THE GRAND TOUR: SLOVENIA 22/23/24th JULY

The Slovenian tourist board has a campaign running at the moment under the slogan ; I FEEL SLOVENIA.  It worked on us. We are head over heels in love. We are feeling it. 

So far on The Grand Tour we have been relentlessly moving forward, onwards, further ( like the bus of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters but without the Cool Aid). We were keen to the xplore the next valley, mountain range, or country. Now we’re worried that nothing’s going to match up to where we are. And we’re in a campsite surrounded by loads of people. That’s odd. 

But it’s felt more like being at a festival or a green gathering than a campsite. There is a fine mix of people from ultra crusty to retirees in smart motorhomes. The majority around us in zone B, in the woods, tend towards the younger ,more earthy, type. Setting up an amazing variety of tent, tarp, trailer,and truck higgledy piggledy across the lumpy bumpy ground in the deep shade of big beech trees. Can you see the Tranny in its beach side spot? 

 The shade has been imperative. It’s been hot, and humid and the joy of flopping into the lake to cool off must partly account for our love affair with the place. This lovely lake, the Bohinjsko Jezero, is Slovenia’s largest. About 6 km long and 1/2km wide, it’s up to 45m deep. That’s a lot of water and it renews itself three times a year. And this year, in this heat, it has broken it’s temperature record. Yesterday the water was 25 degrees, a few months from now it will be frozen over and there’ll be people skating on it.  

 The waters really are pristine and they try to keep it that way by banning any boat that isn’t electric, sail or rowed. There’s no rubbish lying around anywhere and there seems to be a general sensitivity towards the environment and to be great believers in its beneficial effects. We’ve come across loads of references, in ordinary tourist brochures, of energy spots, earth energy lines and so on. There as even a Natural Energy Healing Resort in Kamnic apparently famous fo it’s ” energy spots with special healing effects. The resort is also known for living water with an amazing energy output”   You don’t get that kind of blurb from Bord Failte.  

 Whatever, this is certainly a powerful landscape and the mountains may  radiate energy but they also demand a lot if you want to scale them.  

  To make it a little easier on ourselves we took a cable car, in fact we learnt today the fastest cable car in Europe, up 1000m  in about 5 mins, saving a slog of a couple of hours. We glided almost silently up above the misty lake 

 to the hardly pristine ski slopes.  

 From there to the top of Vogel, the second highest peak in the southern Julian Alps was another 600m but unfortunately our trail went down for quite a way before rising up past a little alpine cheese makers 

 and up a wild flower strewn valley to the bald limestone above.  

     At this point I must apologise if the blog resembles a holiday slide show of interminable boring landscapes. Maybe it’s a case of “if you weren’t there you won’t get it ” but I hope the pictures convey something of the scale of the grandeur.  

     

There’s more.  

  

  

 

We clambered up steel cables and the dogs just clambered 

 untill finally we climbed a narrow ridge and , like champions, emerged up onto the peak, pinnacle and summit of Vogel.   

 Our great achievement was put into perspective somewhat by the large group of 5 to 10 yr olds climbing up from the other side.  

 Fair play to them. 

The next day I had to go further and higher, for longer. The Mountains were calling and I had to go. 

Up on the cable car again followed by a chair lift to get me another couple of hundred meters higher and then a 9 hour hike in the heat began with a climb to a pyramid shaped peak, Suja,where I turned East and followed a ridge over half a dozen other peaks to the highest of them all, Rodica, at 1956 m.  

 Passed giant karst sinkholes  

 and pushing through the dwarf pine 

 with a long way to go and a danger of thunderstorms forecast I didn’t hang around and carried on along the ridge with amazing views on either side and the sun beating down.  

     There were a beautiful mass of flowers including Edelweiss  

 and limestone glories all around.  

   Eventually the path led me across a glorious flower filled broad Coll  

 and after a scramble and a climb involving cables and pegs and pins to the final summit. With thunder rumbling and clouds gathering I started the 3 hour descent and was never happier to reach shade  

 as I entered the beech trees and not long after a little mountain hut for hikers where I left a greeting from Ireland.  

   The thunder got louder and nearer and a couple of hours later as I passed the first houses 

 the rain started. A few minutes later I had hitchhiked a ride back to the campsite without getting soaked. 

Another day on the lake. We walked around it on the north shore through the woods , stopping for a swim at one of many little beaches and marvelling at the tranquility of it all.  

 We hiked around to the shop in the pretty village of Stara Fuzina with its fine hay barns where the hay is draped over the wooden rails and timber or fodder is stored within.  

     And from there got a ride back to camp on a lovely wooden cruiser, electric of course.  

 

THE GRAND TOUR: SLOVENIA 16/17/18/19/20/21st JULY

5 days of family fun and a day of moving deep into the Julian Alps and the Blog is back. 

Most of what happens on family holiday stays on family holiday but I can reveal that we spent 5 days together in a ridiculously large house very high up in the Kamnik- Savinjske Alps a bit north of the capital Ljubljana. So high up in fact that after picking up one son from the airport  

 we seriously overheated the poor old Tranny trying to scale the heights in first and occasionally and fleetingly second gear. 

So we parked her up up for a few days to rest and explored the area in hire car provided by son junior. We went up the windy road above the house to the ski resort of Krvavec and marvelled at the mountains and wild flowers.  

   We ate at a mountain hut. Hard boiled corn mush. Sour milk. Goulash. Sausage and lard. We did the same the following day after s earching for giant boulders beyond the Kamniska Bistrica valley. We failed to find them but got very hot making the spring water ponds look even more inviting.  

 Unfortunately or fortunately swimming was not allowed as the freezing waters had caused a few heart attacks, so instead we are took a cable car up to the high summer grazing plateau of Velika Planina and hiked up to admire the wooden architecture of the shepherds huts ( holiday homes)  

       and indulge in more traditional food before our return to the bottom

    Where we were briefly entertained by a couple banging out tunes in Slovenian and English.  

 

Every morning and night there were hard fought badminton competitions on the patio.  

 And much eating and drinking and drinking and eating interspersed with craic of various kinds. We did some sight seeing to local historic sites  

     and enjoyed strolling around the old town centre of Kamnik  

  

  

 before cooling off in the local pool with the rest of the overheated locals and returning to base for eating and drinking and craic. 

On our last day together we visited the lovely capital city Ljubljana. Small enough to walk around and only 70 cent an hour to park in the centre. My kind of town. 

   
         

After the fond farewells we headed north west to the Julian Alps to the scenic lake of Bled which unfortunately was overrun with people and so we headed out of town towards Bohinj. We found a lovely park up alongside the Sava river will the clearest water imaginable. 

At least I thought so until we arrived this morning into the campsite at the far end of Bohinjsko lake. A dead end hard up against the ring of peaks at the end of the valley with sheer cliffs and wooded gorges dropping into the waters and white limestone beaches, this place is a wonder. I wouldn’t have imagined I could feel so chilled in a camp as busy as this but the sheltering and shading trees, vast empty lake, towering mountains and general vibe have made for a totally relaxed atmosphere here.  

   The signs at reception gave away the vibe of the place.  

     Everything is so chilled that the fish in the crystal waters swim up to you.  

   

A walk around a bit of shoreline revealed more of Eden.  

     

The only fly in the ointment was actually a wasp in the beer that stung me full on the lip causing much amusement for my caring partner.  

 

What with a lip that is threatening to suffocate me and a finger that I shut on the van door and has been stinking like its gone gangrenous the  edge has been taken off the glories of this heavenly place. 

I’m sure that a cable car ride and hike to the peaks at 7.30 in the morning will restore my sense of wonder. 

THE GRAND TOUR: HUNGARY 14/15th JULY

  We were visited in the morning by the inhabitant of the little cabin we were parked next to.  

 

Imran, who gave us a big bag of apricots and insisted on showing us how to get water from the well. It was a very impressive structure with the bucket splashing down at 50 m.  

 Hungarian is one of the hardest languages with nothing in common with English so our conversation with Imran was interesting. I think he extolled the virtues of the pure spring water and it did taste good. We told him that we were going to hike up around Badacsony and he made all the appropriate noises of admiration. 

We headed up the north side on the web of narrow steep tracks that weave their way all over these hills, past some of the vineyards for which the area is famous.  

 Even though the mountain is relatively small and separated from the other wild areas by villages and farmland we came upon a big deer and there was loads of wild boar rootleing and diggings.  

 The well worn paths at the end of the farm tracks took us up through lovely woods rich in species  

 to a well constructed lookout tower at the peak.  

   With great 360′ degree views of the other 13 volcanic mountains of the area 

 and Lake Balaton itself stretching away into the distance big enough for the Hungarians to consider a sea.  

 

There were many monuments to various people and events at the many viewpoints along the trails and some sported fine graffiti from back in the day when tagging took a bit more time and effort than the spray can wielding folk of today put in.  

 

In a big loop around the top we discovered a couple of the old basalt quarries and read about how the monadnocks were formed and the different types of volcanic rock origins.  

 Of course we had to go foraging for volcanic bombs and holey-bubbly basalt or bread stones to add to our collection at home.  

 

When we got back to the van Imran reappeared, this time with a bag of plums and damsons. We gave him a coffee with a good dollop of the “Missis” in it and he seemed genuinely sad when we told him we were going. We gave him all our Hungarian change and waved goodbye. 

We were very hot again and needing a swim we drove to a quieter more downmarket bit of the lakeside to the west and found a simple campsite near the shore where the washing machine was soon in action and we went to the pay-as-you-enter beach.  

   Well, when I say beach I mean park really. But they are nice spaces with trees and flowers and grass is better than sand for lying around on. So after initially recoiling in horror from the tourist trap honeypot of Lake Balaton we learned to appreciate its peculiarities and wished it well. 

The next day was our last in Hungary and we spent the morning doing what we’ve done a lot. Bobbing about in healing waters. These waters were at 35 degrees and were in the largest thermal lake in Europe at Hervis. The lake is fed by two springs gushing and mixing in cave 40m down and supplying so much hot water that the entire 4.4 hectares lake is replaced every third day. Set in a forest and park of over 50 acres the whole” wellness and therapy” complex with dozens of different treatments and massage on offer is owned and run by St Andrew Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases and is full of people floating about amongst the pink and purple waterllies.  

     In the centre was an enclosed pool full of the “healing” mud which amazingly also had loads of little fish in- and a duckling.  

 Sally got out pretty quick when she was approached by one of these  

 but it seems they were friendly enough so we carried on bobbing about with everybody else.  

 There was a big indoor pool in the centre of the lake, directly over the springs and these were the hottest of all.  

 But it was more fun out amongst the lillys. For about 100€ we could have had a stop cellulite package but unfortunately our time was up and we had to saddle up and head for the border, Slovenia bound.

Our visit to Hungary felt a bit short but we had a family get together to get to. We will think of the country as being full of natures bounty. In fruit and nuts and veg and berries. In timber and wood and lumber. In waters , hot , cool and mineral and in friendly unintelligible people. 

After driving across miles of wheat prairies and forests we arrived in Slovenia to an afternoon thunderstorm. The cloudscraping mountains got nearer and nearer and finally we were amongst them at a tiny camp high up a valley in the eastern Slovenian Alps.  

 An eccentric place and owner who welcomed us with some wickedly strong liquor in exchange for the Irish flag we ve been carrying around.  

   We went down to the rushing river to cool off but it was freezing. Very different to the healing waters of Lake Heviz.  

 

 THE GRAND TOUR: HUNGARY 11/12/13th JULY

A peaceful night on the artillery ranges was followed by a successful early morning dog walk when I came across my third snake, luckily this one already dead.  

 The great hunter proudly returned to his women who gratefully received the bounty and set to work.  

 Soon after we started hiking in the forested hills of the Bakony region another 30km north she was thrilled to discover her second treasure of the day, a dead fox from which the skull was soon to join the stinky things to deal with list.  

 It became a rather unattractive adornment to her knapsack which kept me upwind and did little to improve our communication with the family groups we met along the way.  

 

Up until the fox find our path had been rich in more appetising riches. Mulberry trees 

 wild raspberry, walnut, Apple, cherry, chestnut, hazel and what I thought was hops 

 for the beer and even wormwood to make absinthe.  

 And fields of glorious ripe grain.  

 

Most of the long looped walk was in deep hardwood forest, this time un harvested old coppice.  

    We went through stretches of sunken gullies in the limestone and past cliffs and caves. There was even a bit of scrambling with metal pegs and cable.  

   The micro world was busy too with ants nests and fungi and little life.  

   We were very glad to be walking in the deeply shaded forest with the canopy far above our heads as the temperature shot up whenever we came to a clearing. The last couple of Kms were on the road into Csesznek past the castle ruined not in the multiple sieges it has suffered but by earthquake and fire caused by lightening strike. There’s a lesson there somewhere.  

 We were parked up in a nice little flat area with picnic tables and benches and plenty of shade. There was even a water pump in the neat cemetery opposite used mainly to water the flower planted graves.  

 Obviously a popular village with day trippers and walkers we arrived back to the van to find it surrounded by coaches but they were gone before too long and we shared the space with two camping trekkers on a long distance hike. We called to the village inn for a two course dinner and a couple of pints each which involved a lot of Google translate and cost us about 6€ each. Walking up to the castle gates we discovered it was closed for repair work four 4 days but it looked good in the sunset from the van at bedtime anyway.  

 

We did another long loop through the woods the following day. After winding up every dog in the village by parading ours past their fences we thankfully left the yapping and yelping behind and entered the cool and shade of a lovely sunken ” holloway”.  

 These tunnel like tracks and trails have been worn down into soft ground over centuries and often with a hedge on either sides whose root system resists the erosion and creates a canopy above. There are some still surviving in southern England than Robert McFarland explored with Roger Deakin and some of the old Irish borreens are the same kind of thing. Anyway, they make for contemplative walking thinking of the multitudes that have passed by on what is now a pedestrian irrelevance to mainstream transportation.  

 The karstic area is studded with hollows and sinkholes and cut with gorges and steep valleys and the forest trail had us yo-going up and down. Being limestone there was little surface water so we frequently had to stop and give the dogs a drink.  

 These woods of beech, oak and hornbeam had been coppiced for centuries and I was hoping to come across the charcoal makers I’d read about but no luck.  

 

Looping back towards the village from a different direction we passed a cliffy bit with climbers doing their thing  

  and we tried to get a better view of the castle.  

   

Time to head south to the Balaton uplands and give the lake another chance. It was hard work. Temperatures rising, tempers fraying, parking nightmare. How can the majority deal with these conditions?

After too much toing and froing we at last succeeded in leaving the van in shade and accessing the water. We were not alone.  

 Hoards of summer camps disgorge onto the beaches of Lake Balaton in the summer and the nearest thing the Hungarians have to a seaside is swamped.  

 I was too hot to care about honeypot overcrowding and just needed to swim but even that wasn’t easy as the water is very shallow and there are patrolling lifeguards to make sure you don’t go out of your depth.  

 But we managed it and coolness was achieved. We even frolicked in the ripples ( there aren’t any waves) and sat on the grass under a sun umbrella eating ice cream. 

Worried about the dogs parboiling in the van we escaped the Hungarian Riviera and drove inland to the Balaton Uplands where, as luck would have it, we found a great park up at the end of a track into the hills. At the back of the little village of Balatonhenye we found  

 and stayed next to the throbbing waters. I climbed the steep hill above us for a view of the village.  

 And returned to base on a artfully formed sheep/ goat track.  

 

This area has some fine thatched houses, and we past some in the morning as we left.  

     

We were going to walk up the butte of Szt Gyorgy-Hegy, one of the basalt mounds that rise up above the broad flat farmland of the basin in a steep escarpment and provide good views of the lake. 

Our way there was festooned with fruit and nuts of all kinds. Added to the riches we’d had in the Bakony were grape and plum and peach and pear and hazel and chestnut and walnut. And what you couldn’t eat was a feast for the eyes and nose with heavenly scented flowers displayed promiscuously everywhere. Talk about fecund. 

Making our way past the vineyards and veg gardens of the homesteads and thinking what a fantastic country to be a food forager, we climbed up to the basalt columns.  

     And up to the summit for views across to other buttes rising from the plain and the pale blue of lake Balaton.  

   Circulating the hill on the downward journey we past a few deserted properties  

   Which has been a bit of a feature of these parts. Because of the troubled recent history many places are unclaimed and we’ve heard of folk who have successfully squatted abandoned farmsteads. On the other hand we’ve also seen quite a few old places being done up, some obviously by new settlers. I seem to remember a bit of a vogue a few years ago for buying into ultra cheap eastern/central Europe. We past a place advertising some healing/ massage just after Sally slipped and fell but she toughed it out and we got back safely. 

We swung around the lakeshore again and I availed of a senior after4 pm ticket (60p) to have a quick swim before heading to our next park up on the route up our next volcanic objective, Badacsony. After some messing around up dead ends we arrived at a little village green to call home for the night and a nice man called in to wish us well.  I think. 

  

THE GRAND TOUR: HUNGARY 9/10th JULY

After our night cosied up in the van sheltered from the storm by a hill, a forest and a pile of timber we arrived into Budapest to scenes of severe damage. Branches down and trees uprooted everywhere.  

   We headed to a campsite in a little park pretty near the centre and it was chaos there with a big clean up operation going on. We heard from other campers that it had been wild, suddenly, with public transport shutting down and everyone having to walk through the rain and hail with debris and branches hurtling around. The poor people in tents got flooded out and a couple of campers had their windscreens smashed.  

 

This place included use of washing machine and electric for the 20€ and although we had no need for electricity (our solar panel doing well) Sally certainly had designs on the washing  machines. Everything got cleansed and strung out on a web of lines around our spreading pitch. 

In our sweet smelling fashion wear we headed into the big city feeling , yet again, like rubber necking country bumpkins as we unfolded our flapping street map and craned our necks toward road signs. We struggled to make sense of the metro system but did eventually manage to by a load of tickets and get on a train. Budapest was the second city in the world to have an underground and some of the rolling stock seemed a bit antiquated.  

 Our first port of call on a limited tourist trail was the splendid indoor market, giving away our weakness for gazing at fruit, veg and meat.  

   Sorry about the macabre display but all body parts were on offer here. We found some special breed of hairy free range pig and wild venison. 

The building was designed by Eiffel of Paris tower fame and had an impressive iron structure.  

 Upstairs was crafts and souvenir tat.  

   Including some very inferior (to the master Andreas Edler) sand pictures 

 

In a city with more public transport options than most with the metro, buses, trams 

  and boats  

 we continued to walk, often against the flow of cyclists who seemed to be even more prolific than in Holland.  

   

We crossed the mighty Danube from Pest to Buda and climbed Gellert Hill to the Citadel for a panoramic view of the city.  

  It was rewarding to find ourselves overtaking the other sightseers on the way up as our well honed muscles barely noticed the effort. Selfie time !  

 Returning to river level we checked out the location of the thermal baths at the swanky St Gellert hotel for the morning and used the metro like old pros to get back to the washing machine. 

The baths opened at 6 but there was no persuasion that could convince my fellow traveller to rise that early. In fact after deciding to go by boat we arrived at the river at 8 to discover they don’t start till 8.30. So we walked,again, only to watch the boat go past us as we neared the hotel. Still it was a nice riverside promenade past the river cruise ships that come and go from Switzerland to ? Don’t know where the Danube ends.  

   

Anyway the baths were well worth any walk. The whole grand edifice was an architectural wonder full of light and colour. The lobby alone contained huge vaulted ceilings  

 and ornate stained glass 

 And fantastic detailing on the plaster and tile work.  

 

A labyrinthine system of tickets, lockers, cabins and corridors took us finally to the Art Deco splendours of the multiple pools. Indoor  

 and outdoor  

 and a half dozen of various temperature from oooh to aarrh. Whatever minerals were in it felt very good and floating about gazing at the mosaic ceilings seemed like the best kind of sightseeing.  

     And then there were the steam rooms with different scents and the series of ever hotter saunas and the icy cold plunge pools for when you couldn’t take anymore. We were getting seriously clean, at last a match for our freshly laundered clothes, but to finish things off I couldn’t resist the bidet room with industrial style equipment to ensure total hygiene inside and out. Now I know why we need a new bathroom. 

After a successful boat and tram ride back to camp we got the washing in and drove through and out of the city centre with Serena guiding us to Memento Park, a bizarre collection of gigantic statues from the communist dictatorship set up in a parkland in the suburbs. Displaying the might and worthiness of the Soviet worker and party member, the heroism of the Red Army fighter, these testaments to the collapse of the Iron Curtain now seemed rather pathetic.  

   Some were undeniably powerful pieces of art.  

  

  

 And some , like Stalins boots, are an ironic symbol of freedom from oppression.  

 The boots are all that’s left of Stalin after he was pulled off his pedestal during the Hungarian Revolution of 56, a sad affair that saw thousands dead, imprisoned and exiled in the Soviet retribution that followed. We learnt a bit about it in a gloomy barrack building next door that featured a plaster cast  

 and showed a movie put together from Cold War spy training films. The Hungarians are reputedly the gloomiest of nations and the more we find out about the history the more we have to sympathise. 

We’d heard there was an agricultural museum near by and being the thrill seekers we are we programmed Serena to take us there. It took a while to find the wrong place but we finally did it. Turned out to be a crumbling old Manor House/ castle that now housed a collection of furniture from the 17th to 19th century. Ok on a limited scale but this place  had room after room and we were outnumbered by attendants desperate for visitors by about 6 to 1. It was spooky the way they gathered and followed us and we felt it was impossible to escape until we had “enjoyed ” every room. 

A sigh of relief as we studied the final exhibit and fled to the van and 100km later Lake Balaton. 

Everybody in Hungary goes to Lake Balaton this  weekend apparently. Traffic jams, no dog signs, pay to enter beaches and hordes of people aren’t really our thing so after been turned away from two campsites we headed for the hills and forests again and found a nice little park up on what looked like a tank training area. Much more our style. 

  

THE GRAND TOUR: SLOVAKIA / HUNGARY 6/7/8th JULY

We shared the shores of Liptovsky Mara with a mixed bag of free campers. There was a gang of hard partying youth celebrating the saints  day holiday with drink and a mix of techno/folk chanting and cheering in a well behaved way till about 9.30 when they politely turned off the pumping sound system. There were some families with kids out for the (hot)day. There were a lot of serious fishermen with lots of gear and multiple rods and inflatable dinghies with electric motors who were constantly on the case, catapulting bait, checking lines, throwing nets, putting out floats, motoring and rowing around, and reeling in a lot of poor stressed fish that then got released again making the whole operation a bit pointless to me. And in the middle of it all a couple of young lovers oblivious to everything around them cavorting and pawing and giggling on the beach. 

It was a nice place to wake up and very tranquil in the early morning light.  

 The fishermen were already at it, working their books as they floated through the mist rising on the water.  

 

The whole day was spent in camp watching the goings on and providing some entertainment ourselves by putting up all our shades and windbreaks with a complex system of lines and pegs, fiddling around with them and taking them all down again. We did a lot of swimming to cool down although as the day went by the water seemed to heat up and the slight algae green hue began to deepen and by the evening the lake had begun to resemble a soup that I didn’t think was too good for all the nasty swollen bites I’d been nursing for a few days. 

We were heading to the Lesser or Lower Tatry mountains the following morning and a bit of googling came up with some healing water thermal and mineral spa pools on route. So our first port of call the next day, after a finely executed shopping raid on some superstores, was the lovely little town of Lipovsky Jan with its mosh mash of old style buildings  

     and it’s free amenity park and pool. 

  The water was only slightly warm but bubbled up through a pebbly bed with a sulferous odour and a bit of a sting but I convinced myself it was good for my legs quite successfully cos they’ve been much better since. 
Sally got to share the central bubble pipe with a bunch of friendly laughing locals who had no qualms about getting up close and personal but didn’t wholeheartedly recommend the experience so we headed for coffee in a quirky little cafe stuffed with stuff. 

   
 

Feeling suitably healed and refreshed we headed for the hills. And what hills they were. They may have been the Lower Tatras but the steep climb proved too much for poor old Tranny who was spitting boiling water and gasping and wheezing by the time we reached the restaurant at the pass over the top. Nothing for it but to have a bowl of hearty Farmers cabbage soup  

 and some Stray sheep, which turned out to beaming of cheese filled dumpling – sort of, while we let her cool down and hoped we hadn’t burst or overcooked anything. 

I’d read recently about a couple of Irish lads who had hiked the ridge of the Nizke Tatry where we were on a leg of the E8. The E8 is one of those long distance European trails that intrigues and tempts me 

 this one especially so because it starts on the Atlantic coast in Co.Kerry ( and ends in Istanbul a good while later). I felt compelled to walk a little on a path that led all the way home so we made a symbolic few steps on the ridiculously steep track.  

 

The midday sun was really beating down so we retreated from the E8 and set off again in search of cool water to immerse ourselves in. We had the name of a lake or resevoir on the south side of the mountains at Krpacovo and Serena got us there but we couldn’t see the lake. The next hour or more was spent wandering the tracks looking for it but all we found was a bizarre  Soviet monument that had been smashed up at some point.  

   

We had more or less given up and were driving away when I spotted the water through the trees below us. It didn’t take us long to get in with the rest of the cool seekers.  

 There was another imposing ruin here too. Overlooking the lake was the huge bulk of a brutalist block of ,I guess, more Communist era leftovers.  The hotel from hell.  

  but down around the shore it was a different story with a funky little bar and a collection of what looked like DIY dwellings.  

   Also on the lakeside was a wooden “kobila” or restaurant that said we could park up there for the night.  

 

An early morning swim in the now deserted lake and it was time to pack up and drive out of the mountains onto the main roads and down to the border. Goodbye and thank you Slovakia, hello Hungary. 

We’d heard that this crossing can take time with paperwork but it was fine, we just had to buy a vignette for motorway driving. 

It was less than 100km to Budapest but there was a national park we knew of some hikes in so we turned off onto minor bumpy and potholed roads and headed past the sunflowers and into the oak and beech.  

 There is still a little forest railway line no longer for transporting the lumber but now people who want to come out into the woods. There is as a stop at the bar we had coffee.  

 Concerned about the heat we were only delighted to discover an outdoor swimming pool and made the wise decision to hang out there till things cooled off.  

  

 Eventually it did cool off. Cloud was building and we knew a thunderstorm was forecast for later so we headed further into the forest for our walk. On the way we passed 1000s of tons of harvested timber in neat stacks beside the road. I know I’ve gone on about timber a  since Germany but this was unreal. The next couple of hours were like being in the dragons lair filled with gold for someone whose fuel is wood. It turned me giddy and lightheaded to see so much of it.  

 We passed a nice little spot with a well and picnic tables and benches and a fire pit. And , of course , some timber for the fire! 

 There were guys in there sawing and stacking and we past their camp.  

 The skies were darkening and it felt pregnant with rain. The track got rough with machine tracks and the. They were upon us.  

 Big stuff dragging big stuff.  

 We were in the way.  

 So with thunder and lightning starting to rumble and flash we returned to the van, arriving as the first fat drops dampened the dusty trail. Time to batten the hatches. We drove a bit further to find a park up and ended up in the shelter of trees beside a sea of timber.  

 

THE GRAND TOUR:SLOVAKIA 3rd/4th/5th JULY

A beautiful clear sky led to an impressive sunset behind the mountains in the west while a fat full moon rose out of the forest to the east.  

 

I sat outside the van, sipping on my bottle of Missis ,  

  a Slovakian version of Baileys and was suddenly surrounded by tiny twinkling fire flies. I didn’t know they lived in Europe but was entranced by their darting flights of light. 

In the morning more surprises from the natural world when I took the dogs for their early morning constitutional. We headed off down the trail out of camp far enough for the job to be done and we’re heading back when I instinctively jumped over something on the track. Looking back I saw. …

  An adder I think. Luckily the dogs didn’t even notice it as they past. I’d say it was pretty inactive in the early morning chill but didn’t hang around to find out. In hindsight I should have caught it in a forked stick and brought it back for my women to skin and cook for breakfast. That would have got me in the good husband books. 
We’d promised ourselves a “day off” and Sally fancied a night in a bed after a month in the van so a bit of googling came up with a place next to the ski lift we wanted to take for our next hiking/scrambling adventure further west down the range at a place called Strbske Pleso. It a popular ski and hiking resort and with the national holiday weekend coming up to celebrate St Cyril and St Methudious the place was fairly heaving in the hot sun.  

 

We did a stroll around the big lake, our hike for the day, and eyed up the mountains we were going to be tackling the next day.  

 

There was all sorts of tourist stuff going on to entertain the crowds like tree walking and souvenir buying.  

  

 We came across a charming young man in traditional dress playing a strange wooden instrument that was a bit like a tuneful didgeridoo.  

 Outside a restaurant some more ideas for my scots pine trunks at home.  

 

The hotels were a weird combination of grand old style lakeside 4 star  and concrete communist blocks. Ours was the latter.  

 We had a ” bungalow ” out the back that was pretty shabby but dog friendly and the hotel building had an amazing ” wellness centre” that we spent a good while in reviving muscles for the work ahead. Three different saunas, nice jacuzzi and a chill out room with beds, and the first place I’ve seen NO CLOTHES signs with a pair of crossed out shorts. 

To finish the day we went to have a look at the chair lift we would be taking up to 1800m in the morning. The sign told us what to do if it stopped working.  

 It also told us we could take well behaved dogs if we held them tight but there was no way our boys could cope with that experience.  

The morning saw us on the first lift up, a fairly thrilling and surreal trip as we glided nearly silently through the treetops and then high above them. 

  The ex communist state has embraced capitalism to the extent that the chair lift pillars had adverts to peruse as you slide by.  

 We were soon on terra firma again looking back down to the resort below.  

 

We started off with a climb to the 2120m summit of Predne Solisko which was lined nearly all the way with well laid stone steps.  

 The work put in to track making has been stunning and has saved these well walked paths from a lot of erosion.  

The views from the top were 360 and we could see the valley we were heading up next threading its way deeper into middle of the range.  

   

So it was back down to the chair lift where another path lead us across the face of the mountain to meet yet another path  

 leading up the Furkotska valley past wild flower meadows and streams,  

 through the dwarf pines,  

 across the tumbled mass of rockfall skilfully laid into track  

 and up to a pristine tarn where amazingly there were a team of park people diving for information.  

 

We continued to climb higher, surpassing the height we had been at on the previous summit to reach another tarn at 2200 with lots of ice still covering the surface.  

 Then it started to get really tricky with lots of loose scree climbing very steeply to a Coll about 100m above us. The route was also getting pretty busy by now ( great to be somewhere where this crazy human endeavour is normal, even for teenage girls and oldies like us) and a lot were coming down against us, so we decided the view was just grand where we were and settled in for the Sarnies. 

By the time we had made it back down the valley we were grateful for a chair lift ride back down to the van. It might seem like a lightweight approach to mountain hiking  but these lifts allowed us the time to go deeper into the peaks than we could otherwise. 

The resort was noisy and crowded when we got back, the dogs were cooking in the van and we got out as soon as we could, heading to the far less visited western Tatras. 

We had sussed out a route from a simple campsite in the forest taking us up into the mountains and up and down along a narrow ridge to the summit of Jacubina ,the second highest peak in the Western Tatras at 2194m. From there we would go to another meeting of trails a little further down the ridge on the border with Poland and begin a long steep descent to the end of the valley above us. 

The camp was getting busy with holiday weekenders but we found a spot in the shade and went for a meal in the little restaurant with some great menu translations.  

 

The next day’s walk, our last in the Tatras, was the most spectacular and probably the toughest. It only came to 21.5km but it took us 10 1/2 hrs and even though we started at 6 in the morning we still had a lot of climbing in the heat.  

 We realised how lucky we were when we came to a sign warning that the track was closed to the public mon to sat and we were there sun. This was a serious foresting area and I guess they didn’t want joe public wandering through the danger zone. Tractors were cableing massive logs down the mountain, dragging them along the track and leaving a mass of brash behind.  

     

The effort started luckily in the shady forest  

 as we climbed up to the ridge and emerged above the tree line at about 1600m.  

 The hot hard work began but was rewarded with more and more spectacular views as we rose to the peaks.  

   We could see our ridge laid out ahead as a white line across the green.  

 We surprisingly caught up with a group of Slovak hikers, one of whom had been in Cork for a couple of years, and we chatted as we climbed to the next peak.  

 We had made the cardinal error of not bringing enough water so had to hurry on as they stopped for food/ drink and reached the high point of the day with some other lads.  

One more peak to the borderline and on the way we met two park rangers who told us our dogs should be on leads (we knew and we’re glad they didn’t mention the muzzles that are also required. They were very nice and after talking for awhile said that as ours were so well behaved it was ok but asked to take photos to show school kids what not to do! 

  

 They explained that a dogs bark made the chamois think it was a wolf and freaked them out. 

Then we were looking down into Poland and the zigzag tracks going across the mountains in all directions. 

   

By now we were all really gasping and were very grateful when after a long and difficult descent we came to cool clear water pumping out of the mountainside.  

 Another close encounter with a snake sent me hurrying down the valley where another 3 hours hiking took us passed our first unmanned hut  

     and finally,wearily into the camp. 

Feeling very hot and craving cool water to swim in we quickly packed up and headed to a large lake / reservoir about 20 miles west where we found some excellent R+R parking. 

  
And in for a swim. 

THE GRAND TOUR: SLOVAKIA 1st/2nd JULY

After the exhausting efforts of the 17km trek up into the mountains the day before we thought we would give the dogs a rest in the van while we took a cable car up to the top of Lomnicky Stit the second highest peak in the Tatras at 2634m. There was cloud hanging around the summit but we thought we could do some walking at the half way stage until it cleared. Unfortunately, when we got the tickets we were told we had to go now and that we only had an hour up there. It looked like a fairly hairy ride almost vertically up 900m of cliff face.  

   

We slowly disappeared into the cloud and emerged into a strangely smart little bar like an upmarket hotel lobby with doors leading out to a savage wildness. Although today it was all a bit muted in a total grey out. There was a board pointing out all the peaks visible.  

 And a man trying to get the TV aerial to work- left a bit !! 

 

Eventually the clouds started to part tantalisingly to reveal patches of mountain around us fleetingly.  

     We could see the track snaking up the valley we had hiked the day before way down below the viewing platform projecting out over the abyss.  

 The cloud played peek-a-boo for the rest of our stay up there and all too soon in was time to squeeze back into the cable car with the guard whose job it was was to sit with his face jammed up against people’s arses all day and lock and unlock the car door. Nice work if you can get it. 

At the half way station we had walked from the previous day we headed in the opposite direction, past the observatory  

 and up into the dwarf pines.  

 

It  only about 4km to our target, a minor peak called Vefke Svistovka at 2036 m. It was slow going over a jumbled sea of rock and boulders.  

 This was followed by a steep zigzagging ascent but all our efforts were rewarded by the views from the top of the valley below us and we were relieved that we were not continuing on down the switchback path to the lakeside chata on the valley floor.  

   

So , back down once more after the sarnies past a whole gang of chamois and over a whole heap of rockfall.  

 

What we thought was going to be an easy day had left us knackered again by the time we got back to the van so promised ourselves a day off the next day. 

It didn’t quite work out like that as we were at it again from 7 till 5 but very enjoyable anyway. It was a fine clear morning 

 with a rosy glow to the peaks in the sunrise. It looked like it was going to be a hot one so we decided to stay down in the shade and do a riverside walk through the trees up to some waterfalls. 

It allowed us to see close up the recovery from the Bora, the great destroying wind of a decade ago. I wrongly said in my previous post that it took out 24,000 hectares when in actual fact it was only 12,500 hectares.  5 million trees came down and they covered 230km of walking trail that had to be cleared. The Slovakian Olympic team,trainers, committee and staff were some off the first volunteers as well as scouts and schools. An all hands to the pumps effort apparently. 

The recovering forest is lovely in places with a mass of young birch and rowan filling the gaps  

 but unfortunately the wind was only half the damage. A beetle that kills the surviving pines took advantage of the new conditions and created havoc by destroying countless more and a battle is being waged against them by setting up thousands of pheromone traps. We had been seeing them in the woods since East Germany and it now made sense.  

   It was sad to see all the damage but the cascades still made for a beautiful scene.  

   

We got up to a chata in a clearing where we were amazed to see a wild fox hanging around the picnic tables.  

   The whole place was impressive, run by a character from a distinguished line of chata men and porters who stuffed his little but with memorabilia.  

     

We surprised some wildlife and ourselves on the way back down  

   but managed to escape unharmed. 

Not surprising of course as they were stuffed and in display cabinets I the national park museum we visited later.  

 I wouldn’t want to meet one of these guys or the big brown bears. 

Next door was a nice spacious botanical garden containing all the plants we had been admiring in the wild and loads we hadn’t spotted.  

         Including the famous, thanks to Engleburt Humperdink, Edelweiss. 

  
Back to camp after another busy day with just enough time to sample some of the local elixirs before dinner. 

THE GRAND TOUR: SLOVAKIA 28/29/30th JUNE 

The rain never came on our night under the bridge but it was a fine park up a anyway and we weren’t disturbed by the cars or all the people going to mass in the early morning. Been surprised how early things get going in hard working Poland with a lot of people out and about when I get up around 6. 

The river next to us was popular for rafting 

 and we watched some as we climbed up the nearby trail to a viewpoint before heading off over the border. One of the things that has impressed us here is the trail markings and a new one on us was the one to warn you to pay attention coz something’s changing.  

 I guess we’re fairly easily impressed. 

We were in yet another spa town,( these are mineral rich hills), so we had to do the obligatory tasting of the healing waters.  

This one was supposed to be good for the digestive tract and I must say the following morning I produced the proof of that.   It still didn’t taste too good. 

Speaking of mineral springs we have discovered that the “greasers” mentioned in the last post were actually harvesting crude oil that came to the surface in a few places around Losie and had been at it since the 16th century. How about that?

So we spent the remains of our szotys on a bizarre selection of local produce and some tasty beers and drove up and up to the next country on the itinerary, Slovakia, and strangely, there did seem to be an immediate difference. 

The countryside was more open, less forested, wide rolling plains, and getting nearer by the minute the rising bulk of the dramatic Tatra mountains. The towns seemed poorer, the buildings a little shabbier and more plain blocks of flats. There didn’t seem to be any of the traditional wooden houses we had seen so many of in Poland. 

We didn’t have far to go and were soon settled into a campsite with a view of the peaks.  

 

Our early start the next day came to nothing as the thunderstorm finally arrived and we had to abandon the mission to the mountains. We were glad we hadn’t managed to get up there when the heavy rain continued for hours and we hung out in town and camp drying off. 

We had discovered that you a take dogs on the cable car so yesterday we headed up to 1700m sweat free and even though it was cloudy too start,  

 had faith it would burn off later. 

And so it proved to be. After half and hour on the stone laid track we started to see some vistas of the jagged soaring peaks and it got better all day as we climbed through the pine forest and then the dwarf pine.  

  We past areas prone to avalanche  

 and a lot of dead or dying trees. In 2004 there had been a devastating wind in the High Tatras which had felled 1000’s of trees. In all about 24,000 hectares was destroyed along with railway lines and every road blocked with uprooted trees. It took months for teams to clear the wreckage and the once hidden villages were open and exposed for the first time. Some areas have been replanted, some left to naturally regenerate and some left open to benefit from the new vistas that have opened up.  

 

After seeing a bold as brass otter swimming beside us in the lake the other night and the bear skin on the shed door we were wondering if we might come across a wolf or lynx or wild boar all of which live in these forests. We didn’t but getting up high, above the chata or ” mountain but” we’d stopped at for lunch at over 2000m, we heard the screaching of a marmot and soon after spotted a big chamois peering down at us from a rocky ledge.  

   We’d got up past patches of snow and ice by this stage 

   and we were on a section of trail that only opens mid June. We got to a section that involved the use of secured chains to haul yourself up the rock face and the dogs gave up. Sally stayed with them and admired the view while I clambered on to see if I could get to the next pass and get a look at the highest tarn or lake in the whole of the Tratra’s.  

   Time had run out on us though so we had to hurry back down the valley, pausing only to re-hydrate at a chata, to catch the last cable car.  

 Down past the tumbling streams we had seen emerging from the mountainside earlier 

 and along the path with views that had been hidden to us in the cloud before.  

   We got back without enough time to experience the hospitality of the final chata unfortunately  

 but we have learnt to appreciate what a wonderful service they provide. Everything is portered in but prices are still really good. We are trying to find out if we can stay in one with the dogs and so go deeper into these amazing mountains. 

THE GRAND TOUR: POLAND 24/25/26/27th JUNE

We enjoyed a morning bring down the tone of our campsite on the outskirts of Krakow by hanging up our washing and airing all our cushions and bedding etc surrounded by the smart luxury motor homes. We have a “camper van”. Big difference.  

 We hiked up through the Wolski Woods from the camp to a viewpoint overlooking Krackow. Some of the trees sported an unfamiliar bark    
and there were little allotment gardens and the “chaty” huts that have been sure a feature since East Germany. We had learnt in the Communism that after so many people had been housed in hastily built prefab blocks of high rise flats with their thin walls and lack of privacy that a huge movement had arisen of cabins with little gardens being put together DIY style in the country for people to escape to at weekends and enjoy their own little empires.  

 

At the top of the hill we emerged out of the trees at a giant mound with a spiral path to the summit. We discovered that it had been built to commemorate Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a polish hero of the 18th century, who had fought for Independence in the American Revolutionary War and then took on Russia to free his Polish homeland. Unfortunately he lost and Poland ceased to exist for 125years. 

  A hero nonetheless, the mound contained soil from every state in America and was crowned with a mighty boulder from the Tartry Mountains, Poland’s spiritual heart. 

There was also, luckily,a friendly bar/restaurant  up there and we stopped to re-hydrate and take in the view of the city while chatting to a Polish family who had moved to the States in the seventies.  

 

We tried a different route back through the woods and got lost but stumbled upon some lads building an impressive and extreme mountain bike trail. The photo cannot do it justice as it covered about an acre but they had sure put the time in.  

 

The wooded campsite was only 4km from the city centre so it didn’t take long to drive in the next day to explore. Like Prague, Krakow has a fine big river running under it’s castle 

 and a wealth of churches and imposing architecture.  

     Another local hero features prominently everywhere here. He was upstairs in the window of this building.  

 The archbishop of Krackow and born nearby, Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla, known to the world as Pope John Paul 2nd. The only Polish Pope in history, and the first non Italian since 1520, he is credited with being instrumental in bring down communism and his image and name are everywhere. 

Kraków has what I believe is the biggest square in Europe  

 and it was a great place have a coffee and watch the world go by ( on Segways and in horse drawn carriage).  

     There was a massive indoor market in the middle 

 and sculpture around the edges.  

 After having such a pleasant time we thought we had better visit the Ghetto area where the Jews had been kept until a worse fate awaited them. It is still a depressingly run down place 

 containing a lot of hideous memories. No 22 years was a kindergarten where they were all killed when the Nazis cleared the Ghetto.  

 

Just down the road was the scene of some better news- the Schrindler factory where many lives were saved. Now a museum 

 it is next to the Krackow modern art galleries that were displaying huge hoarding of the current show which probably upset a few of the visitors next door.  

 

Time to go South, to the mountains. We headed to the Popradzki Natural Park in the Pieniny and Beskid Mountains where we wanted to hike. We have to stick to Natural Parks because dogs aren’t allowed in the National Parks. We found ourselves a lake side park up for the night overlooking a well preserved castle 

 and in the morning headed to a popular and prosperous spa town, Szczawnica, at the beginning of a 26km walk we had put together from the mass of trails on offer. One of the features of this area seems to be floral sculpture and there’s plenty of colourful ones on display.  

   

It’s a pretty wild area with forests as far as the eye can see and the first thing we come across is a bearskin drying on a shed door.  

 

It really is all about timber in this neck of the woods. There is so much of it. In woodpiles, in planks drying in sheds and especially in the buildings.  

   They use all sorts of vehicles for dragging it out of the forest.  

  

 We passed wayside shrines and waterfalls on the long steep climb.  

  

  

 Eventually reaching the summit of the highest peak on the ridge at 1173m where what the map  had indicated as a “mountain but” turned out to be a big place where you can eat drink and sleep in a room or camp with benches and tables around a big fire pit complete with cooking cranes and trivets. Very civilised. We discovered their is a whole chain of these places across the mountains, unfortunately mostly in the dog unfriendly National Parks, but we’re hoping we might use them on the Slovak side of the Tatras which allow dogs (might have to wear muzzles). 

   
 

We discovered that we were on a long distance Papal Path but not what that meant. Did the man himself trek these paths?

Descending through the beech trees 

 we came down into som lovely alpine meadows and really isolated farmhouses where it was good to see people are still building the traditional style wooden houses.  

   At the end of a very rough 4WD track we wondered how the gang of kids playing there got to school. The parents were out cutting and turning the hay by hand on steep fields between potato and other crops and orchards. It all looked idyllic but was surely a tough life.  

     

An hour or so later we arrived at another “mountain but” and replaced lost liquid with cold beer looking down on our destination.  

   This one had an even better fire pit for the campers.  

 

Winding our way through the flower filled meadows we passed a couple of new builds in a truly minimalist style I appreciated.  

  

  

 A small amount of timber framing infilled only with rendered polystyrene insulation sheets. You’d want to be careful hammering in your picture hooks. 

By the time we got back we were fit only for finding a little campsite on the river for a fiver and heading for bar/restaurant for more pot luck menu choices and to watch the canoeists and fly fisherman. 

Yesterday we tried to walk in an amazing looking area of National Park but got turned back with the dogs so headed off to the Sadecki Ethnographic Park which has a big collection of buildings from the region of different types and from different classses and ethnic groups. Just like Bunratty- but with timber. They had shaggy thatch.  

       

And timber shingle roofs.  

     The details in the timber work were a marvel.  

         As were the interiors and stoves and domestic bits and pieces.  

       There was a collection of carvings by naive artists  

     and another exhibit featured the “greasers” of Losie famous for their grease production which they seemed to have travelled the whole of Europe selling from their wagons.  

   There is even a Greaser Trail that we were tempted to do as a sort of pilgrimage to the lost art of the lubricant men. Unfortunately we couldn’t understand how they made it but it’s worth a Google. 

Another bizarre feature was a display of scarecrows that looked like they had been put together by kids as part of a big event scheduled for the next day.  

       

Our final visit was to a house where John Paul himself had officiated at a wedding and where the friendly costumed lady gave us some bread just baked in the massive clay oven.  

   

With a thunderstorm forecast and the dog and park situation being a bit of a hassle we decided to abandon Poland and head for the border. We parked up for the night by the Popradzki river under the new bridge for protection from the storm.  

 

The place is called Piwniczna-zdroj. Try asking for directions after a few drinks.