day 14, friday 13^th august 99

We're all up around 8:30 and feeling slightly fragile. Jeremy says he feels unfocussed. I feel blurred around the edges. Jim looks blurred around the edges. Iain lies in his bed, only able to move his eyes for about five minutes. Breakfast is pretty good, featuring coffee, toast, fried eggs etc.

There is about 5 minutes of rain. It goes away, but our washing, which is on the line outside, is now damp again.

Another bonus about this guest house is that the toilets (more than one!) are real flush jobbies, so the spectre of the horrible toilet at the last place is driven away.

It starts to drizzle from a low grey sky as we set out for the border and then Budapest. Just before the border, Jim's Sprint ST overheats. We stop at the last garage before the border and check the catch-tank. It's empty, so we re-fill it (not a small job - thanks, Triumph) and we set off again.

The queue to exit Romania is reasonably long. The queue to enter Hungary is huge and we end up waiting over an hour in the rain. Arse. Once we're through and moving again, Jim's Sprint ST overheats again.

We stop on the side of the road in the rain, but can do nothing there. Jeremy checks out the next couple of miles of road and finds a petrol station. We head there, very slowly, and seek shelter to look at the bike.

We take the fairing off & start messing around. At first we think the thermostat might be knackered, so Crispin boils up a pan of water while we (mainly Andy the Pugh, actually) take out the 'stat. As the 'stat comes out, we realise there's no water in the system. The test reveals that the thermostat is working fine. Much inspection of the engine etc. reveals (in the end) a series of tiny holes in the radiator. There's no stone damage near them, so Andy concludes its a manufacturing fault. Jim prizes out some of the fine leaves around the hole and (under instruction from Jeff and Andy) plugs the area with some plastic metal. We also bung a bottle of RadWeld in for luck. Jim telephones a German contact and gets them to go into the local Triumph dealer to arrange a new radiator under warranty.

Once the Triumph's back together, filled with water and anti-freeze and tested for leaks, we get on our way again. By now it's 4:00 p.m. and still raining.

A wet and expensive toll motorway journey leads us to Budapest. Every hotel is full to the brim. It's Formula 1 weekend and there's not much hope of getting anywhere to stay at all. We go round and round in circles through the city for a while, trying not to die at the hands of the Budapest drivers. They are all mad and aggressive, particularly the taxi drivers and the one way system confuses the fuck out of marvin. Eventually, we end up at an utterly full campsite. They take pity on us and show us round the back of the café, where there is a small outdoor dining area. If we want to stay (which we do, being too tired to go anywhere else anyway) we can clear the tables away and pitch our tents there. It's now 10:00 p.m. and we're hungry. We're concerned that if we go out to eat, we might never find our way back. Jim courageously volunteers to go to McDonald's and bring back loads of burgers & associated stuff. It may not exactly be local food, but we've not eaten since breakfast (apart from some crisps) and anything will do.

After a few beers in the bar, they close. As he's disappointed by the lack of a late bar, marvin goes for some carry-outs. All they've got is 7 bottles of some weird dark beer, which is quite nasty. We don't manage to drink it all by any means.

We're off to bed early (midnight-ish) as this day has been crap and exhausting.

Mileage: 211