West Devon's Heather Fell, Olympic modern pentathlete silver medalist, writes about her life 'on and off' the track.

I had started to worry that as I'm maturing, my ability to sleep anywhere and anytime was diminishing. However, I was relieved to find this still intact on my journey to Hungary last Wednesday. Having got up at 4am and not arriving until 9pm you would be forgiven for thinking that I was travelling to Western USA not to Eastern Europe.

Being the European Championships – our luggage was taken out by minibus, leaving us the athletes with a supposed hassle free journey. Yes, this might sound spoilt, but travelling with a 32 kilo bag the size of a Great Dane that contains swords and an air pistol inevitably causes trouble when flying! So... all we had to do was drive to Bristol, fly to Budapest (via Paris) and drive to our destination in Debreczen. Two delayed flights and an incredibly slow and very hot minibus journey later, we arrived!

Now I mentioned the paprikas and goulash last week... as it happened this would have been much appreciated on arrival, but no such luck. Dinner at the competition hotel had officially finished, but much pleading with the waiter yielded a plate of fried chicken with a mushy rice and pea mixture that contained more salt than it did food — don't think our nutritionist would have been impressed. Thankfully things improved — the rooms had air conditioning, so we could hide from the fierce heat and swat the malicious mosquitoes.

After all this we were straight into the semi-final the next day and all four of us – the GB women's team – got through to Saturday's final. Friday was a much needed rest day and we were even presented with some nutritious food; identifiable meat and veg! The stressful journey and poor nutrition obviously didn't affect me too badly, as I had the best competition of my season so far, finishing sixth and coming home with a team bronze.

After all that I made it home on Sunday night in time for a gourmet picnic to the sound of James Morrison live in an open-air concert — a perfect end to my week.