Sunday 24th June 2018

Cathy posting,

We slept well at our riverside pitch It’s time to get our skates on and move to the Lower Tatras, we had a lovely relaxing evening last night by the river, we like free camping more than camp sites but we’ve located one camp site that sounds idyllic, at the base of the Lower Tatras at Muranska Planina near Brezno, we’ve calculated 2.5 hours to get there and the weather is cooler so we’re happy to travel and I’ts time to empty the loo so a camp is a good idea as we’ve got plans for more free camping later.

Dave has discovered that the mi-fi in Pogo is gobbling data like the jolly green giant, literally as soon as he opens WordPress using our mi-fi it counts down about 1mb per minute, what is going on?!

He’s so frustrated!

The views from the river free spot to Sedliaky Dvor campsite improves, it looks more like Scotland, there are lots of forests and 49% of Slovakia is forested apparently, there are little villages with colourful houses and window boxes spilling out their floral contents dotted around with the odd scruffy communist looking block of flats or building thrown in to the mix, further along the hillsides become more soft and round reminiscent of the English lake district in Cumbria, approaching a large town Banská Bystrica it’s like Spain in the countryside of England, shops lining each side of the road and more new car showrooms and dealerships than I’ve seen anywhere BMW, Skoda, Ford, Fiat, Hyundai, Mazda and more to boot! A huge O2 building comes into view, seems like this is a commercial hub, we reach a road that Dave calls the toboggan road, round and round we go left, right, left, right, co-op shops are everywhere in Slovakia.

We reach the campsite and it’s a beautiful place surrounded by nature, chickens roam the site.

Národný hills all around, motorhomes caravans and tents mingle in amongst the fruit trees, camp where ever you like, this works well as you’re not lined up in a row and most people respect space, a young guy appears and explains he is the son of the owner, we ask him the most important question of the day “where can we go to watch the this afternoons England vs Panama game ?” right here apparently! got to be joking in the middle of nowhere! we seem to drop on lucky every time there’s a match that we want to see, they’re currently building a large outdoor/indoor barn complete with benches, tables, help yourself bar and TV, when its finished it will have a fireplace for winter too but it’s being used now so we settle down with 5 mins to spare before kick off,  we get a beer from the fridge, they even have dry rose wine which I like, €1 per 500ml bottle, a glass of wine also is €1, help yourself to a drink and write it down, we like this place already.

We were all alone until the 2^nd half when we were joined by the Dutch owner and a few other campers mostly Dutch or German, what a great day and what a great score for England 6-1 we don’t normally score that many goals in the whole of a tournament do we?

Maps to the ready and walking trails book taken from the campers kitchen we plan tomorrows walk, left over curry for tea and back to watch the Poland Columbia game, we had good fun talking to Patrick and Frank two Dutch lorry drivers who go regularly to the UK.

Bye

Cathy