Day six: here's to chance

Woke up at Stalins. Went for a run round the lake. Jumped in the lake. Packed up. Got lost driving round Bratislava, for this is a city that doesn't believe in signs. Went to Tesco. Drove around 200km to Budapest, en route picking up our first fine, from a Slovak border guard with a brilliant sense of humour: 'I can give you the minimum fine, which is 20 euros, or the maximum, which is 95. Are you happy with the 20?'

Jeff's tired.

Approaching the city, and realising we'd need to operate somewhat more effectively than the previous night in Bratislava, at least if we didn't want to end up with another night of commie headbanging, Steve asked for an idea where to go, so I pointed at near random to one town just outside the city. Once you've randomly picked one place there's no point in trying to drum up another one, so we went there, and were guided by a giant red squirrel to an amazing campsite at the base of a mountain, full of rustic wooden buildings centred around an old railway house.

I am now starting to get properly excited about how chance is guiding us. This is what the whole trip is about: being open and seeing where it leads. Within reason of course. I have very little interest ending up chained to a wall in a Hungarian S&M den, for example. I'll leave that to Jeff.

The campsite is run by a motherly middle-aged woman called Marta, who knows how to make friends - offering a free welcome beer. And decent facilities and quiet, all 20 minutes' bus ride from the centre of Budapest. She even gives her guests free bus tickets for their first trip to town. We're stunned that you can camp in such tranquility within a stone's throw of a European capital. So here we are - delicious goulash soup and gypsy pork for dinner, a few beers, a wi-fi connection for media Dave - and shitloads more mosquitos.

The plan is to have a couple of days in Budapest, take in the odd Turkish bath, and then hit the town for the big birthday celebration tomorrow night. I'm 32.

I sit typing this outside the tent, in the media Punto, thinking how things couldn't have gone any better. It's been a really good laugh already, and luck has played a beautiful part, here in the pleasant pedestrian lands of central Europe. Now for another night of sweltering heat in an MoD-issue sweat bag...