Day 9 - the Hortobagy, a national park

After a welcome lie in, we went off to the train station to meet Sandor and got to the Hortobagy (http://www.hnp.hu/index_en.php), which I was looking forward to as it was going to be good to see Hungary in the countryside as most of our time was in the cities.
When we arrived we had a short walk to the Hortobagy village, a very tourist orientated place with information centres and restaurants. Over the road was a bird hospital, where they rescued injured birds from the great plain and national park to a point where, if possible, they would release then back into the wild. I loved this place, as I have an age long interest in birds of prey and was a great opportunity to get up close with them.

We then looked around the Hortobagy tourism centre which was informative and had many crafts made by locals.
After a half an hour walk we ended up at the place from which we would be taking a horse and cart ride around the national park.
This was an experience I recommend as we saw the great plains from a different view point and we were able to see traditional shepherds on their horses doing some tricks such as standing on two horses and making them lie down whilst the shepherds were on them. Then we got a chance to have a little ride on a horse which was fun. The horse and cart ride continued for an hour in total and we saw a lot of the livestock on the plain and experienced how it feels to take a direct route across a field on a horse and cart... Alton Towers eat your heart out!