From Budapest to Slovensky Raj National Park, Slovakia

Saturday 24th July

Sadly we left the campsite and Budapest, wishing we had more time (well more money!) to spend there. I definitely want to come back to this city, I could even live here a while! Before leaving entirely we headed to Memento park on the out skirts of the city. A place where someone had gathered together old communist statues and placed them in one park! Strange but interesting..

They love statues!

Strange statues!

Communist statues, Momento Park

We then set off northeast towards Eger, but stopped halfway in the Matra National Park and found a small car park just off the road in the woods to stop for the night.

Sunday 25th July

The beautiful sunshine had later on yesterday turned to clouds and rain. Today the rain continued, so we sat in slightly depressed at leaving the sunny and fun Budapest!

Later on we continued on to Eger and passed through it to head up into the hills of the Bukk National Park. After a good while driving around small roads we found a spot and settled inside out of the rain and wind. We now put into play the 10km rule of finding a parking spot, if you see an okay one and drive for 10km seeing no other you turn back around and head for the first one! Saving fuel and time. We got this rule from Patrick & Hannah, who we met at the Budapest campsite, cheers guys!

Monday 26th July

Decided it was time to leave Hungary and head into Slovakia, even though the continual wet weather was putting a dampener on our mood! We set off north and for the first time in a long long while passed through an open border! It was a strange feeling like it was wrong coming into the country unannounced. The landscape and housing seemed quite similar to Hungary and in fact Serbia, but you could tell there wasn’t so much money in this country. We’d had heard conflicting tales about Slovakia and whether we could wild camp or not, Lorna wasn’t convinced we could. So we headed up to the lovely wooded mountains of Slovensky Raj National Park and to a campsite. There were plenty of walking opportunities, but the continued rain made us not bother for today.

Tuesday 27th July

Even though it was still raining we got our raincoats and headed off into the park for a walk up the mountain. Lorna was especially excited as this walk meant ladder climbs up waterfalls! We set off down the designated path and just as we got into he woods there was a small ticket booth, where we had to buy day tickets to enter the natural Park! Money for nothing, but probably more likely the government doesn’t help towards any costs maintaining it. Once inside the walk was down paths along the stream, which had turned into a river! Basically the paths didn’t last long and we were basically picking our way across rocks in the water making our way up the ravine.

Making our way up the river!

What path!

The rain didn’t let up and we got to wet wooden paths over the gorges. I say paths it was just two logs with bits of wood nailed in, so balance was all-important!

Safety first!

The wet walk!

the Slovensky Raj, river walk!

The wooden walkwayover the gorge!

Then we got to our first ladders, vertically up besides the waterfall.

Lorna climbing up the waterfall

Climbing up the waterfall!

All good fun

The rest of the walk up the mountain gorge continued in this fashion, but it was great. By the end of it we were knackered and completely soaked but loved every minute of it. We still had to walk down the hill mind back to the campsite!

The wet metal ladders!

pathway up the water, Slovakia

ladders up the rock