Gardening, walnut cracking and geocaching (again)

On Monday last we came down to the village via Tesco's and also put out my latest cache en route. At home everything looked OK after we've been away for 2 weeks and we settled back into our usual routine.  The weather being quite mild and not too rainy, Roy carried on mowing the grass and collecting/burning the walnut leaves, I was cracking walnuts, pruning the roses and tidying the herb patch. Midweek we decided to dig out the raspberry plants invading the rhubarb patch and replanted them at the other end of the raspberry beds. As we were not here over All Saints Day we lit the candles by my parents' grave and the lights were flickering beautifully in the night.  Candle light is ever so visible for such a long way and powerful too.

Glorious winter foliage on the apricot tree

Getting ready for winter

While reading through the internet page of my latest cache prior to it being published it dawned on me that I didn't recall writing the password anywhere.  This was rather worrying, because this might have meant that I didn't include it on the logbook as I was supposed to. So I decided to postpone publishing it until I could check it next time I was passing. To facilitate this and in order to pick up a few caches that have been in the pipeline for a while, but got postponed a few times, I told my old friend Andor into coming with me to a nearby town, where I put my own cache, to pick up a few others the following Monday.  He, much to my surprise, agreed, but more about this later.

Roy is hard at work

The replanted raspberries

On Thursday I went to see the practice nurse for my prescriptions and amazingly managed to talk her into giving me enough for 3 months. Nice girl, not overly bright, but very friendly and helpful.  You can't ask for more, can you? Needless to say the local pharmacy didn't stock half of them, so I had to arrange with Ursula who works there to take the prescriptions and the money off me in the evening, order them on Friday and then let me know when I could fetch them.  As it happens, it worked out well, as she told me that they would arrive early on Monday morning, so I could fetch them en route to meet Andor for our caching day.

The Cuffs crew

Ben Whishaw in London Spy

I watched quite a lot of TV as well this week, as it seems that I can't stay awake at night, but wake up rather early in the morning, which is now my main TV watching time. Homeland on Ch4, London Spy on BBC2 and Cuffs on BBC1, as well as the last one of Great Canal Journeys on Ch4 come to mind as the best of them. Shame that Prunella Scales's condition is deteriorating and we might never see another one of these lovely boating programs. The last Homeland one was fascinating, and I must admit, while I had my doubts about this series forever reinventing itself, I am enjoying it very much again. London Spy was weird, but brilliant. I absolutely adore Ben Wishaw, he's that good. As for Cuffs, the Brighton setting is fun, but I think the writing and the scripts are bordering on crap. It might grow on me in the fullness of time, but it hasn't done so yet.

Red 44 at Interlagos 2015

As I managed to totally forget to watch the Mexican Grand Prix two weeks ago, I was really awaiting the Brazilian one this last weekend.  Well, poor old Hamilton seemed to have put the breaks on after winning his third world championship title and let Rosberg get on top of him twice in a row.  The Brazilian GP is one of very few, if not the only one that he has never won. Frustrating, I know Lewis, but you'll have to qualify better next time, that should solve the problem!

Old Railway Station building from 19th century

And then on Monday we went geocaching.  Andor is famous for making an order for the caches which bears no relation to practicality whatsoever.  He even admitted that he never considered the fact that we will be driving round, rather than walking all the way. His GPS said this and where the roads went had nothing to do with it!! I managed to talk him round though, as deep down I am sure he knew that I was right.  And anyway, we were in my car and I was behind the wheel, so I had somewhat of a dominant position when it came to which way we went.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Andor up the lookout tower, perusing the route on the map

The plan for me was to fetch my pills at the pharmacy, which went with amazingly little hassle, then I got there so quickly that I had the time to check my own cache before Andor's arrival.  And guess what? I was right, not only the password was missing, but apparently I totally forgot to write anything in and/or on the logbook. Phew, I thought, that would have been a bit of a disaster had I not realised that something was amiss and stopped publication at the beginning of last week.  This time I managed to write in everything that I had to  and got to the station about 3 minutes before Andor arrived.  We got one cache right in front of the station, then decided to start with a 7 parter multi, which was all over town. We did parts 4, 5 and 6 on foot, then drove to another cache on the outskirts by the little airstrip, on the way back into town we did parts 1, 2 and 3 on foot, and finally drove to within 300 yards of part 7 which was the box in the woods in one of the rather overgrown parks behind the University. After that we started leaving town  in a SW direction, first picking up a cache by the Arboretum, then on a wooded hill by some nice lakes, followed by a really exciting one across a deep wooded ravine a bit further South. The final one was about 10km from there, on the other end of town, by another lake in the woods, so the tally was 7 and we even had our sandwiches up a lookout tower between cache 5 and 6.

The Royal Palace at Gödöllő

A pretty fishing lake next to our last cache

After I took Andor back to the station I visited Tesco for a quick food shop and drove home via a half hour traffic jam on the slip road off the motorway due to a railway bridge renovation just off the other side of the motorway.  It was contraflow, which in these parts can get totally gridlocked when two vehicles meet nose to nose in the middle arguing the toss for ages about who should reverse back. Never mind, I had my radio on and listened to a guy who I haven't heard in years and whom I didn't know was back on radio.  I suppose I only listen to it in the car and only when I am on my own as Roy is not particularly fond of music while driving.

The rest of the week will be spent covering up the roses with grass cuttings, as, if one can believe the meteorologists, cold weather is coming by the weekend.  We are off to town again on Friday, as I have a concert on Saturday and because Ian and Ros are back next Thursday.

Concerts, caching and a funeral

The first two days back in town were spent resting after my little funny turn over the weekend.  On Wednesday we went to visit Ros to see her new kitchen. It is really lovely.  Those two have such style, anything they buy is put together with such good taste and artistic good sense. Unfortunately their oven makes a horrible noise, which I promised to investigate for them.

Iván Fischer, principal conductor of the BFO

In the early evening Jutka came up for a chat and to pick up the bag of apples we brought in for her.  I also had to pay for my entry fees to the events I couldn't attend and for the theatre tickets she picked up for me while we were in the village. In the meantime I found out that there is going to be a music marathon again in the Palace of the Arts, this time the composers being Mendelssohn and Schumann. I managed to get onto the website 4 minutes after the tickets went on sale and there were already large patches of the auditorium marked in bright red. However, I still managed to get 4 tickets to 4 out of the 8 performances, where the tickets for the 4th oncert were free.  Great value and great musicians, like Baráti Kristóf amongst the performers.  The last concert is that of Midsummer Night's Dream by Mendelssohn, with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, directed by Iván Fischer, so it should be a good day.

On Wednesday, when Ros cried off our intended visit to the Jelen for lunch, we suddenly decided to go to the nearby Indian restaurant instead. That was a good choice, as we had a really good meal, again. I started with my usual mango lassi, followed by a large garlic nan and a mild veg curry. Roy had beer and a lamb curry and we shared one portion of boiled rice. Simple, but well cooked!

On Thursday I went geocaching with Gizi to an area just outside town that I suspected having old and neglected caches.  I was right, but we still had a good time. It was really annoying that after several bright sunny days, Thursday morning dawned very misty and overcast.  Thankfully it didn't rain, but visibility hardly improved all day, although the sun came out later. The first cache was by a seriously overgrown lake, which we couldn't see in the murk and which tore my coat to bits on approach. Gizi was so worried about me, that she followed, just in case I collapsed in the jungle.

The bridge we didn't take

This was followed by another jungle approach to the next 2 parter, which also included several stream crossings. We were making our way to an abandoned old railway embankment through wilderness. We first went to the second part and without having to cross the stream. Then at the first part I made a crossing from fallen tree trunks, so we didn't get our feet wet.  Later I realised that I was really silly not crossing on the bridge, which in this case was still intact.

The home made stream crossing

The third one led us to a nice old chateau which currently operates as a children's home with its second part being near an old observatory which looked so ruinous that we felt it could fall down any minute. My clothing suffered a few more bits of damage in the thick forest round the cache which was full of water and completely neglected and unmaintained. My feelings about today's caches were proving to have beenspot on.

The observatory on the verge of collapse

However, the next one rescued the day somewhat as it was just at the back of one of the most magnificent avenue of plane trees I have ever seen in my life. It was dead easy to find the cache and we took lots of lovely photos of the trees.

The next was also a multi with 3 parts.  The first two (a lovey old and very large church and the grave of a fallen firefighter in the nearby cemetery) were in the middle of a village and easy to find.  The third part was a few miles outside the village, in the trunk of a tree by an old thatched cottage where some writer spent his childhood.  I have never heard of him, but I'll look him up on Google when I get a minute.

The magnificent avenue of planes

Next we had a slight hiccup with the directions, as a brand new railway line obliterated (or so we thought) a sideroad that my TomTom suggested we drive down on. So we had to go round and only found out that the road was there, just you had to turn away from it and then cross under the railway  in a tunnel.  Thankfully we found this route quite by accident on the way back and avoided doing the detour twice. The cache was by an old watermill, which was quite nice and the rough earth road was in very good nick, so this became a drive-in cache.  We did make an attempt at another one, but we couldn't really find it and as the light was going, we gave up.  The only other one that we did get was one in the area that I have already got, but by the setting sun and approaching darkness Gizi managed to find it just in time by the road near a nice old inn and lake.It was a very good day, even though the light went too quickly, but that is only to be expected in November. I got 6 and Gizi got 7 caches for the day, which is not bad considering the short daylight hours now.

Another avenue, this time of hazelnuts with Gizi

In the evening I had a fantastic concert where one of my most favourite chellists, Miklós Perényi played 3 Bach chello suites superbly, as usual.  The second half of this concert was on Saturday, when he played the other 3, much to the delight of an extatic audience.  He gave us two encores on both occasions and we went home very happy.

The old, large classicistic church

On Friday we attended the funeral of Árpád Göncz, who was the first President of Hungary after the fall of communism, and who was probaby the only post 1990 politician who brought credit to the term "politician", rather than shame, as most, if not all, of them do nowadays. It was very moving, as the family insisted on it being a private funeral and interestingly the most radical speech was made by his grandson. We queued for an hour to place the rose, that we brought, on his grave, by which time it got dark. I am glad I was there, he was probably the only prominent person since 1990 whom I respected.

Árpád Göncz's casket

As we were quite close to one of my own caches which was reportedly having a broken lid, we drove there, replaced the lid and put a few more gifts inside.  All this was done in pitch darkness, but I could just about see by the headlights of the car.

And now we are off to the village tomorrow.  I hope everything is OK there. We hope to stay at least a week, or possibly longer.

Another busy week

On Monday we came into town as planned. We fetched my Eliquis en route in, so I am now supplied for a while, if not all the way to my check-up. It is really crazy how chaotic everything is in the Health Service and in pharmacies. I'll have to go and see the nurse again when we get back home.

The leak

The insurance assessor came on Tuesday to inspect the damage to the ceiling caused by the leak from the flat above and went away happy. In the evening I went to the Old Music Academy for a free harpsichord concert with Ros and Ian.  It was fantastic. Bernhard Klapprott was holding several master classes at the Academy and finished his stay with this concert. The hall was not full, so I need not have worried about getting a seat.

János Balázs

Wednesday had my first piano concert of the season in the Palace of the Arts and very brilliant it was too. János Balázs, who is getting quite famous around the world played all 12 of Liszt's Transcendent Etudes and 2 Liszt adaptations: Winterreise from Schubert and 6 Polish songs from Chopin. It was simply breathtaking, he has such technical proficiency, but a lot of insight and emotion too. His interpretation is unique. At the concert I saw Bozsa for the first time in several months.  She looks well; her granddaughter is a year old, which is amazing, considering she was just born the other day.

The medieaval castle in Várpalota

An then on Thursday we left for the Kali basin to stay with friends and celebrate the 60th birthday of David, one of them. En route down we managed to get a few geocaches, one was a 4 parter in a town which is far too industrial and not exactly pretty, but the area we walked round in was nicely kept and attractive.

Next was a monument just outside the town on a prominent bare hill with fantastic views.  Finding the box was a bit frustrating, as it was supposed to be hidden behind some rocks.  Well, the base of the monument was a sea of derelict, irregular and deteriorating rocks, so I spent a good time looking behind every loose one looking for the right hole.

Pretty little bridge near the cache

Then came a weird one by a pretty little lake where the only clue was that it was magnetic. Obviously it had to be hidden in or behind something metal. Finally it did turn up inside a metal fence post.

The ancient little circular church in Öskü

The last one was a virtual one on a most interesting and unusual little circular church, which I have seen before. It was still very interesting and Roy, not having seen it before, thought so too.

It started getting too dark to carry on, so we made for the village of Monoszló and our friend. He is such a marvellous host that we got soon exhausted by having to eat and drink all the time.  I think I consumed my usual monthly alcohol allocation in 3 days.

A 400 year old oak tree

A stages of the cross with the chapel at the top of the hill

The castle at Nagyvázsony

On Friday, while awaiting the arrival of the others, Roy and I went geocaching again.  Some were really easy, some were impossible, but all showed us something pretty, interesting and with great views.  We didn't get back until about 5pm and found 7 caches in all.  They had varied histories, some were ruins, others springs, or castles or old trees or stages of the cross and, of course more pretty lakes. There were another 2 which we looked for for ages and still didn't find, but such is life! One of them is probably missing, because a few comments on the cache page on the internet said the same, but the other one must have been there somewhere, just we were a bit pissed off and tired by then to find it.

Ruins of a church from a disappeared medieaval village

A few of the party had arrived on Friday evening and we had some lovely food, drink and chats, before both Roy and I faded out by 9pm.

Sheep and goats en route to one of the ruins

Church ruins in the middle of the puszta

Weird statues by one of the lakes

Another ruined church

Saturday morning Roy stayed behind to help with preparations for the party, while I went to get a few more caches. The first was quite a walk, but the weather was gorgeous and at the end of the walk I saw a couple of lovely old medieaval ruins. The next one was very close and easy by some modern statues and a lovely lake.  The third one, however, was very frustrating. It had two parts and the clues were so hopeless, that I had to give up at the end.

The rest of the party had arrived early afternoon awaiting the arrival of the birthday boy. He finally rolled in about 2.30pm and was suitablye surprised at so many people celebrating him. Our host had made us a large stew on an open wood fire in the garden and we had beer, spirits and wine flowing freely.

Talking of wine, after lunch we walked to a vineyard about a mile away, where we tasted one rose and two red wines, which were pretty good too.  We bought a couple of bottles of the rose and I am really looking forward to drinking them. I had to translate the sommelier's speech, which was good fun, especially trying to guess the vintner terminology.  There was a photoshoot going on which was for the winery's wedding brochure and the owner of the vineyard also played the piano for us.

We visited the storage cellar with lots of lovely and enormous barrels (some 225 litres, others 500 litres large). The main cellar was still out of bounds due to carbon monoxide resulting from the fermentation process. They explained what a barique barrel was, which I didn't know.  It is apparently one where you burned the inside a bit, so the wine gets a smokey flavour. Only robust wines can be fermented in one of those when the barrel is new, while secondary and third filling is for more delicate grapes, so that they are not overpowered by the barrel's flavour.

Of the three wines I liked the Pinot Noir Rose best, the full bodied Cabernet Sauvignon was good too, but I am not a Merlot fan, and neither is Roy, so we gave those to others along the table. I always thought Merlot is for people who don't really like red wine, so they can just about cope with it. We prefer more acidity, roughness and flavour.

The happy revellers on the steps of the winery

David, aka Incredible Hulk, the birthday boy

Rabies with Canadian touches

The rose wine awaiting my pleasure

After we walked back we all had a little rest and then departed for the party in the village hall. The decoration was lovely, David was suitably pleased, had  lots of presents and then the dancing started. Unfortunately I got a bit unwell, probably I had too much physical activity in the previous 48 hours, not to mention a furious Scottish dance they talked me into taking part in.  I had to go back to the house and go to bed early.  Well, it was still midnight when I got to bed and about 1.30am when I went to sleep, but the rest of them were having fun for a good few more hours.

Hulk with the star present, the red dress

On Sunday morning the whole group went for a hash run/walk, but I had to stay in bed to get better and thus missed it.  Roy stayed with me, which was nice, but he wasn't going to go anyway. To be quite honest, I wasn't too upset at missing it. While the weather was really gorgeous, I have probably seen all the views and other sights already over the years we kept visiting some other friends who live nearby. Thankfully, I managed to have a good 2 hours' sleep and felt really refreshed and quite well by the time they returned.

Round the long table at the restaurant

Two lovely people: on the left our host, on the right an old friend

Finally, we went to a nearby restaurant to have a late lunch and left for town about 6.30pm from there. We gave a lift to Baldric and Titi Tata (silly hash names, I know, but believe me, they are really apt!) and were in the flat by 9.10pm.

This coming week is more of a rest than activity. I have a lot of catching up on missed television programs, have the Bryson book to read, I also have a hair appointment, and we are going to see Ros and Ian's new kitchen, but without Ian, who had already departed to China for a month, on Wednesday. Also possibly an exhibition of Csontváry, one of my favourite painters, much in the style of  L. S. Lowry and if I feel up to it a bit more caching, but only drive in caches or those that are no more than 100-200 metres from the car.

My parents' grave in the garden

And finally, finally, just to remember that today is All Souls' Day. As we now have both my parents' ashes in a nice memorial in our own garden, I post here how we left it when we came away a week ago.  Unfortunately we are not there to light the candles toady, but we will do so when we are back in the village.

Nice week, both busy and relaxed

Roy's cough got better the moment I bought him some cough medicine.  It was as if the ailment got frightened of the stuff, so we didn't even have to open it.  Bit of a waste of money, but at least now we have a bottle for future coughs. As the weather wasn't too rainy and we both felt a bit better we went to Tesco's for food and a new printer/scanner, to the pharmacy (again) and to check out the proposed cache site where my next box is going. Talking of geocaching, one of the abiding memory of this week will have to be the moderators. Those delightful people who are on whole (not all, but most) use their position to make you jump through hoops for no good reason other than that they can. Some of them are so ignorant, it is frightening. Still, I am now awaiting the e-mail that confirms that I can place it. On Thursday I actually finished writing the cache page and submitted it just before 5pm. The moderation started quite well and then went downhill fast.  Amongst the excuses for refusing it were that it starts in the middle of the Maria route, not at the beginning, that it is not serious, that the markings are confusing, that we should wait until it's finished etc., etc. The rules are that if there is a majority of 4 in the yes votes over the no votes, it can automatically appear in 48 hours. That has now passed because the final vote at that point was Yes: 7, No: 5. So I have a majority for yes but not 4. This means I have to wait another 24 hours for it to go through.What a palaver! Roy is always angry with me for putting myself through this every time, but as it only happens about one or, at the most, twice a year, I am not particularly bothered.

My lovely brand new Canon printer/scanner

On Monday I also managed to buy some theatre tickets on the internet for december. One of them is a one man show by the director of the theatre, the other is a modern interpretation of King Lear. I had so many concert engagements last season that I had no time, energy and/or money for the theatre. I have to put that right this season.

My cache is gong right in front of this church

The other good news this week was that my Polish friend, Bozena finally got in touch, which she hasn't done for at least 3 or 4 months. I sent her e-mails, called her on her mobile, even sent a text message, but there was nothing.  I started worrying when finally she rang. Apparently she has been doing the work of 3 people at work, starting at 6.30-7am every morning and not getting home until 8pm or later. Outrageous! Only someone as peaceable as here can be exploited like this. Apparently, they have now appointed someone to one of the jobs, but there is still no sign of the other appointment, so she still can't have much free time. She missed Othello in the Opera the other week, as she could not get away in time.  She and her fiance have also moved out of town by about 20km and the only road that leads there is having road works on it, so that doesn't make life easier for her either.

The main job of this week (before the preserving and nut cracking) was doing my and Roy's 2014/15 Tax Returns. With the house gone I thought things were going to get easier, but this one was the hardest I have ever done because of the Capital Gains Tax calculations on the house sale.  I eventually got to the end of it, but it did take a whole day. That was Wednesday. Thursday was started with a visit to the nurse, as I discovered one of my pills were running low and I needed a new prescription.  I was in and out in a few minutes, so I think I will give the doctor a miss in future and just deal with the nurse on Thursday mornings. That was the day I did the cache page and, of course, it was Alex's birthday as well. I had such a lovely chat with him, although that was only because he couldn't go out for the planned day off due to Meaghan having gone down with some evil lurgy. What a shame! It isn't too often those two can have a relaxing, laid back, fun day out together.

Alex and Meaghan last month at the Riot Fest

While I was doing most of my work on the computer, Roy was furiously preserving apples.  He made lots of apple sauce out of the surfeit of apples on the old tree. On Friday I was battling the moderators, while Roy was making more apple sauce and then started on the pears. And finally today, Saturday, we started wholesale production of bottled fruit and cracking walnuts. Roy decided to do the roast dinner today, rather than on Sunday, and while that was doing in the oven we kept each other company peeling (Roy) and cracking (me). It went past in a jiffy. This year I am trying to freeze the shelled walnuts as somebody told me that they keep for months like that and once thawed they are like new.  Yesterday I put a small amount in the freezer to try if that's true.  Well, I took them out this morning, they were very cold, but not obviously frozen, even though they spent more than 12 hours in the freezer. However, when mixed with my cornflakes they were just as good as the non-frozen ones, so I went ahead to do all 6 sacks. Today's effort was cracking the first sack, which I can happily report as completed.

Busy cracking walnuts

I managed to fill this big bowl with cracked walnuts

Roy's pears have also been peeled and bottled, currently sitting in an insulated box to cool down slowly, that beeing an ancient, but very effective way of creating a vacuum to keep them safe.

Roy peeling pears

The end result: 11 bottles of pears

We opened a nice bottle of Chardonnais to go with the roast dinner today: Roy had roast pork and I had roast peppers, onions and garlic and both of us had roast potatoes and pencil green beans. Yum, yum!!

Tomorrow, I think we will have a rest and then on Monday afternoon we are off to town for a fortnight, which will include a weekend birthday do for a friend in the country, several concerts, possibly hashing if I feel up to it, definitely some geocaching, some shopping and meeting up with friends again.