Travels with Spaniels: Sunshine in the Valley of the Beautiful Women

Our decision to move south when the cold snap hit us in northern Poland has never looked better. We've had a settled period of sunny weather for the past week, and today saw us enjoying a warm breeze across Lake Tisza as we pootled over to a boardwalk in the centre of the reservoir on a small motorboat. We spent half an hour exploring the reeds and islands via pathways and hides, just managing to stop a hot Max from jumping into the water. After that we weren't in the mood to do much more than pop into Lidl for a few supplies, and roll into a campsite for the night - our first full facilities, official paid site since Norway. It was that or find a forest road and dig a hole, since we had found nowhere to empty the loo since the dry toilet in the lovely picnic spot on the Slovak border.

The waterways of Lake Tisza

The Balrog meets the Tisa

We had spent a quiet night in Tokaj after our wine tasting there, and found a lovely walk along a bend in the river where the Bodrog meets the Tisa. We had followed the Bodrog down from Slovakia, but had immediately rechristened it the Balrog, which will mean nothing to anyone but Tolkien fans. From Tokaj we headed for Miskolc, where a laundrette called Bubbles proved to be one of the cleanest and most efficient yet, giving us very little time to explore, but keeping us on the right side of the traffic wardens. We stopped for lunch on the outskirts of town where we could nod to the castle while admiring a brand new equestrian venue with seating for several thousand people.

A quick glance at Miskolc centre

Another day, another castle...

Spaniels excluded while Florence gets a brush-up

From there it was up into the hills of the Bükk national park, via the small resort of Lillafüred, on a road with more twist and turns than two series of Killing Eve. Fortunately it was quiet, and the road was plenty wide enough to make it enjoyable to drive through the stunning autumn colours of a completely deciduous woodland. We stopped at a picnic area in the hills, turfed the dogs outside, and gave Florence's insides the clean they desperately needed.

Presumably one of the beautiful women

The next morning we drove down to Eger, where an accommodating Mol service station allowed us to fill up with LPG, diesel and water, all in one go. A short hop took us to the Valley of the Beautiful Women, which one can only assume refers to the wine goggles acquired by people who frequent its many wine cellars. The name aside, it offered excellent free parking (out of season) and meant we could taste wine freely, knowing we were settled for the night. Having worked our way through a tasting menu, we decided the local dry white, Csillag, was very much to our liking. And Bikavér, which we had both encountered a very long time ago as Bull's Blood, had lightened and mellowed since its guest appearance at 1980s dinner tables, making it a good addition to the wine crate in the wardrobe.

Sadly, a single (generous) tasting was as much as we could manage at 3pm, and we decided to collect the pups from the van and explore the attractive town with its array of nineteenth century grand buildings. Stopping at numerous souvenir shops failed to elicit a single Hungarian flag sticker, and we all trudged back to the van as night began to fall. It seemed silly to start cooking when there were several good restaurants within a few hundred metres, so we splashed more than £20 on a good meal in one of the wine cellars. It was an enjoyable evening, even after embarrassing ourselves by asking one of the band for a table. Well they were all standing at the entrance dressed in folk costume, how were we to know they had just come out for a fag?

Wine tasting in the Valley of Beautiful Women

Eger town centre

This morning we woke up knowing we had only two tasks: watch England play rugby, and empty the toilet cassettes. We were out of the van by eight to take the pups on a "sniffing" walk through the town, and back for breakfast and rugby shortly after nine. Both were very satisfactory, and feeling on a high, I decided to have one last try for a flag sticker before leaving what might be our last encounter with souvenir shops. I took our spare Poland flag, and showed it to a woman at a nearby stall offering flags on fridge magnets, bunting, and short sticks, but with no stickers in evidence. She put on a thinking face, and disappeared into the back of her van, to reappear soon after with two ancient stickers of the map of Hungary, one of them in the correct colours. "That'll do," I beamed, and handed over my 300 forints.

There still remained the issue of the toilet cassettes. Public toilets are few and far between here, and usually have attendants, who may or may not appreciate us emptying our cassette in their facilities. We haven't been brave enough to ask. The ubiquitous Portaloos and composting toilets of the Baltics and Poland have also dried up, and we have not even seen the "WC Bus" sign that indicates a service point for coaches with toilets. Environmentally, digging a hole in the woods is not a problem as we run chemical free, and we do carry a small shovel, but it isn't always practical, especially at a time of year when there are mushroom pickers around every corner. So that's why you find us in a campsite tonight. At least it means we will have empty cassettes, and be full of water as we head towards Romania.