Tuesday 5th August 2008 – Southern Budapest, Hungary

Time to leave Lillafured camping and we are sad to go. I can strongly recommend this site – it is small, very friendly and very well positioned. The owner is very attentive, regularly chatting with her guests and checking the they are OK. When she is not doing that, she is checking and cleaning the shower block. We wish her the best of luck and hope that she will be able to continue operating the site even though she has lost her husband.
We drove the length of the Bukk National Park, climbing through forest with the occasional clearing enabling us to see the view over the park before we descended into Eger. The Tesco hypermarket was a convenient place to stock up with provisions after the lack of shops in Lillafured. We passed the famous wine cellars of Egar where one can taste many local wines including Bulls Blood and then we passed the huge vineyards on the hills outside the town. Coming off these hills, we started the flat and rather uninteresting drive to the southern outskirts of Budapest.
We had chosen the campsite (Galopp Major) because of its position, only 15 minutes away from the motorhome repair centre. It is a pleasant site with a number of pretty, family-sized cabins. Looking like iron-age thatched roundhouses scattered across the site, these were superior to the majority of cabins that we have seen and looked as if they would have been very comfortable. The camping and motorhome area was next to a fishing pond where a large group of ducks were huddled on the shore. It was hot today so we found a shady pitch under young trees. We were the only motorhome there and only a few of the cabins were occupied. It would be an ideal place to come for a family whose interests are fishing and horse riding, as there is also an equestrian centre there that teaches riding. Both the fishing and horse areas were in use but it is difficult to see what else would attract people to the site as there appears to be little to do in the area and it would be difficult to get into the city centre from there.
Photos: Eger wine at an early stage of production; The late evening view from our pitch at Galopp Major.