Day 22: Brits Abroad

Marker 1519 to Mohacs (71km)

I had a brief moment of panic in the tent last night, when at one stage I thought I was surrounded by water. It turned out that I had simply turned over and was now hearing the river with my other ear. Camping by the river gives the advantage of a quick getaway in the morning, I was on the river and the morning passed without incident.

I again found a nice spot for lunch, my routine now is to find a place that is easy to stop at, easy to get out at and has both a sunny spot and a shady spot. The sunny spot is for the kayak to dry up any water that I’ve brought into the boat with my poor paddling technique and the shady spot is for me. The river at this stage is lined with beaches, after lunch I was paddling round a bend when I went passed one such beach. Pulled up on the bank were a couple of kayakers, I’ve seen quite a few other kayakers but mostly just people out for a wee paddle, nothing serious. These guys looked different, their kayak was fully loaded, they were clearly going far and furthermore, they had a Union Jack proudly mounted on the back of the kayak. I went over to investigate. It turns out, Hugo and Toby are also heading from the Black Sea and started from the source of the river on the exact same day that I did, unbelievable that we haven’t bumped into each other before now.

We paddled together for the rest of the day, it was great to swap stories from the river, they have had similarly ‘interesting’ times at the locks. They have also experienced far worse weather than I have, probably due to the fact that the two worst days of rain have both coincidently been days off for me. I had already booked a hotel to stay in Mohacs, which proved a suitable destination for them as well. We arrived in good time, they found a spot to camp and then we all headed to my hotel. We then headed next door to a restaurant, where our urge to try the famous Hungarian fish soup finally got the better of us. I ordered a schnitzel to go with it, just in case the soup was inconceivably awful. The soup was fine, it was exactly as you’d expect, although a little bonnier than I usually like my soup. Throughout dinner, we were serenaded by a man playing keyboard and singing in what seemed to be, an array of different languages. None of them were English, so we departed. We had a couple of beers in town, but by now it was well past our bedtime (8.30pm), so we called it a night. The guys seem to paddle at a similar speed to me and it’s great to have some company on the river. This part of Europe also provides a regular supply of comical sights and people, having others to share these moments makes life much more enjoyable.