It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

It Could be Sarospatak or Anywhere...

A friend visited me recently, shortly before his visit I'd

collected my photos of trains, trams and stations into one file and on an impulse had shared it with him. During his visit he made it clear that he, and the members of his railway enthusiast club, had no interest in my 'holiday snapshots' whatsoever. 
It didn't surprise me. I'd  deliberately not provided any numbers, no names, dates, timetables, locomotive or rolling stock details.

It was clear that, despite a romantic connection with a recently retired train unit, his interest in railways ends pretty much where mine begins. 

I do like trains and station architecture, I was, as a boy, a trainspotter but public transport would not exist if there were no public to be transported. Trains, boats, planes and waiting rooms are  where stories happen. They have their own histories, they are an important part of our cultures but it's people who make history. Without a context a locomotive, 
or airplane, however well designed and engineered, is just a collection of metal and plastic.

Bus and train stations, air terminals, harbours and motorway service stations provide the stages for endless dramas. Trains, boats and planes are the tools that move the action along. This is the idea behind the Dutch television program 'Hallo, Goodbye'. At Schipol, Amsterdam's busy international airport, there is no shortage of stories. People are interviewed at the arrival or departure gates, it's all a bit too sentimental for my taste but nonetheless a simple and good concept. 

Far away from the chaos of busy international air terminals and TV cameras, on remote stations or all-night motorway cafés there are no explanations, the stories are therefore that much more mysterious, more intriguing. In desolate airport lounges or draughty waiting rooms you witness small slices of lives, excerpts with no beginnings and no endings, raising questions but no answers,  only speculation.  

Forget your own discomforts for a moment, the bleakness, the icy cold wind, the lack of coffee. Look around and let your imagination run free.

A grandmother and a small girl standing each side of a double bass.... an ideally unsuited backpacker couple, she dressed like a Barbie doll, he like a scarecrow.... an old man wearing bedroom slippers is reading a three day old newspaper... a younger man is either seriously ill or just returning from the mother of all stag nights...a family eating an improvised meal are dressed up in their finest Sunday clothes...a man looks so much like a spy he couldn't possibly be one... a beautiful young woman is sitting alone in a corner of the shabby waiting room looking like she could burst into tears at any moment...

or … the place is deserted. there's nobody around, not even staff. Has something happened? Is something about to happen? Does anything ever happen?

No facts, no figures but plenty of fuel for fiction and fantasy.

Oh - and don't worry - if you're not much of a traveller, a trip to obscure places with strange sounding names may not be neccessary.

Just a couple of years ago the central station in our town was reconstructed. The city council and the national railway company were obviously aware of the dramatic potential of the project. It cost millions but for that price the architect managed to provide the platforms and the adjoining bus station with just enough of a cold, windswept, bleak and dreary atmosphere to inspire any would be writer or storyteller. Or for the beginning of a 'feel bad' movie.

"Let Bob serve the drinks...."

“Let Bob serve the drinks......”

We were planning a meal in honour of a cycling friend. One of the members suggested that, instead of a restaurant, we had enough culinary talent in the group for us to prepare the meal ourselves. Adding “ Bob can serve the drinks”....

...WHAT!?...

He was obviously implying that my cooking skills were either insufficient or non- existent. Not that he had any knowledge of my abilities, good or bad, simply based on the fact that I am English! Britain's reputation for poor food is persistent. Now, in daily life I try to avoid clichés, stereotypes and generalisations but as a cartoonist they are the tools of my trade and, let's face it, stereotypes and sweeping generalisations usually have some basis in truth.

During my childhood in London the food really was dreary. Starting with school dinners. A midday meal provided by the schools. I was a healthy and a hungry boy but I rarely managed to finished one. The vegetables were overcooked, well, that was normal in those days, the meat was fatty and/or stringy, everything else, the mashed potatoes, the gravy and the dessert custard was lumpy. I soon gave up and took sandwiches for lunch but this was not a great success as my mother only knew how to make one sort of sandwich! At home it was not much better, there were things I liked but I really can't remember actually enjoying a meal. However, I'm not at all sure that enjoying food was a major consideration! But that was back in the good old days when coffee and tea were the same colour and spaghetti with tomato sauce came in tins. Luckily I discovered Chinese, Indian and Italian food and how to cook it early on.

Nowadays you can, and will, find excellent food and drink all over the British Isles even, and sometimes especially, outside of the big cities.

No, it wasn't the stereotypical view of English food, however outdated, that irritated me.  If the person making the comment had been French, Italian or Spanish I would probably have not been bothered but I live in the Netherlands.

Let me tell you something about Dutch cuisine by listing five highlights of  traditional Dutch food...  

1. Kroket (croquette) – Deep fried, the kroket has a pleasant, crunchy outside hiding a greyish, gooey substance, not unlike wallpaper paste, and a rumour of meat on the inside.

2. Bitterballen – small round versions of the above. By law they have to be served at any and every reception.

3. Olieballen – deep fried dumplings mostly eaten on New Years eve or at fairgrounds – heavy! 

4. Erwertensoep  – thick pea soup usually containing slices of smoked sausage and random scraps of meat that are either too good or not good enough for the dog. 
5.Stamppot – is, in most western countries, what parents feed their children in order to get them to eat vegetables: the vegetables are chopped small and mixed with mashed potatoes then covered with gravy. Most often this mash is topped with a smoked sausage, not from the butcher, oh no, but from a low price department store chain!

Stampot has several variations, you can mash almost any vegetable with potatoes. The most popular being Hutspot (carrot and onion mash) and Boerenkoolstamp (kale mash) followed by sauerkraut mash and endive mash. Hete Bliksem (hot lightning) sounds spicy and exciting but consisting of stewed apples and/or pears, potatoes,onions and small blocks of bacon mashed together is a slightly grown up version of baby food.

But,okay, just because Dutch food is simple doesn't mean it's can't be tasty. My favourite is kale mash, kale, by the way, is not trendy in The Netherlands, it's simple rustic food. You can serve it with whatever meat or vegetarian alternative you prefer. My tip, though, is make too much. The next day it's even better if you take the leftover mash and knead it into a flat round cake, fry it on both sides in a flat pan until it has a golden brown crust. Top this with one or two fried eggs and possibly some rashers of crispy streaky bacon... enjoy!

But, then again, although it is good wholesome comfort food that doesn't mean it's a peak of culinary excellence from where a Dutch person can look down upon other national food cultures.

Not that this will stop them from doing so!

Ah well...in the end it didn't matter, we chose a Greek restaurant...

...and a glass of wine or two and a couple of shots of ouzo will heal all wounds!

 see also: 
https://onlyalso.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-great-cream-tea-controversy.html

https://onlyalso.blogspot.com/2017/10/du-tchuncles-adutch-uncle-is-english.html

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Sitting around at the end of the summer exchanging tales about recent trips and vacations the chances are, whether you are an animal lover or not, that some of the stories will involve dogs.

I can still vividly recall the sight of Yvonne, in America, sprinting uphill towards me on her fully packed bicycle persued by a couple of yapping dogs. I'd never seen her cycle so fast, maybe I've never seen anybody sprint uphill that fast. In Georgia she sacrificed our breakfast of freshly baked katchapuri in order to pacify a ragged pack of stray dogs that had surrounded us on the way from the bakery back to our motel. In Greece we were attacked by sheep dogs while other dogs lay lazily in the road, hardly blinking as we cycled past within inches of their noses or tails. In France I had to stop throwing a plastic pork chop (his favourite toy) for Teddy, a young black labrador, when his feet  became  bloodied and grazed due to him constantly skidding across the gravel drive to fetch it.

A Teddy lookalike in Slovania followed, or rather led, us up a mountain road and into a national park. A large notice stated that dogs must be kept on a lead. We rested at a hut at the end of the trail where it was firmly pointed out to us that our dog should not be running loose. The whole time I was trying to explain with my best Slovanian hand gestures that Teddy 2 was not my dog, he was resting his head lovingly on my lap! Having caused us enough embarrassment and almost incurring us a hefty fine, he abandoned us on the way down! In Bosnia things ended badly for a small dog,  who had joined me for morning coffie,  when he/she decided to defend us against two huge demonic dogs who were passing by. The dog was seriously injured and our tent badly damaged. Nobody knew who its owner was, battered, broken and no doubt feeling betrayed, eventually it limped painfully off in the direction it came from. Another Bosnian dog accompanied us as we cycled up a steep mountain track, he waited a little impatiantly at every hairpin bend, paying special attention to Yvonne, the weakest member of his newly found flock. The roles were reversed on the way down......there are plenty more but these are not the stories I want write about.....

... let me tell you about Maan.

Maan lives on a campsite in Romania. She is a big dog, maybe big enough to scare a non-dog lover but any fears will soon disappear as she rolls over to have her stomach stroked. Maan likes children, chocolate and chorizos. Maan doesn't like thunder storms or strange men wearing hats. 
She likes us but we have, for her, one draw-back: being part of the staff we don't feed her leftovers or snacks. 

Maan never actively begs for food. She tries to wear you down with hungry, pathetic eyes that are hard to resist.

Early in the season as the camprground becomes more populated she leaves us in favour of family groups with small children. Plenty of extra affection from the children and a lot more spillage at meal times. She will visit us first in the morning and pop back now and again for a quick tummy rub and a brief check to see if we've left anything tasty on the ground,  then she'll be off with her newfound friends. Some will be adopted so completely that we'll hardly see her for several days. She will join them for meals, for drinks in the bar, for ball games, for strolls around the village, walks to the shops or hikes up the mountain path. Walking up the mountain with camping guests is something she does with increasing frequency. Whether it's for the company, the excercise or the hope of sharing a picnic, it's hard to tell but it's this activity that almost brought about her downfall recently.

Most guests hike to a small lake half way up the mountain or  to the peak... and then they return.

Maan tagged along with one of the last guests of the season, a hiker who was not making a round trip. Having walked about twice as far as she normally would they reached a busy road over a mountain pass where her companion hitched a lift for the rest of his journey. Left alone she was, for some reason, unable or unwilling to find her way back. Did she loose the scent and her sense of direction or did she spontaneously decide to run off and join the circus? Did she want to extend her horizons or did she go in search of a canine legend, an Eldorado where there is a never ending supply of chocolate cookies? We'll never know but she went missing in this sparsely populated area. Her owners enlisted local farmers, herders, construction workers, friends and aquaintances to help in the search. There were sightings. After several days following tips and after fruitless searches in the remotest places they had almost given up hope when suddenly Maan appeared in the beam of their headlights as they crossed the very pass where her adventure had started. She climbed into the car and I quote “shivered, sighed and cried a little”.

The next few days were spent recovering.

With a long cold winter ahead of her Maan has plenty of time to reflect on her adventures, whatever they were.

Will she have learnt a lesson? Will she change her ways?

Probably not...

Flatpackers

Flatpackers

It's a fact of life. Just one of those things, between, vacations, tours and weekends away most of us have to spend some time at home. Some will even have to work and/or study, well it helps to pass the time between trips! An ever increasing number of my friends are working less or have stopped working completely. A large portion of their time is spent baby sitting, pottering in the garden, fixing stuff around the house or building extensions. However none of these activities are likely to be part of my daily programme. I don't have grandchildren or a garden and nobody would mistake me for a handyman! Yes I do take some pride in my ability to improvise sometimes quite ingenious temporary running repairs at home or on the road but I'm not the person to ask if you want something intended to be functional, attractive and durable. I have in the past written that I am allergic to DIY stores and building merchants but that is not completely true. I don't mind walking around them looking at boxes of nuts and bolts or rolls of cables and chains and, like most men, I'm quite happy to view rows of shiney tools, sturdy machines or smart electrical gadgets. I may even hold some for a while....but I rarely feel the urge to actually use them.

Unfortunately this lack of ability or interest doesn't get me out of all household tasks.

At some point, usually when the late summer sun is shining through the windows of our apartment, Yvonne, my partner, will point out that our furniture is getting shabby, is beyond repair and needs replacing. I may have noticed already but, knowing the consequences, I would have kept quiet about it. You see some years ago, even though we'd had some fun and satisfaction revitalizing and revamping second or third hand items, we thought it was about time that we bought ourselves some new furniture instead of filling our interior with other peoples leftovers. We were, however, somewhat shocked to discover that we actually had very expensive taste! Everything we really, really liked was really, really expensive! Way above what we were prepared to pay. Even if we had it we'd prefer to spend that amount on money on something else.

So that's how we became flatpackers!

Flat-pack : furniture or equipment sold in pieces and assembled by the buyer.

It comes mostly in flat cardboard packaging, hence the name.

A visit to IKEA , which is probably the best known flat-pack furniture manufacturer, involves navigating through endless twists, turns and loops designed to take customers through every single department, presumably in the hope that he, she or they will buy a double bed or kitchen cabinet on impulse. For us it means that by the time we reach the appropriate department we are bored, irritated, slightly disorientated and regretting the whole thing. The fact that we are not wildly enthusiastic about anything on display does not help. However after much discusson we will manage to make a choice. Will we then buy the furniture we have chosen? No we won't !

Yvonne will suggest that we should go home and think about it. We go home. The subject will not be mentioned again for a while, probably not until the next time the late summer sun shines through the windows of our apartment. At which point we will return to Ikea, negotiate our way through all the irrelevant departments and, after the briefest glance at some other bits and pieces, order the items that we had supposedly been thinking about.

Now, friends, there are a lot of jokes, grumbles and  complaints about assembling flatpack furniture but the truth is that with a minimum of skill and modest intelligence it's really easy to construct. Yes, even for me.

Despite an ETD (estimated time of delivery) somewhere between eight a.m. and infinity, the packages and boxes arrived early in the morning. With only a slight loss of blood and hardly any bad language I had four dining room chairs and two armchairs all ready for use before lunchtime!

I also had enough cardboard packaging to construct an imitation rain forest, enough large plastic bags to carry half an ocean and six identical Allen keys, five of them unused......

….and all of the time I was thinking about where we could go for an Autumn break.

It's déja-vu all over again!

It's déja-vu all over again!

The campsite, somewhere along the Rhine, was full of mobile homes and caravans. The receptionist reluctantly showed us a patch of grass where we could pitch our tiny tent. Looking remarkably like the painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci, a row of campers were seated at a long table, they invited us to join them. The couple at the centre of this tableau were celebrating the silver medal they had been awarded to mark their 25^th visit. They seemed genuinely sorry for us when they discovered that this was our first time and we would probably never be able to recieve such an honour!

Similarily in the south of France a Dutch couple proudly told us that they'd visited the same campsite for years. Just once, they said, they'd stayed at campsite down the road but it wasn't as good AND it was full of French people! Adding seriously in response to one of our increasingly less  serious questions “Well, yes, we did try the local food once but we didn't like it”

At the other end of the spectrum backpackers seem equally uninterested in local cuisine and customs. Now, there have been adventurous people travelling around the world  wearing backpacks since they were invented but 'backpacking' as a lifestyle has evolved into mass tourism on the cheap, at times verging on the miserly. You will see them  at backpacker hotspots swarming around wi-fi points clutching bottles of water and packets of cut-price cookies. They spend more time interacting with other backpackers rather than the with the locals. However, unlike the caravanners, they will not be staying long. They will soon move on to the next hostel listed in the packpackers handbook ticking off countries,cities and sights on the way. 
A long weekend in Paris and they've 'done' France, one night in a Yurt just outside Bishkek and they've had their nomad experience in Kyrgyzstan! 
Now, to be honest, we were also restless travellers, never spending more than three days in one place and on long bike trips less. Until at some point we decided to explore more fully some of places we'd previously breezed through. A change of pace maybe but it has not often involved visiting the exact same place twice and never, ever, three times. 
Until this year...............

2x Smizany, Slovakia:  Same time, same place. The big difference was that Ivan greeted us wearing swimming trucks that were way too small instead of a rain cape. This time his extensive covered patio sheltered us from the blistering heat rather than the frequent and heavy showers last year!

3x Breb, Romania: our third visit and the second year in a row helping at the village campsite. Did we get bored? Not at all, actually we had a much busier social life than we do at home. At the end of our three weeks we still had things to do places to go and people to meet. There is every chance we the will go again next year. On the way, maybe, to a bronze medal??

1x Runc, Slovenia: There has to be a first time for everything. Allegedly this tiny, remote village has two shops we only managed to find one. They had bread on Wednesdays.

5x Parad, Hungary: We had visited this campsite twice when guiding bicycle tours, then again quite by chance, then once more! Is it such a great place? Well, no, not really. The grass is well maintained, it has to be said. The sanitation block is clean but in a perpetual state of disrepair.  The rest is bent, broken, loose or faded. It has not improved over the years but, strangely, has got no worse.

“Nothing changes here” said the lady behind the bar “only the staff”.

It was damp, dismal and deserted but the next day there was a change. It was sunny and we were overrun by a project for lively underpriviliged gypsy children. Ah well, we thought, after a moment of panic, 'if you can't beat them join them'. And that's what we did, earning us a huge hug from the generously proportioned project leader when we eventually left.

3x Kapfelberg, Germany: Yvonne had picked out a suitable stopover campsite to punctuate a two day drive. The description seemed familier to me but Yvonne assured me that it wasn't the place I was thinking of and I believed her right up to the moment we left the autobahn.

“It's déja-vu all over again”! I exclaimed!

Yes, we had been there twice before AND the circumstances leading up to the second visit had been exactly the same. 

I guess I'll never learn! 

It had changed though, it now had a proper reception with a desk, a computer and a potted plant, instead of an old man with a note book.

2x Walldorf, Germany: After weeks of intentional and unintentional repeat visits it seemed fitting that we should finish our journey by dropping in on a Kyrgyz friend living in Germany. Yes, you guessed it, we'd done the same before at the end of another trip. Well, it was not quite a repeat,  she had moved house, even if it was only just around the corner and down the road a bit!

No News - is Good News

No News – is Good News

Once upon a time we were tour guides. We led bicycle tours in, among other places, the south of France and Hungary.

The cyclists would usually arrive at some ridiculously early hour in the morning after a long overnight journey. This was  before there were mobile telephones, yes, there was a time before mobile telephones and yes, I am old enough to remember it. Anyway, just about the first thing they would do was look for a public telephone. In no time there would be a queue of weary and bleary eyed travellers waiting to call home and announce that they had arrived safely. Now, I have never been able to understand why people do this. The majority of people who start out to go somewhere end up by getting there, and most of them do so more or less on time. Surely it's only when you don't arrive safely, at the wrong time or the wrong place that there may be a need to call home. I never felt the urge to do this, nor would I demand or encourage anybody else to do so. If nothing happened, there's nothing to report. 

Of course things are different now, with so many instant, easy and inexpensive forms of communication people are contacting each other throughout the journey and posting pictures on the way. So really there is even less need to report your safe arrival but I suspect many people still do! Maybe it's because we have so much news. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. There is always something happening somewhere in the world and we get to hear about it all day long: riots revolution and wars, epidemics, earthquakes and extreme weather conditions. The news is, per definition, about the new and the unsual but faced with a daily barrage of demonstrations, delays and disasters the extraordinary begins to seem like the ordinary. It is hardly surprising that many people feel relieved when they arrive unharmed at their destinations!  

Due to the 24/7 news machine our concept of what news is has become somewhat distorted. However in recent years there has been more attention on the distortion of the news itself. Fake, misleading or manipulated news has always been with us, modern technology just allows us to do it  bigger and better!  And it's probably fair to say that all news is manipulated in some way, even if it's only to fit it into the allotted space or time slot. 

The reliability of the news media was put into perspective for me by some Polish girls I met in London. This was before the collapse of communism in Central Europe and when it was still okay to call young women girls. These were fiercely opposed to the communist government so I was surprised to discover that they were less than enthusiastic about the free press in the west. “ In your newspapers”, they explained “ it's difficult know what is true and what is not true. In our country it's much easier...we know it's all lies!”

Anyway, tomorrow we're on the road again and I won't be troubled much by  news of any sort over the next six weeks.   
For the second part of our trip we have no definite plans. I'll probably be posting photos and stories on the way but if for some reason you don't hear from me you can simply assume that I'm okay and having a good time. 

No News – is Good News

Storms, Sand and a Slab of Jam

Storms, Sand and a Slab of Jam

Just a week ago we took a bike trip  along The Borderlands Trail, a long  distance hiking route. Mostly off-road it  twist and turns through forests and fields, along wide unpaved roads and single tracks that roughly correspond to the boundaries between Belgium and The Netherlands. It was warm and sunny but we soon discovered there was a seriously strong head wind and that long periods of dry weather had turned many of the gravel roads into elongated sand pits. It was tough going. Yvonne began to feel the effort. Her legs were aching, she frequently had to mount and dismount as she had chosen the wrong bike and tires for the conditions. Red-faced, sandy-mouthed but still in fairly good spirits she called out “I have a suggestion for your next column.......... "

Another day, another mountain, the centre of Spain is a massive plateau which doesn't mean that it's as flat as a pancake. However, many of the climbs are long rather than steep. A seemingly endless series of hair pin bends wind their way slowly to the top. “Originally paths for heavily loaded donkeys” I suggested. With so many twists and turns we could often see each other as we each proceeded at our own pace. I looked back to see Yvonne about seven or eight bends below, she waved, I waved cheerily back. It was quite a while before she arrived, obviously not very happy, at the top. She swore at the mountain, she swore at her fully packed bike, I can't remember if she swore at me but angry words were exchanged. I'd apparently misinterpreted her gesture. She was not waving but beckoning me to come back...she was tired and exhausted and could go no further. I'd smiled, waved and continued on my way, there were no mobile phones, so she had to struggle on. There was a bit more swearing before we entered a mountain hut, ordered coffee and the only food that was available, a slice of bread with, what can only be described as a slab of jam on top.

It did the trick. Her bicycle and I were forgiven but not the mountain, it is still reffered to by her as 'That !!@#!**!! Mountain'

We'd signed up for a night mountain bike ride. Although it had been raining for days before, and on the day itself, we decided to go anyway. The ride took us through cow sheds, saw mills, garden centres and villages lined with enthusiastic spectators....but it also led us through unlit, muddy, slippery and wet forest paths. At the end of each of these sections groups of cyclists were calling out in an attempt to relocate team mates. Hard to know if they ever found them. With mud up to the eyeballs nobody was recognisable!

The Mont Ventoux has legendary significance for followers of The Tour de France. Its 21 long, steep kilometres are a magnet for racing cyclist of all ages and abilities. With a van full of tents, bicycles and other equipment we were on the way to lead a bike tour. We'd made a small detour so that I could cycle the mountain. It was a bright sunny day, Yvonne found a nice spot to park and relax before the tiring days ahead ...and off I went. As I progressed up the mountain it started to get misty. By the time I reached the top the only thing I could see was the finish line. It was cold and there was literally nothing to else to see. No point in hanging around I went right back down again. The mist turned to drizzle, then to heavy rain. The road turned into a river, my fingers, on this midsummer day, were so cold I could barely use the breaks. The sharp, wet bends had become treacherous. About half way down I was relieved to see Yvonne driving towards me. My relief was short lived. Yvonne is a kind hearted person, she had fished up two wet and inexperienced cyclists and their fully packed bikes. 
There was no room for me in the van! 
I had no choice but to continue my cold, wet and at times scary descent.

In a café at the foot of the mountain it took me more than an hour and four glasses of Ventoux Liqueur to stop me shivering. Well, three glasses actually but I didn´t refuse when Yvonne offered to buy me a fourth one!

It was a perfect day as we left the narrow Ligurian coastal strip and the smell of sun tan oil behind us and almost immediately started going uphill. The tourists rarely get beyond this point. Some road workers waved as we approached the second long climb of the day heading for the highest point of our tour. There were few other people around. Onwards and upwards. Approaching the top the weather turned, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, nasty. There was a crashing of thunder and flashes of lighting, close by and all around, accompanied by heavy rain and hailstones. We thought it safer to get off the road... we dived into the bushes to get at least some shelter. The storm went on for ages, it stopped and started again. It eased a little then returned with extra force. Circling around as if on a search and kill mission, with us as the targets. Our thin summer cycling gear provided no protection and we´d foolishly not bothered with wind or rain jackets. I was considering following a file of cows that was weaving its way through the trees and undergrowth, in the hope that they may lead us to a herders refuge, when we were rescued by a passing truck, the only vehicle on the road. He drove us through the winding mountain roads, some now flooded others covered with a deep layer of hailstones as big as Ligurian olives. He dropped us off at a pass where we sheltered until we eventually made our way back to the coast. We arrived, almost dry but still cold and bedraggled, to find nothing had changed, the day as perfect as we had left it. 

Christmas eve in Louisiana, we found a campsite. We were shown to their 'luxury tent pitches' which consisted of a square patch of ground boarded by planks at ground level, at the four corners metal poles supported, would you believe it, a roof. Ah well, we'd camped in much stranger places during our year long bicycle trip around North America. However things really dit feel strange the next morning. It took us a while to realise that we were floating. It had rained heavily during the night. The planks were there to keep the water out. What they actually did, and did very well, was to allow water in and then keep it there! In effect we were floating on inflatable mattresses in our own private pool. In the right context I suppose that could be considered luxury! The high point of our Christmas day was watching our sleeping bags and clothes fooling around in the tumble dryer.

It was hot, very hot, even for a Georgian summer it was hot. Even high in the mountain resort where we had been staying it was hot. That was the reason we had planned to leave early but, not for the first time in Georgia, we were delayed by an excess of hospitality. It was gone midday, after too much lunch, when we left. No problem, we thought. It was all down hill from here... and so it was except that there were two tough climbs in the scorching sun to be negotiated first! We arrived at our destinations in a sorry state. Dehydrated and unable to eat much. We could not stop drinking. The rooms had no air conditioning, there was no relief and little chance to recover. I had painful cramps the whole night, neither of us slept much. All the symptoms of heat exhaustion. Next day, however, we had recovered enough and from there the road really was downhill all the way to the coast, where we encountered the most oppressive weather I have ever experienced but that's another story......  and there are plenty more involving, among other things, bears, guns, tumble weeds and police escorts.... 

….but the simple point that Yvonne wanted me to make is that,   and I know it's hard for some to believe,....yes ….we do all this for fun!