The Travelling Buncebury's

  Central Eastern Europe 3. Zigzag across Slovakia   the 'man in the street' manhole cover sculpture in Bratislava I’d always got Slovakia and Slovenia mixed up and I doubt that I’m the only one to have done so but I hope now that I’ll remember which is which.   Our Lonely Planet for Eastern Europe, grabbed from our local library because the trip was arranged at such short notice, suggests that if you have a week in Slovakia you spend three days of it in the Capital Bratislava, then visit some castles or galleries, a day or two in ‘quirky’ Kosice and Poprad.   It doesn’t give the impression that there’s much to see.   ‘Quirky’ is a word that when used in L Planet raises suspicions but it happened to be on our train route.   A day did it for us in Kosice, pleasant enough and we obviously didn’t stay long enough to spot the quirk.      the High Tatras from the train near Poprad and a lot closer from Tatranska Lomnica After the flat lands ...

  Central Eastern Europe 2. From Hungary, north into Slovakia a late lunch at our hotel in Pecs a grand building in Pecs on the central square    this isn't a badly aligned photo, it really is a wonky meterological information post  Budapest is about the centre of the north of this roughly oval shaped country and we’ve travelled to Pecs in   the far south and quite a way in the east to Eger with both only a little over a two hour train journey from the capital.   So Hungary is not a large country and from what must be described as my limited viewpoint it has an unprepossessing landscape.   Using the unofficial SI unit of size it’s about 4.5 times the size of Wales while Slovakia, the next country we plan to visit is about 2.5 Wales.   There’s a possibility we might get to Slovenia too which is the same size as Wales assuming Anglesey has declared independence.   is this really a statue using a mobile phone ? I'm sure you'll agreee that th...

  Central Eastern Europe 1. Not Braemar at all, Budapest instead  Pest from Castle Hill in Buda (the dot low in the sky isn't a blemish, it's a hot air balloon)   It’s a long story but here it is in one sentence.   Van off colour two days before we were due to leave for Scotland to do some long-distance walking so we booked a flight from Bournemouth to Budapest for three weeks instead.   Arrival in Budapest being the entire plan and start point for an exploration, mostly by train of this part of Europe.   Incidentally, although a small regional airport, Bournemouth also sells giant Toblerones.   Buda from Pest with the Danube in the way today's oxymoron Many of you will know that Budapest straddles the mighty Danube (it definitely is not blue as it runs through here) and is two cities called Buda and Pest, not very imaginative but there it is.   Just like London really with the less mighty Thames (Danube 1,770 miles, Thames 215 miles) separati...

Pyrenees 6. End of the Pyrenees three photos - walking towards the Cirque du Gavarnie We turned south and upwards towards the Cirque de Gavarnie which turned out to be one of the great sites and sights. Parking was two or three miles from the Cirque itself and the walk to it was along a lovely valley with meadows to each side and a smallish river tinkling through it doing what seemed to be a terrible job at cooling things down a bit. However, we had no control to measure it against so I may be too harsh on what was an attractive bubbly little line of what had until very recently been snow. It was here we saw the only Edelweiss of our entire journey. A surprise because we’ve only seen it before on rocky slopes high in the mountains and this was a flat meadow with conifers dotted around and it’s not expected to start blooming until July. Unmistakably Edelweiss though, a funny little plant and I’ve never understood the fuss made about it. Maybe it is just that that old song made it...