So we waved good bye to Vienna and drove over the border to Slovakia. Didn't bother to stop in Bratislava as we'd had enough of cities and were keen to get out into the mountains. The High Tatras in the East of slovakia are apparently the smallest Alpine type mountain range in the world and are supposedly very beautiful so we wanted to see for ourselves.

We stayed one night on route and formed some first impressions of Slovakia. It seems a little behind the Czech Republic in Development terms i.e. more manual farming, less good roads and more sign of its communist past i.e. one minute you're thinking what a pretty village and the next "Who put that vile block of flats/huge industrial chimney there"! But they do have Tesco, so that's OK and the countryside got lovelier as we went East.

When we got to the Tatras they were as impressive as we'd been led to believe so we went straight out and bought a hiking map and planned our first route. We took a funicular railway up the first section of our nearest mountain so we were starting from about 1200m and then walked through woods up hill to just above the tree line, passing waterfalls and rivers and fantastic views all the way up. We finally got to Stalnate Pleso at about 2000m where you can take a cable car up the last bit to the top of the second highest peak in the range. They only let a few people up at a time and we hadn't booked so we couldn't go, but when I saw what the cable car looked like I was quite glad - a bit too precarious for me. Instead we just had a nice lunch and, of course some beer, and then headed back down.

While it had been lovely walking through the trees, the terrain was quite different above the tree line and I wanted to do one of the walks up there. So the next day we planned just that. Unfortunately the Tatras weren't playing ball and the notoriously changeable weather kicked in with a major thunderstorm just after we got up. By 12 it seemed to have stopped so we set off on the scooter round to other side of the range only for it to start again and us to get soaked! So we ate our sandwiches in the rain, went back to the campervan rather soggily, only for the sun to come out at 6pm. Typical!

The next day it dawned sunny so we decided to give it another go. This time all was well so we took a dramatic chair lift ride to above the tree line and started walking. It was all quite different with white flowers everywhere which I suspect might have been Edelweiss, and patches of snow. The path was harder going as well and I was a little worried my weird agorophobia/vertigo cross might kick in but it seemed to be OK and we made it to the first glacial lake we'd targeted in good time. But then it all started going wrong. As we got higher and it got more and more icy I started getting very panicky. We kept trying to push on and find different ways to skirt round the bits I didn't like but then where there was a big patch of snow that had to be crossed, with a steep drop of ice right next to it I just couldn't go across it. We were only about 20m from the top of the ridge we were to go over and then skirt round and down the other side so it was really annoying, especially as we'd already seen other couples come down our side, but I just couldn't do it. Gordon went on up just to have a look and said it was worse on the other side. In fact the second lake we'd planned to see was completely covered in snow still and you couldn't see it anyway so it was probably just as well. So we turned around and started to go down only for the changeable weather to kick in again, with thunder, lightening and hail. Very atmospheric when you're out in the middle of Alpine type mountains at 2200m! Fortunately it didn't last too long and the sun came out to dry us off. Though of course the path was slippier and Gordon lost his footing and sprained his hand. Not badly - we were worried about broken bones initially but it was not that bad, but he can't do fiddly things like open his own beer bottle now!

After all this adventure we are now looking forward to a soak in one of Budapest's thermal baths at our next stop!