Castles in the fog

Another morning with patches of freezing fog as we started on the frosty up hill ascent to Sinaia, in the Carpathian mountains. Peles Castle is set in alpine clad forested hillside and today was mostly in fog. 

It's more like a Palace with tiered statued terraces & ornamental wooden balconies. It was closed for tours today though we were allowed to visit a Klimt exhibition in the museum gallery where the best exhibit was a Tiffany lampshade that was usually on show in the Castle. Just up the hill is the Art Nouveau Pelisor Palace which was open and was very interesting but a shame we couldn't have compared the two. This was home to Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Mary, lived in the summer having married the Romanian heir and future king. Lots of superb oak panelling, stained glass windows and interesting furniture & an interesting tour, in English, of many of the family rooms. As our guide said when Dracula was mentioned, at Bran Castle they have the Legend but here we have the History (of Romania)

Leaving Sinaia suddenly we dropped back down to the very flat plains but sadly the sun had been left behind over the mountains. Now it was flat fields & long straight roads where a bend became quite an excitement. About every 20km would be a small village with the road passing through the centre and a 50km speed limit sign which must only seem to apply to foreign drivers. Often there would be a 'concealed' Polizia car but you are always warned by the other drivers who flash their lights when approaching you from the other direction. Apart from small lay-bys close to the road there was nowhere to pull off & stop for the night & we eventually found a quiet side street in Lanca, a small town where we just parked & had an undisturbed night.

Now we are almost a sea level it was 8C warmer last night but it still feels cold as a wind from the North has picked up & there is no sun.

Finally found a car wash where for 20 Lei we removed the dirt & salt of the last 2000 miles & managed to get a water container filled up as we never know where we will end up camped for the night especially at this time of year.

We were now out on the Danube Delta with the worlds largest area of reed beds (not many roads then!) There are many small lakes and waterways with some great looking wild camping spots. Not such a good day for navigating though as these maps seem to get harder to read as we age. Outside Braila we unexpectedly had to take a small ferry to cross where there surely should have been a bridge. We just fitted on!

In the next town Tulcea we tried leaving towards Murighiol, on 3 different roads where we had been following the signpost suddenly there were no further signs just a choice of roads & we somehow always chose the wrong one.

It was hillier than we expected after all it's a delta, but it does allow good views down over all those reeds.

We were also very close to the border with Ukraine, another unexplored country for us, but for another time. We don't need much from a campsite, somewhere safe to park, fresh water & toilet facilities & sometimes a shower and we don't need all of these every day. The gates at Camping du Lac were open so we drove in & conversing with the Romanian owner, in our only common language, of French explained our basic needs as they were busy renovating the facilities & would have sent us away had we required hot showers etc. We could have potable water, a toilet & somewhere to empty our Porta Potti & a space to park, all we needed, which cost us 10 Euro. From reviews I have read it always seems popular & the new facilities they are installing look very nice. We walked about a mile along a track on the side of the lake but you can't see much through all the tall reeds. The main attraction is boat tours & bird spotting on the Delta but obviously there's not much of either at this time of year.

Transylvania area

19/20 November

In and out of freezing fog all morning mostly on small country roads with little traffic. We spotted more bird life, Goldfinch, Bullfinch, Herons, Pheasants & all the time buzzards perched on telegraph poles. Following the signs to various Saxon villages with fortified castles & churches sometimes led us up some quite rough tracks which often ended in a dead end unless you have a horse & cart. 

Our destination was Sighisoara, especially the old town with it's medieval guild towers perched on the hill & the birth place of Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) apparently the inspiration for Bram Stokers Dracula. 

A great place to wander around the small cobbled streets looking at the colourful painted buildings & to try out some cafes. 

Also we were lucky there is a very central open all year camping which was very easy to find as it was well signposted & you are very close to town so ideal for a meal out for the evening. 

Camping Aquarius seems to be a big swimming pool site for the summer & everything was shut except the Pension reception. A wizened old lady, possibly from the time of count Dracula, seemed to be the only person in charge but she competently photocopied our passports & conveyed that we needed to pay 40 lei for the night. It was fine for us, we were put in a gated parking space but with a key for our own toilets & hot showers. 

Their business card was promoting Free Wireless Access Areas but when I asked her about this she replies quite forcefully No! Getting back in the van & trying the laptop gave me full strength signal Camping Aquarius unprotected network! I guess the internet may have passed her by or she considers it an instrument of the Devil!

We had interesting dining in a hostel restaurant which offered vegetarian meals but when coming to order only one of the dishes was available, also no White wine was available and they only had one glass of Red wine left. Each dish & course came out separately, maybe they only had one ring to cook on & in the middle of it all some electricians arrived to sort out a problem which to us seemed to be that everytime they tried to play an Elton John track a fuse kept blowing, should have tried some better music I felt! At one point the whole place was left in darkness apart from the one T-light candle on our table (there were no other diners) Anyway it was quite entertaining & made a change from van dining.

Next day we headed for Dracula territory but Bran castle didn't sound appealing, so drove out through the ski resort area in the forested hills between Rasnov & Brasov. It was around 800m altitude as evening was approaching the roads were getting quite a frosty look to them. We decided wild camping here would be pretty cold & didn't fancy dodgy roads in the morning. We knew there was Camping Darste on the edge of Brasov but thought it would be shut and we would have to park up somewhere in the dark. When we came across it we saw it had a Motel & Restaurant attached which were open & after declining their offer of a Motel room we asked if we could just stop in one of the parking spaces outside the camping gates. The receptionist looked a bit nonplussed, but shrugged and agreed, probably not realising that even small motorhomes can be totally self contained for a few nights without campsite facilities.

Sibiu Romania

Moving on the fog kept coming & going, I guess that's the price we are paying for the wonderful weather we are having at the moment. Blue skies & sunny but only for a few hours of the day as the sun is so low in the sky, I'm glad we are mostly heading South Eastwards. I think we have been spoilt seeing the countryside in such beautiful light & with the end of the Autumn colours. We haven't found the roads too bad so far, maybe that's having had the last 5 winters on Moroccan roads. The main highways here are full of trucks and sometimes the road surface has been sunken by their wheel tracks. Off the main roads we have found good surfaces until we come to a small village where the nice new tarmac seems to disappear until we head out of town on the other side where it magically re-appears.

 Every side road though seems to be an unsealed track & we would be dubious about venturing down many of them at this time of year. Our van is filthy after 2000 miles but there's not much incentive to clean it as every day's journey invariably throws up more road dirt. We were stuck behind a truck full of soil with water dripping out the back for miles which didn't help, but we will need to find a car wash soon.

Reaching Sibiu our main destination was the Museum of traditional folk civilisation which was more interesting than it's name. It is set in a large forested park with a central lake & many traditional buildings & structures from all over Romania have been re-established here in quite traditional settings. There are wooden churches, windmills, weavers homes, farmers dwellings and all sorts of representations of rural Romanian life which have been brought here since 1963 to preserve them.

It also seems to be a very popular park with the locals for a day out and was very good value at 10leu (less than £2.00) We thought about stopping the night in the car park but the thought of hot showers was appealing. I had posted some info about our blog on motorhomefacts.com & quickly got loads of useful advice & links from other members. Sophie & Adam's site europebycamper.com has frequently provided me with so much useful information so I was very grateful to get some useful links from Adam when he saw my post. One of his links was to a list of Romanian camp sites and we contacted one of the few that are open at this time of year and this led us to http://www.campingdeoudewilg.nl/ in Carta. What a surprise there was no one else there, we haven't seen another motor home since Prague! A very nice site behind the house backing on to fields. Loads of useful information about the area & it's in a small village so you see lots of local life going on. Even though it's not high season everything was operational, a campers kitchen even with electric kettle & hair dryer. Lots of homely quirky ornaments around the site, it must be beautiful in summer with all the plants & vines.

We've been up in the Fagaras mountains today, we'll at least as far a we were allowed to go before the pass was closed at 1246 metres. Some bends that never get sun at this time were still icy on the edges but they had been gritted. Our coldest night so far -2.1C but warm enough in the van & a good excuse to cook warming meals in the oven.

Romania first impressions

Very peaceful night considering we were in a truck stop & we awoke to a heavy frost & blue skies. 

The clocks have moved on an hour so are are back to slightly later evenings. Sunny days just give everywhere a cheerier feel, everywhere looks more rustic, stacked up hay bales & chopped wood piles, horses pulling old wooden carts & people pushing hand carts. Many people trying to flag down traffic for a lift to the next town, there are many abandoned decaying industrial buildings & railway tracks that we're never sure if they still function. Mostly though its agricultural but with much smaller fields than Hungary & a lot of small roadside stalls of people selling their own produce. 

The road was not too bad though only single lane & with many trucks or speeding & overtaking drivers. I seemed to be the only one driving within the speed limits in towns & villages & would invariably end up with a queue behind me until I pulled over. We eventually ended up going for about 30 miles on a very empty but good stretch of Motorway though we were starting to get worried as there were no exits for such a long way. We decided to explore a bit and go cross country on what looked like small sealed roads which they were but as we got more remote the tarmac seemed to be more covered in mud, I guess from vehicles & carts from the fields. There was little traffic on the road but it was slow with many bends & we weren't progressing very far. Finding ourselves on a quiet road we found a place to pull off for coffee & decided to stop the night a couple of hundred metres down a firm track hopefully without passing traffic. 

The temperature quickly dropped to around 2C as the sun was setting without a cloud in the sky & showing a sliver of a new moon. 

We have been so glad of the Webasto Diesel heating, it saves all the problems of carrying enough gas & has always been very economical & it's great being able to turn it on whilst still in bed in the morning. Both our 5 year old leisure batteries continue to give us the electrical power we need though the solar panel doesn't get much charge now the sun is so low, but as we are driving most days it's not a problem. Most of the electric power still seems to go to run the fridge though I sometimes wonder if it's actually warmer in the fridge than in the van through the night.

Not a sound in the night but -1.6c our coldest so far & we woke up in thick fog & this view out of the window

Into Romania

Thursday 16th November

Took a while to get out of Budapest, they don't seem to go in for many road signs & also it's hard to find turns against the traffic as the main routes are often a few lanes wide. We had to drive almost back into the centre to get out again. The rest of the route was very flat, across vast fields of Black soil being ploughed by tractors. It was a very good road the No.40 or E60 with lots of stretches of dual carriageway with many Romanian trucks. Spent the final Hungarian money in a Lidl, we miss the ease of being able to use Euro's in so many countries.

Romania

There was a long line of trucks approaching the border but no queue for us. We had to show our passports & were pulled over for some sort of inspection, they seemed to look at our lovely new winter tyres, then waved us on. You have to buy a Vignette to use Romanian roads and we opted for a month one as it's little more than the weekly one. Of course as there's no ATM at the border & we don't have the 31.76 RON we had to pay in Euro's at the vendors exorbitant commission rate, so what should have cost about 7 Euros cost us 10. It's now all done electronically so we have since found out we could have done it on line here http://www.roviniete.ro/en

Diesel is just over £1.00 litre the cheapest so far & we soon found an ATM outside a hypermarket. It was one of the sneaky ones though that tries to convert your withdrawal into Sterling, much better for us to choose the withdrawal in local currency & let our bank convert. Heading East it was getting dark & no chance of a camp site  We looked at Truck Stops & happened to drop in on a very modern one with no charge for overnight stops, just a small fee for toilets or showers & free WiFi. No obligation to eat in the restaurant but we went in to check it out. Very good filling selection with friendly service & a beer was only 50p. Gills smoked bean soup was a surprise as it was served inside a whole round loaf of crusty bread. 

Hungary

November 12th & 13th

Bumpy road surface but with light traffic all the way down to the Hungarian border near Sahy where you just slip over the border without realising you are in another country. Then we saw the Diesel prices 441 per litre, but it wasn't really a worry as £1.00 = 350Hf. Planning to take about £100 from the first ATM we saw I asked for 4000 then when I got back to the van I realised I'd missed a zero and it was only just over £10 and I get charged £1.00 for every ATM withdrawal! Next, on to Tesco that well known Hungarian supermarket, they even have Clubcards but I didn't think they would accept our UK one! I wish the Wine & Beer prices at home were the same as here though. Getting to Arena Camping in Budapest should have been easy except once we were on the ring road we couldn't see any roads marked going off and we had to guess which junction we wanted to leave on which we missed and then spent about 30 minutes trying to get back to the correct road. The GPS map I had downloaded for Hungary didn't work, eventually we sorted out where we were from the Autoroute map on the laptop & found we were only about 500m from the camping but on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

It was dark & raining when we got there but at least it was open. Only one other plot occupied by a caravan and building work was going on so we had to squeeze through a small gap to get to the pitch. Peaceful night apart from the planes & trains but we are in a city. So far this is the most expensive site on our trip costing 5800Hf per night, almost £20, double what we paid in Prague. The price includes electric hookup which we don't need for a few days stop but there is no choice to go anywhere as close to the city that is open at this time of year. WiFi is free but quite a weak signal into the camping area though we are getting a slow connection now with our signal booster.

Our first day we spent looking around the more modern side of the city in Pest, full of parks & wide streets with large grand buildings many of which seemed to be embassies. 

Michael Jackson tree?

The size of St Stephen's Basilica was vast and it was surprising to find it was only completed in the very early 1900's. 

The enormous dome was very impressive & of course it also has a great 'relic' St.Stephens mummified right hand on show in a special display case. 

After this and visiting the Ossuary in Czech Rep. We are thinking cremation is looking a better option, people can't put random bits of you on display when you're gone! Getting around was very easy with the 24 hour travel pass & everyone we spoke to was friendly & helpful & had some basic English, unlike Czech Republic & Slovakia where it was usually only German. People weren't as stylishly dressed as folk in Prague but it's hard to tell when they're bundled up in winter coats.

Buda, across the river Danube, has the castle & older buildings with the advantage of great views over the city. 

Despite being November there are still many large groups of tourists being led around by their guides. Overall we enjoyed our visit but after 2 days tramping the streets we are keen to move on again so we are heading for Romania tomorrow.

Here's today's tasty mid morning snack, shared rather messily between us

In to Slovakia

10^th & 11^th November

This time of year the days are short so its up around 6.30am to make the most of daylight hours. As we approached Slovakia we could see bigger hills and the border was right at the summit at 740m. You wouldn’t know it was the border though, no obvious country signs & no border formalities. Places looked the same though with a lot more alpine type houses with steep roofs, we are in skiing land. 

We are now back with the Euro but Diesel prices seem the same as Czech Republic about 1.46 per litre. Negotiating Zilina we missed a turning & came back round to where we had just entered the town but then found the correct road towards Martin. Near here was hopefully an open all year site but on arrival it looked closed. However there was a bell & quickly someone came to the gate. They were still open but of course there were no other campers. Autocamping Turiec is a very good site with spotless facilities for 12.90 Euros. Hot showers, an indoor camp kitchen & TV room, loads of good guide books and free WiFi which we easily picked up in the van. What timing, we just arrived at 4pm and listened on Seagulls Player to all the live commentary of the exciting Brighton v Wolves match (3-3). There are nice wooden chalet rooms and great views to the mountains with a dusting of snow on top.

Next day we set out early to drive around a mountain range in the Mala Fatra National Park and were rewarded with a beautiful and mild day. Strangely in the middle of it all was a Lidl which seemed to be doing a busy trade from exiting chuchgoers at 10am. All the churchyards we have passed are a riot of flowers on almost every grave stone, floristry must be a very profitable business here. Leaving the van at Chata Vratna we found a waymarked trail heading up into the hills with picture sign of a restaurant in 45 minutes walk. 

It was open and already busy, luckily the menu also had a German translation & we managed to explain no meat and ended up with Lentil soup, Fried cheese (Gill's dream food) with potatoes & tartare sauce & a fried pasta dish, excellent and a stunning setting.