6 caches and 5 graves

Before I get to unravel the mystery of the title, let us start at the beginning.  The day after I last posted Brexit happened. There is no way I am prepared to revisit any of it here, so if you are interested in my opinion or Roy's for that matter, visit FB!

Ros and Ian by the basalt columns

And then on Friday Ros and Ian arrived.  We had some problem connecting up at Hatvan Railway Station as it seemed to have a large number of exits, but finally Roy came across them while I was in the loo. A quick sprint up Route 21 got us to the start of our hike by Somoskő Castle.  That walk was really spectacular and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. We started steeply down to the stream on a rocky path, passing by a "stone sea", which was basically a scree slope with medium size rocks. The path flattened out down by the stream, then we crossed on a cute little bridge and started climbing up on the other side.

The forest in the valley en route to the quarry

Large old trees, mostly beech, but there were some oaks and maple as well, delighted us and many a photograph was clicked. We read all the information boards along the study trail, mostly about the forest and the industrial past of the area. The route more or less followed the now non-existent tracks of the narrow gauge railway that took away the quarried basalt from the quarry we were aiming at.

The wall of the quarry from below

En route we found an interesting looking lookout tower, but we left that for the return trip.  Finally we arrived at the end of the study trail at the bottom of one of the 35m high quarry faces, showing clearly the columns and benches of the sedimentary rock they quarried in the past.  Roy decided to have a rest there and while he was doing that Ros, Ian and I climbed to the top of the quarry for the view and to place my 9th geocache.

Sheer drops on either side hidden by vegetation

The views were spectacular, if somewhat worrying for Ian, who was petrified of losing Ros down the sheer drops. Our sole male stayed long way back from the edge, but the two girls bravely hopped onto a bit of a promontory where the views were out of this world.

On the lookout tower with the castles in the background

The cache was securely placed, with the assistance of Ros and Ian and then we returned to Roy and our way back to the car. As agreed, we climbed up to the top of the lookout tower, which also provided some spectacular views towards both castles on the horizon.

As the weather was pretty hot, we got the shopping done in Lidl quickly and retired to the Wild Flowers Restaurant in Kozárd. The food, the service and the prices were excellent and we departed with full tummies and very happy indeed.

The view from the lookout tower

On our return 75% of our party had a siesta and I went on the computer to deal with photos and other matters.  Unfortunately, this week the proofreading was put on the back burner, so I don't think I will be able to finish everything, but I am doing my best before the deadline of 1st July.

As our trip to the quarry was quite gruelling in the high heat, we chose some more sedentary pursuits on the Saturday.  We all had a lie-in of sorts and then proceeded to harvest our Morello cherry crop. We have had better, but also worse, so we ended up with about between 6 and 7 kilos of fruit after stoning. Ros and I did the stoning and the men were in charge of cooking and bottling. It all added up to nearly 10kg of jam, now safely packed away in many bottles.

Harvesting

On the ladder, getting to the high ones

Lunch was taken at Mill Court in the village, where we all had a mixture of Phillipino and Hungarian cuisine and admired the development of the mill complex since our last visit. They still have three buildings to renovate/rebuild, but that will take a bit of time, now that the restaurant and guesthouses are fully operational, albeit only at weekends.

I had a long chat with the owner who promised me some old, pre-renovation photos (yet to arrive) and he showed me an interesting looking cave where I could hide my box for the cache I am planning to place there sometime this summer.

The merry band has assembled

And then on Sunday we returned to town, giving Ros and Ian a lift, as they were invited to a birthday party and I went to attend the Hash. There was a jolly good crowd there, numbering aroung 9 or 10, which was pretty good compared with recent attendences. Other than Rabies, Baldrick, Tittitata and Stiff Nipples, I didn't know the rest. The novice, nobody other than Tittitata knew, was called Pankaj and he seemed a happy and nice fellow. The rest of them have recently joined the group since I haven't been due to my rib injury. The nationalities of the other three were 1 English, 1 Canadian and 1 American. The English guy was an old Brightonian, so when Roy joined us after the run in the pub, he had a partner for reminiscing about the old days for hours. The Canadian guy was also our hare who was scheduled for a naming after the run and the American guy was a temporary resident and an old hasher in his own country.

Awaiting the start of the hash

We all got on the Metro first and then bus no. 21A to get to the end and then the fun started.  As our virgin Canadian hare, ably (or otherwise) assisted by Stiff Nipples asked for at least a half hour to get ahead, we had to go to the nearby pub to put away a few beers. Needless to say I didn't, but the rest seemed to imbibe profusely. Finally we got going and while I wasn't really running, more like fast walking, I managed to keep up with the front pack for a good while.  Mostly because they could be heard all round the forest shouting and also because they got stuck quite a few times, and while hunting for the route forward we caught them up.  I say we, because Bankrupt, who is also a walker, not a runner, teamed up with me bringing up the rear. I actually found a lovely new friend.  We enjoyed each other's company and keeping up the banter we hardly noticed the privations of the route, which were many.

Bankrupt

First of all it was nearing 40 degree Celsius. Secondly, there were quite a few very steep uphill climbs, sometimes at 45 degree gradient and finally, some of the route led us through complete jungle full of mosquitoes and other nasties.  The final stab in the back, however, was the closure of the planned beer stop near the top, due to storm damage the previous night. This misfortune affected Bankrupt more than me, but I was also looking forward to replenish my water bottle, which was pretty empty by then.

Finally, the exertions of the route included a small cave, which the two of us wisely avoided crawling through, such are the advantages of lagging behind: you don't get bullied into doing silly things, as the rest of them were ahead by miles at that stage.  Finally, we caught them up at the very top, as they were descending from the top of the lookout tower, where they spent about as much time as it had taken for us to catch up. The trail, in the meantime, went cold.  Baldrick and his merry band had serious problems finding it.  In the meantime Rabies had departed, due to a choir performance he was appearing in, but nobody was none the wiser about which direction the trail went. Baldrick was just telling us that there was no sign of any markings, when I spotted one about 6 inches from his head on a tree. He was not happy having a mere woman being more observant than him, but quickly disappeared ahead to lead the trail.

The lookout tower ahead

Then followed a steep 2km descent all the way to a pub/cafe in the next valley Northwards. Where both hares were awaiting the group with big grins on their faces. The cheeky buggers were welcoming us with "We thought you would be another 45 minutes!" Huh, no such thing,  We are not that bad, we said and all attacked several pints at once. With practically all food having been already consumed by others, and even if there was anything left I couldn't have eaten any of it anyway, I ended up with 3 strudels (2 with cottage cheese and 1 with cherries for filling) which kept the wolf from the door until we got to the restaurant a lot later. Bankrupt thanked me for my company, a compliment that I have returned at once. He is a fun guy with a brilliant sense of humour and he didn't seem to mind my politics which converged from his quite a way to the left.

The circle was hilarious, as usual, or perhaps even a bit more funny due to the presence of our colonial friends, who entertained us and anyone around with a rudimentary understanding of American English, with very rude yankee hash songs.  Our Canadian young man had his naming ceremony with flour and beer on his head and is henceforth called Roger the Bus Boy. That being an allusion to Roger the Cabin Boy in Captain Pugwash, with the word "Bus" relating to his drunken adventures one night taking several buses in a variety of wrong directions and ending up at 3am about 10 miles from home.

The circle

I rang Roy to let him know where we were going for a very late lunch and he joined us there promptly. Him and Bankrupt then proceeded to ignore everybody else, as well as the footie on the telly, to reminisce about the 1950's, 60's and 70's in Brighton.

Stiff Nipples up side down

I had to leave before the rest of them as my wall had just hit me, considering I have been up since 4am that day, that was not surprising.  It was a fantastic day and I am looking forward to more like this when we are in town during the summer. Which, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) is not often.

Monday was spent mostly getting over the weekend, although we managed to fit in a little outing to do some shopping and a lovely lunch at the Jelen. Tuesday dawned yet again a hot and this time also humid day, but we were off on two adventures, which finally might explain the caches and graves mentioned in the title.

Roy promised to one of his Australian family history contacts that given the opportunity, he would go to the Jewish Cemetery and photograph the graves of his ancestors. You need to know that the Jewish Cemetery in these parts suffered neglect for about 60-70 years and they have only recently started on clearing out the jungle vegetation that had grown up in the meantime. Needless to say, more than half of the graves we were looking for were either missing or were in plots that were totally inaccessible due to thick, thorny vegetation plus millions of mosquitoes and other insects.

Two graves in a tidy plot

We have spent about 3 or possibly nearer 4 hours there, fighting the jungle and trying to identify old, overgrown graves.  The final tally of 5 clearly identifiable graves was a miniscule percentage on the list, but we were glad we managed that many.  In one case, we actually struggled to grave 10, only to find out at home on the computer, that the reason for not finding any name even remotely similar to the one we were lookng for was that in that plot they have probably started numbering the graves from the other end, not the one we have encountered on every other plot before.  Still, we usually like these jaunts of a practical nature, as it makes such change from doing family history research sitting in front of and staring into a computer screen.

And another one in one no so much

After this we then proceeded to try and find some of the town caches I still haven't got. The final tally of those was 1 better than the graves and they included the national memorial place for the martyrs of the 1956 revolution, an old and recently beautifully restored chateau, the little hill at the end of the old runway at the airport, from which you can see planes taking off and landing and another 3 showing us interesting places in the XVIIth and VIIIth districts of the city. These included an old water tower, a church, a chapel, a local wood and the outer marker radar dish by the airport.  All in all, we had a good, if somewhat hot, mosquito laden and exhausting day. Falling into bed last night was rather early for both of us.

Today is a resting day, catching up on blog, FB, cache pages, and a few assorted things, like sleep.  Unfortunately, our plans for tomorrow have fallen through due to Ros and Ian's schedule changing, but we might go to the Börzsöny instead to do some geocaching and see the Miksa Róth Memorial House with them later, possibly in September, when they will be back again.

1956 memorial place in the cemetery

The renovated old chateau

The water tower

Air traffic control

The small chapel in  district XVIII

Pretty flora in a town wood

A bit of caching, a fair amount of hiking, some proofreading and enjoying the garden

The day after I last posted Roy and I drove to Bercel to place the moving cache that had to be placed near a chateau. Bercel has 3 of them, so I thought that might do it. It turned out quite hard to find a place where the box would be safe and the chateau that relates to it is visible from. Finally, we hid it between the front wall of the chosen chateau and a lamp post covered by stones and grass. I was worried about it getting nicked, as it was in the middle of the village, but thankfully it only had two finders and the second one moved it on, so I will not be held responsible for it disappearing.

The chateau where the moving cache went

Currently I am eyeing up another moving one which is on a mountain about 40 miles from here. I don't want to drive nearly 80 miles for just one cache, so I am waiting to see if it could be done from town on public transport next week.  That would be much less effort in driving, much more environmentally friendly and a lot cheaper too. Apparently it does not move too often, so there is a chance that it will still be there next week.

The cover of the new edition

The rest of  last week until Friday afternoon was mostly spent by doing some proofreading for my comrades in London. A new edition of Trotsky's Stalin is coming out and I took on some proofreading, which is hard work, but very enjoyable.  It will be a fantastic new edition, free of the falsifications by Charles Malamuth, its original translator/editor and with new material recently translated from many of the original Russian documents in the Harvard Trotsky archives.

On Friday afternoon I took the 3.55pm bus into town again for yet another theatre visit.  This time Donald Margulies' Time Stands Still was on at the same theatre where I went on Monday.  I love that place, they put on stuff I usually enjoy with good directors and actors. Friday night was no different.  I had just as good a time as I did on Monday and learnt about a playwright whom I have so far didn't know.

The two main characters from Time Stands Still

Some time ago the plan was that I'll go hiking and caching with my girlfriends on Sunday in the Pilis, but then we took on some guests from the Mill and I thought I ought to go home on Saturday morning to help out. In the last minute the guests have cancelled, but by that time I was in town and thought that while I didn't want to wait until Sunday, I still felt like a nice caching hike myself. Also, the route I planned would have been much easier to do from top to bottom, which the girls wouldn't do as they always insist on going by car and then you have to return to the car at the end. Not to mention the fact that they are not that good on getting out of bed early, so with them we always start far too late and well into the hottest part of the day. So, cut a long story short, I decided to do my planned hike on Saturday, on my own and travelling to the start and back from the finish by public transport.  This way it became a linear hike with 4 caches and mostly downhill.

The one bridge over the stream before hopping on rocks started

After catching two buses, I was at the trail head quite high up on the mountain by 8.45am.  Other than a rather slow young couple, whom I have caught up and then left well behind, there wasn't a soul on the mountain. The first half of my hike was through an ever narrowing, much storm damaged, exciting and very romantic valley, which ended up tight enough to be a gorge in places. I had to cross the stream in the middle of it at least a dozen times and only once on a bridge. The rest of the time I had to balance on wobbly rocks, which was definitely exciting. Took lots of photos, although the light conditions were not optimal in such a narrow and deep valley.

The gorgeous view from the lookout point

There I had to find 4 places, 3 belonged to one multi parter cache, plus a standard one near a spring. Once those were done and lots of photos taken, the valley started getting wider and more people and finally cars have appeared too. Once I got to the main tarmac road I had to decide whether I would go for the other two caches or not.  It was pretty hot by then, but I decided to go for it. I had about 3km of hot, busy, uphill  road to contend with, but at least it went past a gorgeous lookout point where you could see all the way down to the river and across it to the next range of mountains. It was breath taking to stand there and I even managed to ask a complete stranger to take a picture of me, which was unusual.  I am not particularly photogenic, but what the heck, Rene always complains about me missing from my own pictures, so I went for it.

Muggins at the lookout point

At the top I had an ice cream and a litre of water at the restaurant by the castle.  I did have some water with me, but the weather got so hot that it  ran out earlier than I expected. Decided not to visit the castle, as it was full of wall to wall tourists by then and quickly disappeared down a steep and wild path to my next cache. Originally I only planned three, but I discovered later that my route went past another one, so I got 4 at the end.

By the last cache, the Matthias Spring

The last cache was by a lovely old spring and there I made an attempt at a self portrait with the delayed exposure on the camera.  I keep forgetting it has that facility.  It worked a treat, so Rene should be happy. This time, when I had nobody with me I had taken more pictures of myself than when I have friends around me.

Once I got down to river level I quickly found the bus stop and amazingly it came in about 3 minutes.  Considering that there are only 2 buses an hour and they go within 5 mintues of each other (don't ask me why?) I was lucky. That day was magical.  I rediscovered the beauty of being in the wild on my own. I will have to do this more often, as being your own master, deciding your own speed, your own rest times, how long you spend looking for a cache and when to stop, is a luxury only afforded to single hikers. I loved it and want to do more of it.

One of the gorgeous two tone roses

Come Sunday I could have stayed, but I decided to go home on the 7.20am bus.  It was OK, although it wasn't as modern and comfortable as it looked from the outside. It looked big and new, but its suspension was shot and foolishly I sat at the back, so the ups and downs almost made me seasick. Roy looked pleased to see me and I must admit I was pleased to be back.

It seems to be a good year for whites

Since then I have been either enjoying the sun or hiding from it.  The pattern seems to be that we do some gardening, harvesting, photographing in the early morning or in the late afternoon.  The rest of the time is spent indoors on the computer, especially for me as this proofreading is a slow business. My eyes are really tired and I seemed to have slowed right down because of it. Staring into the screen the words start getting jumpy, out of focus and my eyes get very tired. Alternatively, I do have a paper copy now, but the print is tiny in that, so the same problem applies.Still, the deadline is 1st July, so I plod on, but I very much doubt if I will be able to do the lot. Such is life!

The garden is in full swing now.  The strawberries have finished, the raspberries are ripe and so are the cherries.  The peas won't be long, neither will the Morello cherries.  This is going to be a good plum year, the trees are so laden with fruit that we had to prop them up. Let's hope we won't have to buy too much extra fruit for the cefre! The apples look OK too, let's hope no disease, insects or hailstorms take them from us ahead of their time!

They look pretty enough to eat!

Oh yes, we had all these on our cornflakes this morning.

The roses are also at a stage where the first flush of blooms have given way to the second swathe. The deep reds and the whites are gorgeous this year, but the two tone ones are not bad either.  I love sitting out in the yard, reading or working and being surrounded by their beauty and fragrance.

Today and tomorrow I will still be doing as much proofreading as my eyes will allow and then on Friday Ros and Ian arrive and we should have 2 or 3 lovely days with them,  going on hikes, just hanging out, eating, drinking and having fun. Will post again sometime next week, which will be spent in town, seeing a variety of people, shopping, doing a bit of family history research and caching.

Friends, caching and a brilliant play

You may recall that I finished the last post with not knowing how this weekend just gone would pan out.  Well, it was an all round, resounding success! But before I go onto that, let me outline what happened on Friday, 10th June. Roy came geocaching with me to the Matra mountains, which was really nice of him.  Still, I suppose he also wanted to go to the DIY store and Tesco near there, but he drove me quite a long way to catch a moving cache and two others. The moving cache was by a lovely chateau, the other two in a pretty  park by a lake and by some ancient big boulders.  I did bring home the moving one, so I will have to place it this week somewhere near another chateau.  I know where it is going: to a village which boasts 3 chateaux and 5 manor houses and it is only about half an hour by car from here.

The chateau at Parádsasvár in the Mátra

Anyway, now for our weekend. Finally, we downgraded it to just a simple friends' weekend gathering with food, drink, chats, hikes and a bit of culture thrown in. The reason why it was such a fantastic weekend, is entirely due to our guests. May I introduce them to you one by one, please:

Pityu

Pityu is a lovely man, of whom I still don't know much. I met him last October, which is when I saw him last before this weekend, at my hashing friend David's 60th birthday party.  The party was actually taking place at Pityu's house in the country and that weekend was also fantastic with lots of activity and tremendous hospitality on his part.  This is, basically, why I invited him, we both really wanted to return the compliment. He has lost his beloved wife of many years 4 years ago and is living a solitary life. He is a good cook and turned up with a large pan of fish soup, which was absolutely delicious. We loved his company and he had already invited us to his place again together with the others.

Agi on the left, Erzsi on the right

Erzsi is a nice lady of about Roy's age who is an excellent photographer and whom I also met for the first, and until last weekend the last, time at David's 60th. We chatted a lot and I did say that I would love to see her again.  She also lives in the country and she already suggested that I go to Transylvania on a hiking trip with her next summer.  We'll see! She also invited the whole group to her house in the country for a weekend, so we have definitely made two new good friends the weekend gone.

David

David is a fellow hasher, who hails from Guildford originally. He travels a lot for his job, but when he is around he is an absolute delight.  He is the epitome of the English gentleman: calm, quiet, with great sense of humour, very kind, helpful and nice to have around.  He knows how to have a good time, as I will never forget his face last time he was out here and the colour of his face after a night of hard drinking.

Agi

Finally, last, but not least, Agi, David's partner, who is one of the nicest women I have ever met. She is also a hasher and Scottish dancer. In fact, that is how her and David met - in Vienna on a Scottish dancing outing. She has two grown up sons and she is just really nice to have around.

Dishing out the curry on Friday night

The program included a large chicken and veg curry that Roy made, a fantastic fish soup that Pityu made, lots of cakes, beer, wine and palinka, plus a meal out at the our own Mill Court in the village for a delicious lunch on Sunday. Activities included a guided tour of our garden, barn, 2 cellars and 3 houses, a walk round the village visiting the church and meeting the vicar's new wife, which was a treat. On Saturday we went for a lovely long hike to an abandoned quarry through an ancient forest and on the way back visited a World Heritage site village and castle. On Sunday we walked to the andesite outcrop above the village, returning via the ridge behind it which included a fight with some serious jungle. We should have taken machetes, or at least some secateurs. We made it home and I even got a lift from Agi and David into town at the end.

On the hill above Hollókő Castle

They even managed to get Roy play bridge, which I didn't want to believe. On Saturday night I wasn't feeling well, so went to bed early, but Roy stayed and apparently played very good bridge. The alternative hash, that those that didn't come held in town has gone down well also, and they ended up at a beer fest. We haven't missed them one bit and to be honest, I am going to stick to small, informal gatherings of good friends and nice people from now on.

On a fallen log en route down from the andesite outcrop

On Monday I had a theatre ticket together with a good friend to see Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek's play, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  This is an adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's film from the 1980's and it was absolutely superb. The adaptation, the staging, the acting, the singing, the direction and anything and everything that went on was fantastic.  You couldn't fault it.  Well, perhaps occasionally the music was too loud, but I wrote that down to getting old and not liking noise any more. I loved the fact that all the principals, bar one, were women. That the conclusion at the end was, that you don't have to have a man at any cost. Very 1980's I know, but I was young then, so that is what I like. I must admit, I had probably the best night out in a theatre for a very long time last night.

The Women on the Verge of a Nevous Breakdown

And one more lovely thing happened on Sunday, admittedly a very long way away, but it made me happy: Lewis Hamilton won the Canadian Grand Prix. Yipppeeeee!!

Lewis en route to victory!!

Must go now, be good and I might talk to you again next week!

Opera, photography, gardening, proofreading - in other words, quite a normal week!

I left you last week with the prospect of a modern rendering of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  And it most certainly was that. Thomas Ades is English and the music was fascinating, interesting and generally enjoyable. The libretto did not completely destroy Shakespeare and all in all I had an unexpectedly good time.  This time Andor turned up and while I had no idea what happened to Kati (Bozsa was obviously on her honeymoon) at least I wasn't alone, like the week before.

The Tempest by Thomas Ades

And on Thursday Andor came at 10am and all three of us departed for Bér. We did some shopping at Tesco's en route down and the weather was promising for the weekend. We decided to attend the photomarathon on Friday and Saturday, as Andor had to leave early on Sunday. We went and registered on Friday morning and then proceeded to get two geocaches before the official programs started.

Andor in one of the abandoned quarries

The first one was a multi on a study trail through and above an old, abandoned andesite quarry. The forest was majestic, the old rocks fascinating and the cache turned up quite easily. The second one was up at the end of the valley Gizi and I abandoned when I got ill last September and it most certainly was a steep and thorny jungle we had to climb up through to get to the cache.

The view from the hill we climbed to our 2nd cache

After we got these two we went to attend our first official event, which was supposed to cover portrait photography, but it being in the magnificent upland country of the Medves Plateau, we ended up on a rocky outcrop with the models balancing on rock ledges and us surrounding them with cameras.  We scarpered after about half an hour as I spotted the rain coming on the horizon in the form of a rather black cloud.  It started raining just as we got back to the car, so we were lucky.

Andor on the Witch's Rock

I realised, of course, that my knowledge of the science of photography is nil and surrounded by photo boffs, I didn't feel like I was producing pictures anywhere near the quality of theirs.  I am not sure if I am into photography so much that it would be worth my while to learn all that, but I am considering it at the moment. The first two steps would have to be: 1. starting to photograph in RAW and 2. downloading and learning how to use Photoshop. We'll see!

We got home in time to have dinner and fall into bed, as we were getting up at 2am to get to Somoskő by 3.50am for a 4.00am start to hike to Macskalyuk in Slovakia.  The latter is an old abandoned basalt quarry from which you can photograph both Somoskő and Salgó castle as if they were close to each other. I have already photographed in the past one from the other in both directions, but haven't had a chance to have both in one photo until now.

The two castles behind each other lit up by the rising sun

The hike was really nice, we started off in pitch dark and then slowly the light and then the sun came up.  We were thankfully at the top of the quarry already as the sun was appearing, so a few decent photos could be taken, but about 10-15 minutes later the sky went cloudy and the sun never came back. I enjoyed crawling through the vegetation to a rock outcrop, top of which proved a marvellous place to take photos from.

The sun coming up over the plateau

Later on when we were returning, we also climbed a lookout tower and there were a few good photos taken from there as well. The forest was also very nice, although the light conditions were not optimal in the densest parts.  All in all, this crack of dawn treck and all the photography was delightful, if somewhat exhausting.

In the afternoon we went down a mine, which is not now used for mining coal and I must admit I was grateful for wearing a helmet, as I would have cracked my head open more than once without it.  Photography opportunities down there were limited, but I managed to snap the back of Andor a few times. We also took in another cache on Saturday, which occasioned a 3.5km hike up onto a beautifully forested little peak and on our return we also visited a basalt outcrop which had columns like organ pipes.

The basalt columns

The balance of these couple of days was: lots of photographs, 3 geocaches, visiting two places around the Medves Plateau I have never been before to plus the trip down the mine.  Most enjoyable and profitable all round.

While Andor and I were away taking pictures and hiking, Roy was looking after 11 guests from a local wedding, who had stayed the night. We were doing this as a favour to our friends, the owners of Mill Court, as being rather silly, they did not include sufficient number of guest rooms in their otherwise lovely development in and around an old water mill.  I think they can only accommodate 12 or 13, so with our 14 beds things were eased a bit for them. We do not really want to do this as a business, so we agreed that Anna will do all the paperwork and we help out now and then when we can.

After the guests as well as Andor went, the house became all quiet again.  We love company, but almost the best bit is when things are back to peaceful and relaxed. We did endless number of wash loads on Sunday and Monday, which included all the bedding and our clothing. Thankfully the weather was good enough to dry everything outside. Another job I promised to do has finally turned up this week.  I am proofreading a new edition of Trotsky's biography of Stalin for my friends in London. Hard work, but I love it as I get to read things first off. The deadline is early July, so I'd better get on with it.

My beloved two tone rose

We also did quite a lot of work in the garden. Some more mowing and strimming, covering the bottoms of the fruit trees with plastic protection against damage by the mower and strimmer, digging up the tarragon which had got to large and invasive, tying up the peas which have got jungle like and, of course, photpgraphing our roses, which are now in full bloom.

The new pear tree is already producing

The fruit crop is looking very promising this year, but that also causes problems as the weight of too much fruit can and usually does snap the branches.  We are off tomorrow to the DIY and lumber store to get some supports for the trees.

This coming weekend we were originally expecting a large crowd of hashers, but one by one they cried off and we now only have 4 people coming, unless, of course, they cry off as well.  We'll see.  To be quite honest, I will be a little bit sad, as there are some really delightful people amongst them, but I also like peace and quiet and not having to run around anyone.  So, I'll be happy whichever way this weekend pans out.

I am rather sleepy, so I'll wrap it up here and will talk to you again sometime next week.