Team Basil has a mole – A Life in the Slow Lane

As we were sitting, generally lazing about, yesterday afternoon, Melek, despite his poorly eye, got very excited all of a sudden and started barking at the long grass next to our pitch. Experience has taught us Melek only gets excited by six things: food, other dogs, food, hedgehogs, food and on this trip he has added tortoises.

We could all see significant movement in the long grass. In Bulgaria we thought a hedgehog was most likely so Sarah prodded around in the long grass and found nothing. Curious we thought.

This morning as we had breakfast we saw similar movement in the long grass, but this time the grass seemed to be moving up vertically. On closer inspection the grass was rising on top of a mound of growing soil. A mole! We are so starved of excitement, as Melek’s eye has confined us to base, that Sarah and I spent the next half an hour watching as the mole hill slowly grew. At any time we hoped Mr. Mole would stick his head above the ground, but of course he did not. We now have to add moles to Melek’s growing list of non-edible interests!

The scene of today’s excitement – Mr. Mole’s hole

Melek has now had over 24 hours of eye drops and I am pleased to confirm that his eye has made rapid progress. If this progress continues we plan to visit the vet on Friday, to get more medication, but then to hot tail it to Romania. Since we will have spent 7 unexpected days at Camping Veliko Tarnova, just 11 km from the campsite’s namesake, we are determined to spend tomorrow looking round this famous old city.

After being virtually hypnotised into a torpor by Mr. Mole we decided we better get ourselves some exercise, so we did one of the campsite’s recommended walks. Out came Melek’s doggles to protect his eye from any more damage. He spent the first half of the walk trying to get them off, but finally got used to them again. The countryside in this area still has plenty of wild flowers to add interest and there are several crops in the field that we don’t recognise.

Sarah and the dogs on our walk. If you look hard you can see Melek’s Doggles.

The walk led us into Draghezevo village market place where a strange market was taking place. Eighty percent of the stalls seemed to be selling children’s toys. I went into the local grocery to get some bread and was helped by an English speaker. He didn’t seem to understand when I asked him about the market, so we are none the wiser.