Sunday 8 July
We’re leaving the city and heading to Lake Balaton which is a couple of hours along the motorway. We’re going to the north eastern side of Lake Balaton to a free spot in a carpark near the ship museum. The drive down is uneventful and a little boring. By the time we get there its blowing a gale so much so I contemplated putting on my jumper when we went for a walk down to the lake.
It’s a nice 15 minutes walk along the path down to the lake and onto the harbour. It’s really busy with loads of yachts in the harbour and the cafés and restaurants are full. There’s a small beach area which is packed with families enjoying the afternoon sun.
Back up at the carpark we meet Peter & Christina who are touring Europe for 6 months in their Knaus and by the time we’ve finished chatting with them the sun has gone down.
Monday 9 July
We’re awake and up early, Keith has had an infection in his thumb for nearly a week we were hoping it might go away on it’s own, but during the night the pain was so bad it kept him awake most of the night and he was thinking about the easiest way to chop it off, so it must be hurting.
We head back down into the town and find the doctors surgery. We go in there’s patients waiting but no sign of any reception or anyone who looks like they might work here. I ask the patients if anyone speaks English, one old guy answers “no”! I show him the phrase in our book “we need a doctor” he motions for us to sit down and wait. The system seems to be as people appear and disappear through a door you move along the row of seats and when it’s your turn you stand guard in front of the door so no one else pushes in.
We’re in, the doctor beckons for us to go into his room, “do you speak English”, no Hungarian or German, “Keith show him your thumb” the doctor looks “arrh” and we follow him in the next room. He gets a bottle of spray and then a very big needle. Keith thinks he’s getting an anesthetic injection in his finger before it’s lanced, but no, he shoves the needle into his thumb and squeezes very hard. Keith is on his tip toes tucking his other hand under his arm so he doesn’t punch the doctor around the head. A few more squeezes and he tells the nurse to put a bandage on it. The doctor then ushers us out the door, we try to pay but he just waves his hand for us to leave, it was like we had washed his time and it wasn’t worth paying for lol.
We leave the carpark to spend the day lounging about at Igali Gyogyfurdo Thermal Pools. We paid £12 for both of us for the day. I covered Keith’s bandaged thumb in cellophane and we just hung around in the water all day. We should have one of these pools at Beau Sejour so all you Thursday night “swimmers” can chat all night without getting in the way of the real swimmers.
Our free stop for the night was in the carpark at Kapsfurd Lake. It’s a beautiful lake, no swimming allowed as it’s more of a conservation lake.
We took an hours walk before the rain had us running for cover, but all you can hear are the frogs bellowing out a noisy tune and the singing birds, it’s lovely. We were a little spooked by some guy in his car who was taking photos of us and the German family parked up next to us, wild camping is not allowed in Hungary and we thought he might report us to the police, neither the less we decided to stay and glad we did, apart from the rain which hammered down most of the night it was lovely and quiet.
Tuesday 10 July
We need some exercise and get the pushangs out to cycle along the cycle path around the lake which is 16km. It’s a lovely cycle, mostly flat just how we like it. Half way round Keith changes gear and the chain snaps. For the next 8km he tags onto me to get him up the small rises then scoots himself down, it’s fair to say Keith didn’t really enjoy the ride, too much hard work for him lol.
We head into the village and find a cycle shop and a new chain is fitted with minutes.
We need to get some washing done so it’s a campsite the night. Andrew & Sharon give us a warm welcome at Tranquil Pines with a welcome drink and good old chinwag.
Washing done we take a welcome dip in the pool to cool off.
Wednesday 11 July
In the morning we decide we need to leave the campsite and not stay another night as we had initially planned. We have both suffered during the night with terrible fly and mosquito bites and it’s more than we can cope with. The washings not dry because it rained overnight so we put a line inside the van, stack up the clothes horse and set off.
We head off to Kis Balaton Lake. It’s costs us 1000ft less than £2.50 for the day and the ticket collector says we can stay overnight. We take an hours walk over the bridge to the small island before it starts to rain again. We can pick up the free WiFi in the carpark and it’s good enough for us to stream the England football match, unfortunately we can only get it on Keith’s phone, but it will have to do.
Thursday 12 July
It was a lovely quiet night and by the time we’re sorted to leave the carpark it’s nearly 11 o’clock. The ticket collector doesn’t want any more money so we get on our way.
It’s a long drive to the town of Györ we had wanted to spend a couple of hours at the thermal baths in town but the tickets were just over £8 each and we thought that was to expensive for our budget so we head to the campsite.
The campsite is Camping Piheno. It’s lovely and quite with the pitches under the pine trees, there’s a few campers here but they are all out and about so we’ve got the pool and the sun beds to ourselves. The free WiFi is good from the pool and it’s Shane’s birthday day so so we put in a Skype call with him and the kids. God don’t we miss them😍😘
Not sure if Hungary has grown on us, it’s very busy with heavy traffic and we’ve spent quite a bit of time in traffic jams. It’s a much more modern country than we had in our minds, nice houses and flash cars, some of the towns newly developed with trams running through the centre of the towns. The country is spotlessly clean probably the cleanest country we’ve been to and I don’t think we even saw a sweet wrapper or broken bottle on the road, and as we passed through the villages and towns someone was always sweeping up. The bins are not overflowing and there’s little graffiti around. Very few if any stray/wild dogs. For us we loved the thermal/mineral baths and wished we’d done a few more.
Our budget for Hungary has been £48.57 per day, which isn’t that bad, mostly been spent on fuel because we’ve driven a lot of miles everyday.
We had 4 nights in a campsite and 6 nights free camping spots.
Thanks for coming along on our trip to Hungary and tomorrow we head into Slovakia.
Don’t forget you can catch up with more photos on our Facebook page, follow us live on Polarsteps and a few posts on Instagram.
A la Perchoine
Shirena & Keith
