Split, Plitvicka and Balaton
On 24th May (Tues) we arrived at Camp Stobrec, about 6kms south of Split, where we stayed for 5 nights, one of the best sites we’ve used so far on this trip; as well as being only a short hop from the city it is directly onto the beach and a 10 minute stroll round the harbour into the village. We had a lazy few days, just going into Split once to check out parking for the ‘van and found a car park at the bus/rail station, which allows motorhomes to park for 24 hours (costs £24 so not normally a replacement for a campsite). We wandered around, had a coffee and weighted ourselves down with our purchases from the very good fruit and vegetable market, then left the rest of our sight-seeing until Sunday. Lots of fellow Brits at Stobrec, in fact we’ve met up with far more Brits on this trip than we’ve ever done before. Hello to Bob and Val from Leicester, who were travelling with Ken and Iola from north Wales, also to Roy and Jackie and Arthur and Hazel from Bristol.
Eye, Eye! Camped next to us at Stobrec
Stobrec Bay from campsite.
At this point in the trip we didn’t feel inclined to do the usual touristy things; having already spent 6 weeks of pursuing Roman architecture around Dalmatia, we left out the climb to the top of the cathedral bell tower when we went back on Sunday, but I did take some photos during our walk around the Diocletian Palace. The harbour is picturesque, with restaurants all along the wide pedestrianised front and the old town within the walls is well worth a visit. We then met up for a late lunch with our friends Britt and Roger; they had flown from Sweden along with 4 friends to spend a week around the islands on a sailing boat. We had a lot of catching up to do as we’d not managed to meet up for 3 years, but we parted up-to-date after dinner that night!
Our next stop was the Plitvicka Jezera (Lakes) National Park. It really is a beautiful place and not to be missed, the waterfalls being the main attraction; however we were lucky enough to visit Victoria Falls some years ago so nothing else will ever live up to their glory, the volume of water there makes all others seem to be just a dripping tap! Having said that, at Plitvicka it’s easy to spend a full day walking the trails, taking the shuttles between stations and taking boat trips around the lakes. It’s the biggest inland attraction, with scores of coaches daily from all over Europe. It’s extremely good value too, we paid 110Kn each, about £12, and that included the shuttle and boat trips. After the visit we stayed overnight a few miles down the road at the Koruna camp site which, along with several hotels there, is owned by the National Parks Authority. It was a lovely, peaceful site on the edge of the park and when we checked in we found out that they run a free shuttle bus every morning and evening to and from the lakes, but we’d already made our visit and the next day was earmarked for Zagreb.
Plunging Plitvicka!
We arrived at City Camp, Zagreb in the afternoon so left our look around the city to the next day. We were going to take the free camp shuttle bus to the station and do the short train ride in, but the site info sheet said that there was a car park in town suitable for motorhomes and parking overnight was allowed. So next morning, as we needed to go through Zagreb on our planned route to Lake Balaton, we drove in at 10 a.m. only to find said carpark full of commuters’ cars. We then gave up on Zagreb and headed in the direction of Balaton.
We’d decided that we wouldn’t be using motorways in Hungary so didn’t buy the vignette but, travelling along admiring the view, we realised that SatNav had taken us by a different route only when we reached the Slovenian border instead of the Hungarian one. A few minutes later, although it’s set to avoid toll roads, it then appeared to be heading us straight towards a Hungarian toll road so a few U-turns were made to get us out of bother until we managed to find a garage that sold the vignettes (c. £15 for 10 days). As things turned out, a week a later we were thankful that we’d bought it.
We eventually arrived at Camp Zala, on Lake Balaton, at the edge of Keszthely town and stayed a couple of nights. The ACSI description of the site’s facilities – basic but adequate – summed it up quite succinctly; however, at £8 per night, it was really good value as back home we often pay more than that to park up in a wet grass field! We couldn’t help comparing it though to Pod Maslinom at Orasac, which was the same price. The Friday night was very noisy until the early hours, but that was down to the yearly town festival which happened to be on that weekend. Talking of wet grass fields though, there had been a lot of rain so pitches had to be chosen with care; the heavens opened again just after we arrived, forcing our unlucky neighbour to move elsewhere to avoid getting completely bogged down on his pitch.
We moved nearer to the northern end of Balaton, staying 2 nights just outside Fured; the first we wild camped on the large, tree shaded car park a few metres from the Fured Camping site, the 2nd we stayed on the site where, again, the facilities were just about adequate. It too was noisy, this time because a “Sun City” (or was it Sin City?) nightclub was just across the road. Fured itself is a very upmarket, switched on waterfront town.
From Balaton to Budapest and a change of plan.
Our last day at the lake was spent along the northern edge at Balatonkenese. It’s quiet and peaceful, unlike the rest of the shores which are noisy and very commercialised. We wandered along the shoreline then got the chairs out, in the shade of some trees in parkland at the roadside, and we were set for the afternoon! We stayed overnight in a shaded carpark then headed off early Tues morning (7th June) for Haller Camping on the outskirts of Budapest.
When we checked in we asked where we would find a doctor, which turned out to be just along the road. Since the previous Monday John had had a stomach pain which, at first, he blamed on something he’d eaten, but 8 days on it hadn’t gone away. We rang the bell on the street, a young doctor came to the door and asked him a couple of questions; she then scribbled the address of a hospital on a 2” square yellow post-it note and told us to take a taxi there. This was at the street door, we didn’t get a foot over the threshold! We checked into the busy A&E at 11.45 and waited patiently until 2pm, by which time everyone had been seen, and then asked how long before he could be seen, to which the reply was a shrug of the shoulders and “I’ve no idea”. We sat it out until 4.45pm, 5 hours after arrival, and asked again; a doctor came out and said he must be patient as they had no rooms (cubicles) available, despite the place being empty except for people who’d already been seen. He waited a further half hour and then left. (We do appreciate that we were in Hungary and speak no Hungarian, but all the people we spoke to speak English so it wasn’t a language barrier that held us up). The lads at the site office were shocked at the tale and said they send people to the hospital round the corner, but we’d asked for a doctor. We tried there next morning but were told they have no A&E and needed “a paper from a doctor” so off we went back to the surgery! This time he was seen by a different doctor, who thoroughly examined him, duly wrote out “the paper” and said he wanted him to see a surgeon. An English speaking ambulance driver took us over, checked him in and told us which clinic he’d be called into. He was examined again by the surgeon, who had bloods taken and sent him for an ultrasound and 2 x-rays. By lunchtime he was back in with the surgeon who told us that he suspected a gastric ulcer, but couldn’t arrange for the remainder of the tests to be carried out for several days; John asked if he’d be ok to carry on with the trip but was told not for longer than a month, at most. This was all done, free of charge, through his E.H.I.C.; we did take out a good travel insurance too, but we decided to return home to get the remaining tests done, the main one being a gastroscopy. He said we’d do the hop-on hop-off tour bus next day then take a week to make a steady drive home. We’d spent a week in Budapest in the 90’s when our friends Lars and Ylva were living there, but thought we’d refresh our memories of it before leaving as we’d only seen the inside of hospitals since arriving!
It’s a small world isn’t it? I saw 2 French motorhomes whilst here with a “22” plate, meaning that they are from the Cotes d’Armor; I had a chat with them and found that they live only a few miles from where we used to have our house. Chatting to a family the next day, with an UK plate, I discovered that they live a few miles from us back home! Hello too to Steve and Nemone from near Eastbourne.
Budapest to Peterborough
We left Haller Camping early on Friday (10th) morning and during the morning John told me that the pain had been getting slowly worse over the (by now) 11 days. I then decided that we were not going to take a week over the journey, I wanted him home as soon as possible. We used motorways all the way but, nevertheless, had a beautiful drive across the whole of Austria that day, ending the day at Altotting, in Germany. We took a walk around and found several churches around one village green and were amazed to see that every shop around there was chock full of religious icons so I asked a local why and he said it was because “Our Lady Mary” had visited and it was a pilgrimage site. I’ve since googled it and found that “For over 1250 years the town has been Bavaria’s spiritual centre and for five centuries has featured as Germany’s principle Marian pilgrimage site”.
Altotting, Bavaria
We drove NW across Germany on Saturday, mostly through heavy rain; they have had an awful lot, with the rivers at breaking point, touching the bridges in some places and fields flooded. John said he was not going to pay the expensive French motorway tolls so I set SatNav to shortest time, no tolls and on Sunday it took us up into Belgium and we crossed into France just north of Dunkirk. When we later learned of all the football trouble we were pleased to have taken that route. We’d reached Calais by 3pm but when I went to the ticket office I found that, like the airlines, ferry companies now charge through the nose for same day travel ( I hadn’t booked in advance because I didn’t know when we’d reach Calais). John wouldn’t pay the €150 to take an early crossing so I paid €63 for the 1 am ferry and was told that actually we could take the sailing before that, so caught the 11pm on Sun night and finally arrived home at 3.15am Monday morning; 1141 miles Budapest to home.
He saw our GP on Monday morning, who told him that it could take up to 6 weeks for the endoscopy here, which left us wishing we’d stayed in Budapest! However, he got a call on Wed evening and got an appointment for 5th July; by making phone calls on Thursday and Friday to chase a possible cancellation, he will now get it done this Thursday, 23rd June.
So ends our planned 5 – 6 months trip, shortened to 8 weeks, during which we stayed put on the Dubrovnik site for 10 days but we’ve covered 3813 miles nonetheless.
John’s chomping at the bit to get off again so you may yet hear from us again this season!