. I have to ring the owner to ask when we can go for it. I suppose, it will be like most previous years: he tells us to go when it is the most inconvenient, but such is life, as the saying goes.

Study route post with the iron miners' emblem

Hopefully I will not forget the next post and it'll appear on its normal day, or near to it.

Ancient slag heap in the depth of the forest