I looked around my bedroom on the morning of the 19th July this year, and saw a clutter of camping equipment, stove, sleeping bag, roll mat…the list goes on, and somehow in an hour I was to fit my home and wardrobe for the next month into a rucksack. It seemed like an impossible task, and was not to be the last that I faced that summer. This was the day I left with four Scouting friends for a two-week tour of Europe, followed by a 100-mile trek across Hungary with my friend and fellow Venture Scout Claire Charlton to gain my ‘Explorer Belt’ Award. The Scouting movement operates a progressive award system that leads to increased self-development, but the ‘Explorer Belt’ is an additional challenge to enhance participant’s knowledge of foreign lands and cultures whilst continuing to improve their ‘life skills’.
Our first stop was Kandersteg International Scout Centre in the Swiss Bernese Oberland. During our nine day stay we swam in a glacier lake, visited the capital city Bern where we joined the locals jumping off bridges into the beautifully clear river which runs through the city, went on a day trip to Milan and made friends with scouts from all over the world, including Madrid, Naples, Boston, Brussels and Dublin,
From there we had a 12-hour train journey to Trieste on the northeast coast of Italy. The city has grown up at a crossroad of cultures, the Slovenian border only a few kilometres away and also we managed to visit Venice, one of my favourite places of the trip and unlike anywhere I’d ever seen before.
After three days in Italy, we decided to head on to another large scouting centre near Salzburg in Austria. There we joined in with the international football and volleyball tournaments, and didn’t do too badly, beating some German scouts and Portuguese Ventures amongst others. We also went on a ‘Sound of Music’ tour of the city on which our very enthusiastic guide pointed out many of the scenes from the film. It was then that disaster struck- a cyclone hit the campsite, flattening everything in its path and dropping tennis ball sized hailstones. Luckily, we had taken two of our tents down when the storm warning was given, but two of the boys had left theirs up whilst we were away from the camp and we returned to find it as a mass of gashes and rips. We were more fortunate than some however as we spent our last night before leaving for Vienna in a storm shelter treating some young German scouts for shock.
In Vienna we met up with 40 other Scouters from West Lancashire and prepared to start our expeditions. The five of us had become very close over the past two weeks and knew we would miss each other’s company a great deal as we paired off to tackle Eastern Europe so we celebrated our departures in style with a pizza. The next morning we got up at six to say our goodbyes (Claire had pulled a ligament in Salzburg and decided to rest her foot one more day). We watched as 30 Venture Scouts disappeared in minibuses to be dropped off in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, completely naive of what they were about to face.
After another day spent in the city dining on schnitzel and watching the street entertainers, Claire and I decided we were ready to leave for the adventure we had been preparing for a year. Ordering maps from Hungary, buying appropriate equipment, planning a detailed route and finding funding had kept us occupied for the past 12 months. We were driven south to the Hungarian border crossing at Rattersdorf, where we were presented with ten surprise projects that had been selected by our group committee, and reminded of our major project that was to be completed on the subject of ‘Hungarian Youth’. I’m not sure whether it was the obscurity of some of the tasks (e.g. take a picture of a local in national dress, work on a farm…!) , the length of the road which stretched in front of us, or the stern looking border guards, but my stomach suddenly lurched in a mixture of excitement and terror as we watched the minibus drive away and we wondered what on earth were we doing?
Having successfully crossed the border, our first real taste of Hungarian culture was the supermarket from which we bought lunch for 50p and received a lot of stares, something that we were to have to accept over the next ten days. The open land did not provide much protection from the mid-day sun, but we covered a lot of distance, even though Claire was forced to walk in one boot and one sandal because of her sore foot! After seven hours walk we reached the village of Tomord where we expected to find a campsite. Having searched for the site, we finally plucked up the courage to ask one of the locals for directions, and with the aid of our phrase book discovered that the closest one was another 10km away. We felt sick. We had already put a number of miles on our days’ walk to reach this village and with no suitable place to pitch our tent, were presented with the prospect of having nowhere to stay. Luckily we did manage to purchase some water from the village shop which opening for only 1 hour a day, but on opening discovered it was carbonated (the only variety they sell bottled in Hungary) and spent 15 minutes trying to shake the fizz out of it! We found a wooded spot off the road to cook tea, a meal we looked back on that evening as we wrote up our log books-
‘Tea gave us an unwelcome chance to assess the situation, as we both began to feel utterly helpless, isolated and very alone. I brought the video camera out and felt a bit better because it was like speaking to someone back home. My worst fears had been realised- no site and no security, and we have both admitted we were on the verge of breaking down into tears.’
It was then that we turned our problem to our advantage. One of our surprise projects was to ‘sleep off the ground in an unusual place’, and at the edge of a field we found an old wooden hunting tower in which to spend the night. As the brilliant blue sky turned into a beautiful golden sunset, we watched from the tower as a herd of deer crept out of the woods to feed on the corn, and hoped for a more successful day tomorrow.
Awoken at 5.30am by a noisy cockerel, we made an early start and reached the town of Sombathely by midday, having learned that not all footpaths in Hungary are well kept and modelling a number of nettle stings as a result. The last kilometre of our walk brought us down a long, hazy main road, which then turned into a cluster of flyovers and intersections that were not marked on our map! Instead we were forced to navigate our way through the outskirts, but on arrival at the town, found that once again our campsite no longer existed despite our thorough planning. Mild panic set in, but we hailed a taxi, said “Kemping?” and found ourselves at the gates of a luxury campsite complete with a restaurant, a pool (which we were far too tired to use) and hot showers! We even found a Hungarian scout to teach us their national anthem (another surprise project), and who told us a little about scouting in a country where the movement was banned until fairly recently, after the fall of communism. Then, for £3.50 we ate a 3 course meal and relaxed in the knowledge that we were secure for another night at least, something I will never take for granted ever again.
There was however, the looming fact that we didn’t have anywhere definite planned to stay at on night 3, but what should have been quite a stressful day turned out to be one of my fondest of memories (I believe this being entirely due to my discovery of a 4 leaved clover that morning!) We made our way back to where we had finished walking the day before and following the minor dilemma of my water container bursting (I still had not perfected the art of taking off my rucksack without dropping it), we set off on a 25km walk to the village of Egyhazaradoc via the village of Jak. Once at Jak, we bought some postcards that needed four rather large stamps each and didn’t leave much room for writing! We then decided to brave the local café, but got very confused and ended up ordering a plate of processed peas and carrots. After our meal, we followed a ‘Wanderweg’ (a special path for walkers) through a wooded area, out into a stunning field of sunflowers and into the village where we intended to spend the night. Once we had consulted the locals in a mixture of German and broken Hungarian, we were told we could camp on a strip of land at the edge of the village, but also took the opportunity to embark on our ‘work on a farm’ task as a local girl allowed us to feed her chickens!
Having completed the task, we had a wander around the village and then set about making tea. As we started preparing our pasta and sauce, a lady came out of one of the gardens we were camped behind and seemed to be trying to see what we were up to. Eventually she came over and we showed her a Hungarian translation of what our expedition consisted of. At this, she disappeared back into her house and reappeared a few minutes later with some bread, fresh water, pate, homegrown tomatoes and a carton of orange juice. We thanked her as best we could, and then, using lots of pointing, she invited us to pitch our tent in her lovely, flat, grassy garden, if we didn’t mind sharing with the chickens! We gratefully accepted, and spent the evening as part of a Hungarian family, watching water for the vegetable patch being brought up from a well, and chatting to some English speaking neighbours. The next morning we breakfasted on salami, more tomatoes, bread and Earl Grey tea! We thanked them for their kindness by giving them one of the spare ‘Explorer Belt’ badges we had taken with us and we set off on our way. We then discovered we were something of a novelty to the village as many ladies had come out of their houses to wave at us and keen to point us in the right direction. We were extremely touched by their generosity as they were so eager to help and it was one experience that made the trip so special.
With full stomachs we began one of the most difficult days of our trek having misjudged how long it would take us to reach Vasvar, our next stop. Five hours and one very short break later we collapsed into a heap under the shade of some trees in a campsite that did exist thank goodness! Unfortunately, we had tired ourselves out (as well as Claire’s bad foot, which was hosting a number of blisters due to the thinning of her sandal’s sole), and we forced to spend the remainder of the day resting and eating ice cream.
We decided to be very ambitious on Day 5 and cover two days worth of walking in one in order to reach the large city of Zalaegerszeg, by pacing ourselves throughout the day. This would allow us more time to tackle what we thought would be a mountainous region later on in the trek. A pleasant day’s walk through the Hungarian countryside followed, and we watched the rustic looking villages turn into small, modern towns. The city was to be our base for two days as we took a rest day in order to concentrate on our projects, and so we chose to stay in a 4- star hotel overlooking one of the most famous churches in the region. Whilst I enjoyed my first hot bath in 3 weeks, and watching Hungarian ‘Friends’ and ‘E.R.’ on the T.V., we both found the beds far too comfy having been camped on hard ground for so long, and were on the verge of sleeping on the floor!
Our rest day was spent visiting a museum of Stone Age houses and national costumes, a circus (which decided to cancel it’s show that day) and we completed another project by visiting a police station, from which we were promptly escorted! We also met up with two of the support team who were keen to hear how we were getting on, just as we were anxious to find out how our friends were managing on their trek.
Following another night of little sleep (a Hungarian wedding reception was taking place below us and apparently they all go on until 5am!), we were expecting to find a very hilly area that would take a while to travel across. However, what we found was a mere ‘bump in the road’ in comparison to what we had anticipated, and were quite disappointed after 5 days of flatness! Instead, we made excellent time enjoying the freshness of the vineyards, and stopped for a typical Hungarian lunch of Goulash soup at a roadside restaurant, another of our projects. Expecting to be dining on a ‘tourist friendly’ variation of English stew, we were horrified to be presented with a dish of almost raw meat, beans and oily gravy, obviously the more traditional version.
That night we persuaded the owner of a large fishing reservoir to allow us to camp on his land for a small fee, and settled down for an evening of midge bites and high temperatures, as we moved further south.
A short walk the next day brought us to Heviz, a town well known for the relaxation and healing properties of its thermal spa. Always keen to experience the culture, we spent the afternoon unwinding in the sun, perched on rubber rings in the middle of the lake! We also knew we were only one day’s walk away from our ‘unofficial’ finish at Lake Balaton. Although we had another 10km to walk from there to the train which would take us to Budapest and then back to Vienna we had held the thought of this stunningly clear lake in our minds the whole time, as our target. When we finally reached it, we weren’t disappointed-
‘When we turned off the main road and saw the lake for the first time, I was stunned. I had been so afraid it would look bleak and uninviting, but it was beautiful. The midday sun was bouncing off the ripples of blue water, and the mountains in the distance provided the perfect backdrop.’
I felt a little teary knowing we had walked all that way for this single, tranquil scene, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. We took photos but knew that nothing would capture those moments as we had experienced them. I remember saying to Claire, “Yes, it was all worth it”, and it truly was.
During the expedition, Claire and I realised that the award was not based on covering 100 miles in ten days but about existing for a period of time within a society very different to our own, as even visiting the local shop became testing. Rather surprisingly, Claire and I did not fall out once during the trip. I think this was because we learned that success could only be achieved by working together and supporting each other in a land where the language and culture was so dissimilar to at home. The trip changed me in a number of ways, I have more confidence, greater independence and a continued appreciation of rain, but it is the differences that I haven’t yet noticed and that will unexpectedly manifest themselves later on in my life, that have made it so worthwhile.
I’d like to thank John, Matt and Paul for helping make our holiday so much fun, 1st Ormskirk Scout Group Committee for their financial support, our advisers Sue Gregg and Ray Fitzsimmons, West Lancs Scouts County Support Team for their aid with planning, and most of all my partner Claire, without whom I couldn’t have achieved what I have, and who’s friendship is valued greatly.