It proved another excellent camp last night and Emma recorded a few hares on the trail cam.
The area we'd overnighted is an interesting one. Though bone dry at the moment, thousands of acres of land there - including the spot we'd stayed - is shown on mapping software as being a massive open water body.
Surrounding the entire area is a raised bund, about 6m in height, and at various points around the bund are dams, pumping stations and sluices. It would seem to my latent engineer that the entire area acts as a flood defence reservoir, and - perhaps - ensures the surrounding communities don't end up inundated.
The more interesting but associated bit: the Hungarian authorities have seen fit to create a well tarmacked cycle route around the whole fifteen mile perimeter. Come on... how could we possibly ignore such a blissful entirely traffic-free - in fact, entirely human-free - experience (pic).
Come today's drive, we've basically intentionally bumbled a comparatively short distance and had a chilled day lollygagging on the way. We've been in the fishbowl, looking out.
A major theme of the bumble has been the Tisza river. We've criss-crossed it several times, lunched by it, and are now intending to overnight by it. It clearly serves heavily as a utilitarian and recreational resource. We saw swimmers, boaters, paddlers, sunbathers, people fishing, dams, slices and other level-control infrastructure. It also, where we are right now, forms the border with Ukraine.
During the Tisza-themed bumble, amongst the more interesting land-based things we've seen have been some really exquisite wooden bell towers. Sometimes these have been in contemporary church grounds, sometimes not. Apparently, they're a celebrated thing.
It's been another hot one today and our intended overnighting spot is next to a brook, which is thankfully shaded by trees. There are many white storks about and a kingfisher has visited the brook; bee-eaters, calling frogs, grasshoppers and cicadas have supplied the background score.
We also witnessed a fairly unusual juxtaposition here. Three young girls of about 9 to 11 years old were chatting away riding bikes on the cycleway along the Tisza when, from the other side of the river, an air-attack warning alarm sounded and a stern Ukrainian announcement over loudspeakers issued forth. The girls didn't bat an eyelid and just carried on cycling and chatting as if absolutely nothing had happened. Emma has an app installed that buzzed a notification confirming the Ukrainian warning was indeed a live-and-legitimate one, and that the warning had been issued countrywide.
Granted, the border we're currently hugging is a long way from the more troubling regions of Ukraine, but the air-attack alert did bring home the realities. It struck that the young girls cycling along the Tisza had been living with this caper for a good chunk of their lives and had seemingly simply normalised it. What a ridiculous species we are.
Post composed at 22:15 on Saturday 2nd August from our intended overnighting spot N 48.10488°, E 22.80793° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:48.10488%2C22.80793