Today is camping day! We started off well with a good breakfast of omelette and yoghurt. The boys came round for 10am to watch Ibolya make bread. She came from the outhouse and into the kitchen with a large cradle-like implement full of flour. It became Michael's job to gradually pour more water into the flour and yeast while Ibolya kneaded, pummelled and folded. She certainly worked up a sweat over this as it was incredibly hard work. This part of the process must have taken about 45 minutes to do, to ensure the dough was appropriately elastic and ready for baking. The next step was to stoke up the fire oven. This was also hot work as the oven captured an incredible amount of heat inside and within the stone itself. It took a while to prepare as Ibolya had to keep adding more wood to get the fire extremely hot. She then split the huge mound of dough into six lumps, each of which went into the oven to bake for about two hours.

The next job was to give Chockie a bath! He was a very difficult participant as he kept trying to jump out of his bowl while Ibolya washed him down. At the end of it he inevitably shook his fur dry (thereby soaking us).

Laszlo arrived in the meantime, to take us to the barn to load the car up with camping supplies. We saw the local neighbour there again, who flattered me and Kate then bid us farewell.

By the time we got back to the house, Ibolya had lunch ready. The soup was bean flavoured. This was followed by meatballs, mashed potato and Polish-tasting stewed cabbage. Delicious!

Shortly after lunch, once we were packed, we set off for Vargyas gorge. It was only 8km away so it didn't take long to get there. Once we had arrived on site, we set up the table, the campsite, collected firewood and started the fire. Simon and I struggled to get it going so we cheated a bit and used my deodrant. It worked a treat!

While dinner was being made by Laszlo, we cracked open the Harghita beer, which was being chilled in the stream nearby. Schnapps was also consumed, by some more than others...

For dinner we had barbequed chicken, Ibolya's homemade bread, cheese, fresh/pickled cucumber and wild garlic sauce. Any water that we needed was sourced from the freshwater spring, a few yards away.

Once the sun had gone down, we set off into a field in search of the Corncrake. A couple of members of our group were a wee bit drunk and so did everything possible to scare it away! One person, who will not be named (not Laszlo), pretended to be a monster and walked around growling. He even thought that a pair of binoculars would help to see the Corncrake (in the pitch black darkness) as they are "better than using mine eyes".

Michael and I heard the Corncrake so we went in search of it by following its call. We accidentally walked through a ploughed field (I was only wearing sandals!) which was unpleasant. Since it was dark, we inevitably didn't see it but I think we managed to get quite close to the spot where it was singing.

When we got back to camp, we stoked up the fire and sat under the cloudy sky. It had cooled down a bit after sunset. Simon was first to go to bed, among the hay bales on the top rafters of the barn.

I stayed up a bit longer with everyone, then turned in. It was bloody terrifying to climb up the rickety wooden ladder in the dark with just a headtorch. I was determined to get up there though, just to sleep in the hay for the experience! After a bit of an ordeal, I got there and collapsed in my sleeping bad within the hay.