New doctor and some more geocaching

Last Wednesday I went to see the dermatologist, and while she seemed nice, I had a feeling that she could have been more thorough and informative. That clinic has never failed us yet, and neither did she, but not on the level of enthusiasm and thoroughness as I had from other doctors there before. The upshot was that she wants to take one of my spots off my back (nothing to do with the purpose of my visit) and thankfully she confirmed that no sign of the condition  we were worried about could be seen on my skin. However, I want to be sure, even if I was totally satisfied with her diagnosis, so she promised to arrange for a quote to be sent about a genetic test, which is the only sure way of getting to the bottom of this condition. No quote arrived yet, I wonder if I should forget about her and do my own research into genetic laboratories? We'll see!

Blue Bloods cast

During last week I have finally caught up with my backlog of television, which is great as originally I thought I am so busy that it'll take several more weeks. The main event, however, was my trip to Pécs for the big geocaching hike that my friend Feri and I were organising.  Towards the very end we had a slight falling out, which was my fault as much as it was his.  The hike included a very dangerous cache, which was half way down a massive rock face. Feri organised someone to come and bring his rope and associated equipment to secure our descent to the cache. He was not very communicative about the details and when I quizzed him on it got a bit shirty. Needless to say I got all worked up too and he lost his rag and slammed the phone down. Male ego is an evil beast, and he has plenty of it.  Still, I shouldn't have said that should anyone fall off the rock, that would be on his conscience forever.

Pecs comm and TV tower

I apologised if I upset him and left it at that. He never responded, so I went South with great trepidation on what he is going to be like. I should not have worried, he was as sweet as pie, as if nothing had happened. Phewwww!!! The hike itself was an enormous success. Over 60 cachers turned up, we had fantastic weather (even though it rained both the day before and the day after) and everybody gathered lots of new caches for themselves.

Group photo before start of hike

I went down by train on the Friday with my friend Mariann and her friend Gabi. We dumped our gear at the hotel first and then went caching by bus and on foot. We managed to get 5 caches that afternoon, including one that was the last cache on the hike, but this way we saved ourselves at least a kilometre at a stage in the hike when we knew we would be knackered.

The lookout tower

On the day we had 13 caches, plus a couple of mobile caches that others have brought, and I have found all of them. There was a wide variety of locations, all of them up steep, rocky and forested hills. We had to visit about 20 locations as three of the caches were multis. We saw some glorious views, incredibly high rock pillars, medieval monastery ruins, lookout towers, springs, a sylvan exercise course and a few others besides.

Muggins on the rock face with the cache

I managed to chat to many people, new ones among them, which was nice. Obviously, the highlight of the day was the rock climb, ably assisted by Zergi and his girlfriend ésKata. I think I was the oldest overall, but definitely the oldest woman that did the climb and got applause at the end. It was amazing, how rock climbing and scrambling skills will never die.  It is at least 30 years since I was on rock, but as I started climbing down all the moves came to me automatically and easily. Zergi was quite impressed and I was really ecstatic.

Looking for the cache on top of a rock pillar

On Sunday my friend Gyuri went to get three easy caches before going home and took me with him in his car. That was fun. The first one was in a village that is famous for its Gypsy Mayor. He proved that even in a community which is primarily Gypsy and with unemployment very high among them, you can provide opportunities for everyone to give the best of themselves and ultimately gain the self-respect that would lead you out of poverty and give you a future.

The old monastery church

He established local democracy, everybody in the village has a say in what they do and how they do it. The atmosphere of the place was peaceful, tidy, clean and happy. If only others would take a leaf out of his book, there could be many more harmonious communities in villages up and down the land! The next cache was by a lovely old church and the last one behind a pretty stages of the cross up a hillside. We got all of them quite easily, took some nice photos and after that Gyuri took me to the station to catch my train home.

Lewis in pensive mood

On Monday I was having a rest, as the list of my parts that didn't hurt was a lot shorter than those that did. Also, I had to do the usual paperwork to do with the caches and finally watch the US Grand Prix which was quite crucial for Hamilton, if he wanted to secure his world championship for 2018. The race was pretty interesting, especially towards the end, when the first three were only seconds from each other in the last 10 or so laps, which is not normally the case.  Unfortunately Lewis could not overtake Raikonnen and Verstappen, so he ended up third. This still gave him 2 more points than Vettel, his main rival in the championship, who ended up just behind him, so the final reckoning was postponed, probably to next week in Mexico.

View from our highest point towards BP

And today I went on another hike, this time only about 7 or 8km and 4 caches, with my friend Zsuzsi and Jutka. We have not hiked together for nearly a year, but today the weather was good, and both of them felt like getting out into the countryside. The first cache was by a lovely old spring, the second was Part 1 of a multi, but we couldn't find it, the third one was near a non-existent swamp and finally the last one on the hill was at the top with glorious views.  After we got back to the car, we drove to a stages of the cross in Szentendre.

Autumn colours

Now I am ready to go to bed, I feel so done in, but I can't yet, as I would not get a wink of sleep all night if I retired on a full stomach.

Large beech trunks waiting for transport

Waymarks before we started climbing

The start of the descent

Dentist x 2, 11 published caches, Italian food and a geocaching weekend

This post is about yet another hectic week. I am beginning to give up hope that we will ever be able to cut down on activities. Still, I am only doing all this because I love it, so as long as it gives me pleasure, even if it tires me out, I am not likely to give it up.

A spring dedicated to the Virgin Mary

The main event of the beginning of the week was that finally, after 8 months' hard graft my 11 caches at 11 Nógrád springs were published. I was really worried about them, but now that every single one of them was found at least 4 times, and many a lot more times than that, I can be calm and enjoy watching the number of hits rise every day. I am not at all sure that if I knew in February what I know now, whether I would have started it at all. However, now that the pain is over, I am looking forward to the pleasure side of it.

Another spring, this time called after a communist partisan

You may recall that I had to find a dermatologist to investigate my genetic disorder that the ophthalmologist thought he saw at the back of my eyes. I had to study lists of doctors to try and find a dermatologist who is also into genetics, and finally I found two. One of them has consulting hours at the hospital Roy had his operation, so I am going to see her tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that she doesn't find anything too bad!

Alex speaking on Ontario history in the 1990's

I also managed to finish Alex's transcription, which was heavy going and sent it to him to check, edit and then publish. It is always hard to know what to leave out or change when listening to a speech. The style is totally different between oral and written language in most people, but it is a fine line you have to tread when there is a risk that the speaker had something else in mind from the transcriber. The first half did not flow as well as the second one, which is not surprising. The time period covered started in 1995 and finished in 1999. The closer you get to the present time, Alex knew more and more about his subject matter. He had to read up books and many articles, essays etc. for the period he didn't live in Canada and was not as familiar with as the time since he arrived.The last 10 minutes of the video was vintage Alex, but the earlier parts were a bit disjointed at times and as I know very little about Canadian politics, I often couldn't guess what he was on about.  Still, I am glad I have done it, as I have learnt a lot, as well as saved Alex some work.

A Procera implant

I had two visits to the dentist recently, both on Mondays. Last week she did a two faced and a simple filling and that cost about £120. Considering her excellent skill I think that was very cheap. Then yesterday I had a three faced filling, which was only £50, which was even better.  Unfortunately the next lot of work she is doing is going to be £800 by the time she finished, but for that I will get two big Procera crowns and a pin in one of the teeth, made out of fibre glass, to support it. Dental technology has come a hell of a way since my poor old mum worked as an assistant in a shop supplying dentists. It is a price, but the stuff lasts longer and saves you visits to the dentist later.  This Procera brand is from the US, where they have large machines that make porcelain crowns from computerised imprints. Amazing, and if you think that my crowns will come all the way from the US, the price suddenly doesn't seem too expensive. I might also need implants in the future, although annoyingly the two places where I would need them are unsuitable for implantation. One because the undescended tooth is above it and you can only fix implants into bone, and the other because my actual tooth from that space has only recently been extracted and it may be that I am too old to grow enough bone to fix an implant into. We'll see how it goes!

Restaurant on the right, patisserie on the left

Another interesting discovery was made when we went for a lovely lunch on Wednesday in an Italian restaurant called Bocanova. We park the car out at the terminus of the trolley bus that stops in front of our block, as there are no parking restrictions (yet) in that district. En route to and from on the trolley bus we often commented on that restaurant and as we are always after new places to visit, this week was the one when we tried it.  And what a discovery that was! That place is probably the only genuine, high quality Italian place in the entire city. We will go again, that's for sure, and probably take others there to discover this very well kept secret.

Linguini aglio olio e peperoncino

I had my favourite pasta dish, the name of which I never know how to spell, but it is plain durum pasta, cooked al dente and mixed with lots of sliced fresh garlic and olive oil infused with chilies. Roy had also pasta, but his had calamari with it and both of us were absolutely delighted. The next time, I think I am having the fish plate, which has shark in it, a complete novelty for me and Roy will probably go for some meat dish, as there were quite a few exciting ones on the menu.

Transylvanian gate and my friend Feri

And then the main event of the week arrived in the shape of a geocaching weekend away with Roy. These are not very frequent, but he felt like coming this time, as he didn't know the area I was going to. We had a couple of nights in a very nice hotel, which was right next to some medicinal thermal baths, the waters of which, unfortunately, we didn't have the time to try. That was a shame, as the price of our room included free passes to the baths. We will have to return and try the baths then.

A 10km route all over Komárom with Roy. Hotel in NE corner

This time we decided to use our free travel passes and went by train. As the hotel was quite a distance from the train station we invested the princely figure of £2.50 in a taxi ride and arrived in good spirit. One of my geocaching friends, Feri, was due to arrive in the same hotel in the evening, but before that Roy and I decided to go and discover the town of Komárom on foot and find a couple of multi-caches in the process. The weather was glorious, the town quite interesting in places and we did find all cache locations bar three. More about this later!

Courtyard view of one of the forts

Town multis are absolutely perfect for getting to know the attractions of a place.  Komárom's attractions included, the Danube bank, several 18th-19th century military forts, some lovely old buildings, lots of memorials, churches, statues, parks, lakes, barracks and a few besides. We were out for about 5 hours, 1 hour of which was a nice little cafe where we had drinks and surreptitiously ate our sandwiches. This makes for an average of a mile and a half per hour as my hiking map tells me that we walked 10km a.k.a. 6 miles. Roy's feet were hurting by the end of it and my knees were also complaining, but this was very enjoyable indeed.

Down by the Danube

Down on the Danube bank we met a really chatty bloke who was taking the air with his mate. I have to say, that being a very chatty person myself, I never thought I would ever meet anyone who can out-talk me. He certainly did, but that was also part of the charm of the place. It was just before this meeting that we decided that the missing 3 parts of one of the multis would not be visited.  Partially because they were on the other side of the river in Slovakia, partly because Roy managed to get round the need for going there, but how, that should stay our secret.

The boat mill

After Feri arrived in the evening we agreed to go to breakfast at 7am the following morning and start our caching trip in Slovakia as early as we could. We had 10 caches on the list, to which Feri added one more that he failed to spot on the map originally. We got going about 8am or just a bit earlier and got back just after 6pm. Feri drove us in a zig-zag pattern starting to veer towards the NW and then back East, followed by South and finally back West. He ended up driving 300km and the cache total was 10. We had to leave one out at the end, as it was getting dark.

The covered bridge

Some caches were great, some others awful, the sights were variable.  The town of Leva was interesting, with a lovely old castle, the other great place was a monastery with a massive big church and high stone walls.  The latter was a bit stupid cache-wise as we found out later that the coordinates were crap. No wonder we took a while to find it. The star attraction for probably all of us was a gloriously restored boat-mill where they were getting ready for a cooking competition and you crossed the river on a long covered bridge, which was also very pretty.

Gyuri and other caches at the festival

In the evening we discovered the restaurant right across from the hotel was open, so had dinner there. Poor old Feri was so exhausted that he went to bed early after eating very little. Still, he was up early the following morning when we departed to the Gerecse mountains to visit lots of geocachers who were gathering for a festival and competition there.  Feri and I never compete, but it is nice to go and meet up with fellow cachers, some of whom you have probably not seen since the last such event in the spring.

The monastery church at Garamszentbenedek

I picked up my lovely T-shirt, which the club gave to everybody who had found at least 3 of the event caches that were paid for by the National Tourism Agency over the summer. I have visited and found precisely 3: one in Szeged, one in Sátoraljaújhely and the first one in Békéscsaba when visiting my good friend Gyuri for some additional caching in July. I also bought a nice, frosted glass tankard with the geocaching logo on it for Roy at one of the stalls at the festival. He is so difficult to buy anything for, but he was pleased with this one.

A massive rock on the last day

Musicians on top of the rockface

After lots of chatting and socialising, we left the others and started on our return to town, picking up a couple of caches en route. They were both on top of mountains, but unfortunately I left both my phone and my camera in the car for the first one, so no photos from that. The second, also the very last of the weekend was at the end of a not too long hike with some climb, but nothing too serious.  The rocks at the end, however, were. Gorgeous, exposed limestone rocks, the top of which was full of people, including about 5 singers and musicians with drums and recorders. The music could be heard from quite a distance and made the whole affair a bit spooky.

The view

The kids' group on top of the rock

The cache up there was also one that should be published for new cache owners for copying. The coordinates were spot on, the hide was witty, safe and not too difficult to find, due to an excellent and perfect description of it on the cache page. I had to do some lovely scrambling to get to it, which I loved, but at no time did I have the fear of falling, as it was in the forest with trees to hang onto.  The weekend finished on a high, which was really nice.

Another busy week

Most of this week was spent either by the computer or up some mountain or forest. The day after I last posted I was trying desperately to get on with the second half of Alex's transcription, but always something happened to stop me. Then I had to go for an examination of the back of my eye, which brought up some interesting facts.  My eye, as such is fine, but the back of the eye has some strange features which might point to a genetic disorder, so I will have to get that investigated further. When, is anybody's guess as I am totally snowed under presently.

Ian and I just before we turned towards our mountain

Thursday  was the day of the hike with Ros and Ian and it was an epic one yet again. We started with picking up the one that got away the last time, this time trying to attack it from the North. The start of the path at the bottom of the mountain was pretty much invisible, but we found it at the end. The climb was pretty steep, but soon we gained the ridge with panoramic views, so we were happy.  The cache turned up after a small amount of thrashing about and having logged it we sat down on some rocks to have our sandwiches.

Ian striding along the ridge

After we descended to the bottom, we aimed our compass towards a lake a bit NE from where we were. We were heading for two multi-caches, each having three parts. The first one was fine, however, there seemed to be a total jungle of thorny brush and forest between us and the next bit. The fight through that stuff was uncomfortable and painful, but finally we made it through, minus one water bottle and a pair of glasses. Me losing the former and Ian the latter.

The view towards Piliscsaba

The next couple were not too bad, neither was the one after that, albeit we started looking for it on the wrong side of the path first.  Eventually that also turned up, which is more than we can say about the next one.  By now we were all tired, hungry, thirsty and thoroughly fed up with the unmaintained caches that were giving us this much hassle. So we decided to head for Piliscsaba railway station and to the Indian Restaurant where Roy was waiting for us.

Lunch

The meal was gorgeous, as usual, and we took home quite a lot of it, as the somozas and pakoras filled us up so much that the main dish had beaten us both. The left-over curry came in handy the following day when I had my left-over marrow for lunch and Roy had the curry. Soon after lunch I departed to the train station and to Veszprém to stay with my friend Edit for the purposes of some more hiking and geocaching.

Some picturesque berries

Treee growing fungus

Saturday's plan was for 7 caches and we have done 6 of those, which was pretty good. They included the porcelain manufacturing town of Herend, then the old castle ruin of Bánd, followed by a pretty steep climb up to the top of a big mountain with a lookout tower on it. En route up we picked up another cache that celebrates the yew forest on one part of that mountain, which was pretty special.

The lookout tower was quite new, but unfortunately just before we got there 8 4-wheel drive vehicles full of people arrived. Amazing how lazy people can be and how noisy with it. Found the cache quickly, took some photos from the top of the tower and scarpered. We had our lunch at a picnic site about half a mile away in beautiful peace.

Once we were off the mountain we went back to the castle ruin, as we couldn't find the cache originally, but on our way up the mountain met a family who told us where it was. We couldn't miss it, so we had to climb up a little bit from the car park to get it. I am positive it was mostly my stubborn stupidity, coupled with Edit's inexperience that stopped us at the first time.

The Herend porcelain lion

After this excitement we motored to a nearby village with yet another large mountain in its backyard and climbed that as well. The cache was at the top, but before that a near vertical climb with loose stones, nothing to hang onto and scary fallen trees awaited us. This was probably the scariest 400 metres I have ever climbed in my life, during which we gained 140 metres of height.  The view at the end, however, had definitely made up for the struggle to get up there.  Thankfully, on the way down we managed to find a much better route for the descent and while that one wasn't a picnic either, at least there were lots of trees and bushes to hang onto, as well some rock, which is also good enough for hand holds.

The last cache of the day was definitely easier, as it was only about 600 yards from the car. It was a stages of the cross with a cute little chapel at the end. Easy-peasy, we thought, took lots of pictures and headed back to Edit's flat for dinner.  She cooked a delicious veg soup and made a broccoli flan, both of which have disappeared fast.

Esseg Castle in Bánd

On Sunday morning we were both a bit worse for wear, so we decided to be conservative in our choices of caches for the day. We had to do the other lookout tower, which I have been looking at from afar all day Saturday, so we started with that. One of the most magical aspects of that climb, other than it being not a patch on the previous day's death march, was the fact that all along the path we saw a shrub, whose name I have no idea of in English, but it turns red in the autumn. Unfortunately not all of them were fully red, as they need a touch of frost for that, but they were already very pretty.

The steps up to the yew forest

The second cache had beaten us yet again, this time for reasons of a dangerous rock climb that neither of us was prepared to risk our necks at. Thankfully, there was an alternative on an other set of not so large rocks and that we did with no bother. After this one we got going towards the main attraction of the day, a beautiful valley lying deep in the forest, with cool air, ancient maple trees and enormous big rock faces. The cache was hidden in a rock wall, which you had to approach from behind after some steep climbing, again. That was just so spectacular that we didn't mind the climb at all.

An old gnarled yew tree

Having got back to the car, we decided to do two more before lunch, but those were drive-in, so nothing too exciting. The second one provided a bit of fun, as we found 3 young people, dressed in commando fatigues with large carbines playing some war game in the forest about 8 metres from our cache.  When we explained what we were doing, the young woman in the group immediately pointed to the bird box just a few metres away. Still, they were really nice and polite, so we didn't mind meeting them.

Our first lookout tower of the weekend

Called after this forester, the protector of the yew forest

After a quick lunch at home, Edit took me to the railway station and the train was only a few minutes late. Needless to say that they sent a new, so called "zoning" wagon, which while modern, clean and comfortable, (unlike the one I arrived on), the downside of this one was that it wasn't big enough for the crowds. Thankfully, I managed to get a seat and I was home in 2 hours no bother.

Edit gazing the horizon

Roy made me a veg curry and after dinner I did some stuff on the computer and then fell into a  coma just after 11pm. This hectic lifestyle is testing my physical strength, but I enjoy every minute of it. Ler's hope that once October is over I might take it a bit easier!

Edit on the top

The view from the top

Strange rock on the way down

Chapel at the end of the stages of the cross

Some of the stages of the cross with the chapel at the top

Autumn colours

Sylvan chapel half way up a mountain

Our second lookout tower of the weekend

Some more autumn colours

A row of maples

Weird shaped oak tree with large rock face in the distance

A big rock hidden in the forest