Friday 15 September 2017

Szarvas to Gadoros on E4: Day 42

Today's walk was on straight roads and farm tracks through an agricultural area: fields, some belts of trees, and a few drainage ditches.
I wished I had longer in Szarvas as I had not seen the arboretum and National park visitor centre among other things. It is a pretty town with a lot of German being spoken, possibly because it was originally a German Lutheran settlement. However I had accommodation booked at Gadoros and they had asked for my time of arrival so I had a schedule to keep.
Apart from passing a geothermal well on leaving Szarvas it was not the most interesting day's walking, mainly beside fields. There was generally a distant hum of a harvester bringing in the remaining maize or a tractor tilling the ground ready for seeding. The farmed landscape does not have the hedges, fences or dry stone walls we have in Britain, if they are grazing livestock a single wire electric fence is used that looks rather temporary, or else a shepherd or cowherd is employed. It must be very efficiently farmed with the large fields and mechanisation but it is not intensively farmed, there is still room around farm tracks and drainage ditches for wild flowers to grow.
I was again frustrated by my unfamiliarity with bird names. Could the brilliant white birds standing in a field be egrets? And were those herons flying overhead? Nevertheless, there was no doubting that it was a pheasant I disturbed.
I had been wearing some insoles my podiatrist gave me. I get hard skin and blisters particularly on the outside of my heels and she diagnosed super pronation(?), or walking on the outside edges of my feet. She gave me insoles with wedges attached to correct it. Sadly these seemed to cause the blisters even more quickly and after several days walking the wedges are parting company with insoles. So today I dispensed with them and it was much more comfortable.
I am now at Anna's Vendeghaz in Gadoros, conveniently located next to a bar where I had a beer waiting for Anna and her family to arrive. Most refreshing!

Typical track beside drainage ditch

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