The gap of 10 days in posting has been inevitable, due to so much activity that I could barely breathe, never mind write. I will try to be concise, otherwise this will end up a saga, not a blog post. The last 10 days contained two main events: 1. Jack's visit; 2. Another 4-day outing, this time to celebrate my birthday and do some caching in the flatlands.
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| One of many lookout towers in the flatlands |
Jack's visit was about as painless as it could be. He is a delightful young man, considerate, clean, quiet and a pleasure to have around. His job over in Budapest was to deal with the crisis in Fáklya and hopefully help it to carry on solving its own problems. The weather was still tropical, so we all had to use the air conditioning quite a lot. He spent most of his time out, talking to people and trying to gauge the degree of chaos in the group.
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| The Inn at the edge of the puszta |
He talked to most of them, appraised what he heard and finally made a decision. Adriam had to be suspended, and this was done by a letter to every member. In the meantime Zsófi suspended her own membership until September, but I could not make head or tail of her reasons. Still, that is nothing new, so I ignored it the best I could. I hope the group will establish a new regime without Adriam and that a new leadership can be elected for a better future.
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| The stables at our B&B |
On Friday last week Jack left for London and we managed to take him to the airport en route to Bugac, which was the starting location of our little 4-day holiday. The idea was a good one when I planned it and made the reservations with the narrow gauge railway company and our B&B's. Since then Hungary became a part of the Sahara, and temperatures permanently in the 35-40 degree Celsius range made me doubt the wisdom of the trip.
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| Our little house at the horsey place |
I knew full well that at 76 and 82, we are in the age group that is in serious danger from such permanent high heat, especially in the puszta. That is the big flat nothing in the middle of the country, which can be beautiful, but not at these temperatures. Still, I couldn't go back on any of it at such short notice, so we kept our bookings and got on with it.
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| Bugac railway station |
The idea was to finish the series of narrow gauge railway geocaches, (there's 25 of them), this year. On Friday, we went geocaching a bit beyond Bugac and gathered a good few other caches, after which we arrived at our B&B. It was a horsey place, where they kept lots of these majestic animals, but not for riding, rather for carriage driving. The young lady, who was one of the owners was delightful and we had an entire little house to ourselves on her estate for £20 a night.
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| Roy, me, Mariann, Gabi, Hajni and Wilka |
It lacked AC and WiFi, but the charm of the place and of the people made up for that. Saturday and Sunday were the days of two trips into the puszta, first on the narrow gauge railway, then a hike in the puszta for another two caches and then return. At end of the hike there was an Inn, which was famous for its food, so all looked ship shaped and bristol fashion. Saturday was a small party, only 4 of them plus myself. It was fun, especially the choo choo train ride on some rail carts, not a proper train.
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| The larger group on Sunday |
This railway line closed 15 years ago, and it was only last year that some enthusiasts decided to have a go and restore some of it. Unfortunately, their engine is still in the repair shed and they have no money to mend it, so they gathered some of these rail carts and connected them together for taking people out in. It was great fun. The engines were from an old Trabant and a Hungarian Pannónia motor cycle. It was great fun, watching one of the guys jump out at the one and only road crossing with a lollipop, making sure we made no damage in passing traffic or that it didn't make any damage in us.
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| Getting ready for the rail cart journey |
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| The smaller train in the front on Sunday |
The hike was a different kettle of fish. About 2 km into it I started feeling really funny. I got very weak and dizzy. As I was drinking water every 5 minutes, I don't think it was dehydration, more like something not quite right with my heart due to the temperatures. I was saved by my really good friends, Wilka and Hajni, who looked after me beautifully. Hajni made me stop, I was lucky to find a fallen tree branch in the shade to sit on and waited. She didn't let me move and we chatted, while Wilka and Gabi, the other really fit person in our group, went ahead and made contact with Roy, and the two of them returned in the Duster to take all of us back to our B&B.
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| A beautiful old smock mill without sails, alas |
After this dramatic rescue, Roy and I had a rest, and later on the afternoon went out to visit a few more caches in the area. At he end of this day we were half way through or trip and tried to sleep enough to be up to the last two days. On Sunday, we were up early and went to the railway station in good time to receive a much bigger group. Altogether there were 16 people who got going on the little train, after a few birthday presents to me, a group photo and a really good video of the departure of the little train. I could only shoot it because I wasn't going with them and could stand by the side, rather than sit on the rail cart, like on Saturday.
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| A glorious morning sky at the our Bugac B&B |
This group had a fantastic time too, although they also had someone flake out, like I did the day before, except that their solution was much more fun than a frog march in the desert and a car rescue. They found a horsey place close to where they were stuck and for just over a tenner, one of the guys got his horse and cart out of the stables and carried them out of the desert to the Inn. They rested, drank and ate something, I was told later, and thought it was the best adventure they had in a long while.
Roy and I managed a few more caches in the nearby area both on that day, plus the last day, when we cached all day en route home to BP. We even managed to drive home on the M4, instead of the M5, which had road works and plenty of accidents to make miles and miles of jams in the heat.
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| An old wooden bridge with a few new metal bits for safety |
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| 5 large and 4 small jars of peach jam |
This week is for catching up, both in the house and the garden, plus for geocaching paperwork, which usually takes me a week to catch up on. The plans are that we stay here until we have to get back to BP next week to prepare the flat for the invasion by Stephen and the kids. Let us hope the heatwave started to get down to bearable temperatures by then and the both the kids and their dad has a good time. Stephen is taking his girlfriend to the Adriatic for a week, while we have the boys. Elian will have some climbing tuition, while Xander has a week of football camp with Buda Juniors, the kids' team he trained a couple of times with at Easter when they were over here last.
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| Xander at Buda Juniors last spring |
Next post hopefully on or around next Wednesday, but the next 2 or 3 weeks will be hectic, so do not bank on it!
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