It's never a bad thing to wake to the sound of golden orioles, bee-eaters, turtle doves, green woodpeckers, plus countless other less ostentatious passerines. Suffice to say last night's overnighting spot was top-drawer.
After breakfast, Emma's little voices unexpectedly visited me and demanded that I at least tried to tally half of her training sessions. And so, I went for a run. To be honest it was no hardship in such amazing surroundings and I think I may actually have almost enjoyed it.
Post post-run shower, we spent half an hour or so marvelling at both the diversity and sheer numbers of butterflies, grasshoppers and other beyond-our-knowledge insects that had surrounded us in the sunbathed bit of unkempt ground we'd parked on. It was truly teeming and several commas, red admirals, dryads and meadow browns even happily fluttered through and within the truck's doors-wide-open cab. One comma in particular took to basking on the passenger seat and just kept on returning.
It was definitely a struggle to leave that spot.
Leave, though, we did and within half an hour or so we'd crossed the border into Slovakia. As with Czechia we've been here before, and, as before, so far our impressions from then have been reinforced. It's not that anything's especially bad, more that nothing's quite as fettled or pleasing in comparison to Czechia.
It all feels a bit more frenetic, grubbier, and more industrialised. This also extends to agricultural land use, where endless monocultures replace the sympathetic set-aside and woodland-bound pastoral fields of Czechia.
Of course, Slovakia has it's high mountain ranges, too; where things are quite different. Or at least they were when we were last there.
Anyway, our time in Slovakia today was mainly about covering ground and trying to keep out of the way of local drivers going about their business. Some of these included 40 tonners barrelling down narrow-ish roads as if they were autobahns.
Lunch was a different affair today. We intentionally embraced our inner industrialist and spent the best part of two hours enjoying watching Slovakian rolling stock earning it's keep amongst decrepit concrete monoliths. We are both genuinely partial to watching trains. It just is so: we don't discuss it.
As an aside, the largely abandoned-by-people but re-naturing spot we'd parked in was also thronged with grasshoppers. Emma even managed a decent pic of what Mr Google later told us was an Italian locust. As an aside to the aside, we also witnessed a genuinely excellent example of man training dog here, but to explain would mean we probably wouldn't reach Moldova. I may attempt later, given the time...
The afternoon was basically more juggernaut dodging until Emma again suggested we embrace the industrialised bespoiling and head up a track next to a giant and hideous-in-every-way poultry farm. What do you know! Behind it (and both upwind of it, and out of its sight) is where we now are. We have good open outlooks and though there's been nothing new or unusual, there have been loads of deer, hares and the usual bird species. We're also more or less parked right on badger and boar prints.
I did a few bits-and-bobs of fettling here: one of the truck's mirrors had started rattling irritatingly, a press stud failed on the cab-top seat and one of my bike tyres needed re-seating on its rim: out-of-round bike tyres are no fun.
The trail cam is set.
Post composed at 22:00 on Wednesday 30th July from our intended overnighting spot N 48.13174°, E 18.83928° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:48.13174%2C18.83928