The overnight trail cam last night was a disappointing bust! In spite of all the conditions being right, and expectations being high, we didn't even get one trigger. The stopover spot was perfectly peaceful, though.
We decided to revert to full-on bumble mode today after the relatively stressful and functional traverse of Slovakia. So, in the continuing quest to head generally east, we did just that, but did so by sticking to Hungary's twisty and steeply hilly northern roads.
And what a chilled and sublime traffic-free experience it proved to be. The landscapes are twee and gorgeous and are essentially an even more concentrated version of the feel-good landscapes we initially encountered in Czechia. Suffice to say the northwest of Hungary is just a lovely place to be. It did make for very slow progress, though. The twisty-turney hills were made even more tricky because of the road surfaces. Sometimes, for miles on end, the roads were no more than a patchwork of inexpertly dolloped tarmac laid upon equally inexpertly dolloped tarmac, all of which singularly failed to address pot holes so deep that they could easily contain a crouching pheasant (I formally propose this as a new SI unit, incidentally). Notwithstanding the resultant pummeling, the morning's drive was one for the memory bank.
Just before lunch we spotted, and stopped at, a Spar supermarket and took on a few essentials. Prices were surprisingly high, about 25% more expensive than the UK.
Post expensive lunch, we decided to take on water. We'd used about 100 litres to this point (about a third of capacity) and didn't strictly need to refill, but the next week or so is going to be something of an unknown quantity, so we figured we'd control what we could.
Hungary, conveniently, still has many public fresh-water supply hydrants scattered around. Though many have now been decommissioned, working ones are still a common sight and regularly used by locals. We carry a few adapters to be able to attach a collapsible hose to such things and,, after a bit of fiddling were in business (pic).
Dull technical interlude... As always, we coarsely pre-filter water we take on from unknown sources, then treat it in the tank with Oasis purification tablets and then, if it's to be drunk as is (or used for washing food / cleaning teeth etc), we treat it further by running it through a carbon on-faucet filter. The on-faucet filter removes any taste / smell of chlorine and adds a further micro-filtering stage.
It's a simple yet effective way to achieve clean and sanitary water, without the (ridiculous) cost, complication and space consumption associated with proprietary 'Seagull' etc systems. We've taken water from many a spring etc now and, so far, so good.
Operation fill-up complete, we bumbled a little way further until weariness descended and resulted in a spontaneous left turn up a random track. Here we now temporarily dwell (coordinates). It's not thronged with (easily visible) wildlife, but we have seen the by-now usual mammal, bird and butterfly species. Of some note, the grasslands here are teeming with grasshoppers and a look out with the thermal imager after dark revealed flitting bats wreaking nocturnal havoc.
For completeness, we both ran from here but it was a right-old struggle in the upper twenty degree C range we slogged through.
Post composed at 22:30 on Friday 1st August from our intended overnighting spot N 48.28106°, E 21.92853° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:48.28106%2C21.92853