Last night's impromptu stopover proved to be yet another cracker and, adding to the serenity, we awoke enveloped in a rather splendid sun-dappled mist.
The short drive to the parkrun town of Rymanów-Zdrój took us through some very pleasant landscapes and we found the town itself extremely posh and twee. The park itself (Park Jana Pawła II) was also very well maintained and presented. It was a lovely place to be.
The parkrun itself, though, was not a lovely thing to do. The temperature was already in the high ridiculouses by the 9.00am start and - within a couple of kilometres - the onboard core temperature sensor was well-and-truly signalling to the brain to stop being such a stupid old fool.
Suffice to say, on the back of nearly a month on the road engaged in the kind of stuff we ambitiously call recreation, and whilst living mainly on crisps and alcohol, there was very little spring in the step for the entire 5K.
Emma (pic) suffered similarly but whilst we were both still bucketing sweat, vowed to do it all again as soon as possible. I was 3rd overall and she was 1st in the female category (or whatever category it's now supposed to be called in order to avoid invoking supercilious indignation from the kind of people who get angry on behalf of others who actually mostly aren't that angry about the thing that the supercilious people think they really should be more angry about).
Post sweatfest we headed roughly west and through a really superb bit of Poland known as the Jaśliska Landscape Park. This is basically an area made up of five nature reserves and is just a really beautiful and relaxing place to be. The landscapes were magnificent, the roads empty and people few. It was everything the Bieszczady National Park was not and it's difficult to grasp why Poles seeking a genuine outdoorsy experience wouldn't be here instead of queuing to buy tat in Bieszczady. As a bonus, we scored a casual sighting of a black stork in a random roadside pasture.
Some comparatively dull roads in Slovakia followed that we punctuated by taking on diesel (€1.43/l) and some massive chocolate lollies (cost no issue). As a massive and totally unexpected bonus, we also passed two wild boar casually snuffling in a roadside field, totally unperturbed by traffic.
The otherwise dull Slovakian roads were necessary in order to reach where we now are: bear country in the High Tatras mountains.
We've spent all evening, right into darkness, scouting around with the optics and thermal imager. Daylight saw us spotting peregrines, a lesser-spotted eagle and black woodpecker, and dusk saw us quite excited by two large and lumbering mammals that were giving off a really strong heat signature on a hillside about a kilometre away. Unfortunately there wasn't enough light left for regular optics to do their thing, but because of the animals' size and movements, we tentatively agreed the likelihood was elk or bear...
Post composed at 22:10 on Saturday 16th August from our intended overnighting spot N 49.28786°, E 20.23052° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:49.28786%2C20.23052