Romania.....(picture heavy)

Bit heavy on pictures so apologies in advance..

After having a lot of fun getting the engine ready after a power steering failure, a box failure, and me breaking the injection pump from leaving the timing pin in, and then starting it..(doh) we finally got on the trip to Romania...

Crossing Europe in August with a non airconditioned car is not fun...

Romania is lots of fun.

Full report later on but heres some pictures of what everyone on here who gave me sound advice enable us to see...

First off a church dedicated to St George, who is apparantly a big deal in Romania as well as the UK

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Campsite number 1. No one cares where you camp in Romania. Everyone just pitches a tent on land that isnt a garden or under cultivation. Take only photos, leave only footprints and everyone seems happy.

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/firstcamp1.JPG
http://80.229.2.31/pictures/firstcamp2.JPG


After wildcamp we got on our way to the next one. Off road naturally following goat tracks, cart tracks, the occasional "road" and some bits of tarmac.
We found a watermill where the owner blessed our trip on his bible, played a fiddle and gave us fresh water for a small donation about 10 Lei (about £2)

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/watermill1.JPG
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Then through forests and rocky roads to the evenings accomodation, a mountain pension.
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For £30 we got a large double room, breakfast, and stunning views

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/mountainpension.JPG

We also got pressed into service to use my newly repaired winch.... some local lads had a tractor problem! Dropped the rear wheels in too far, and then dropped the counterweight off the back. They were just walking despondantly home to confess to Dad they had screwed up when they spotted my winch and asked a favour..

So cross stream, strap out, winch tractor out. Then cross back adn gently tug the counterweight upright so they can reattach...

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Next day campsite.

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/campsite2.JPG

Then the first mountain climb... at the summit just drive up the hill to the very top. The locals all cheer and like to see offroaders being sensible, be they RO, GB, NL or whatever...

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Attenborough voice - Here we have a Land Rover in its natural habitat.

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As well as horses....

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/horses.JPG

Oh and a wolf ran through the first campsite we were at as well....sadly we never got a photo of that.

Descending we find some splashy stuff as well as a couple of river fords. Please note these are roads - with cars, trucks, etc using them!

http://80.229.2.31/pictures/water.JPG


On the way we found an abandoned Communist era work camp, probably for forestry work...
http://80.229.2.31/pictures/ghosttown.JPG

Then we went to a salt mine - there is an underground boating lake, echo chambers, ferris wheel....

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Teaching some Slovak students to hoot like an owl in the echo chamber...
http://80.229.2.31/pictures/owlhooting.JPG

Now on to Sighisoara - birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula. Then Brasov, and then the biggie - the Trasfagarian and Transalpina mountain passes.

Great write up but no photos...

+1

Apologies I don't know what happened but I've amended it so it's just clickable links now to my website. I'll get a proper write up done later. I've got a rather delicate stomach for some reason so probably not going out for a day or so.....

Enjoyed the pics ,excellent . How have you found these routes ? Hope you feel better soon Chris.

Great photos!

Nice one, thanks for sharing That salt mine is amazing!
Took me right back, waiting for JPGs to load lol
Couple of broken links though, firstcamp and owl.

OK think ive fixed them as well...

Fantastic photos. Cannot wait to travel Romania. Looks like you found some really nice routes.

We are going back in two months to finish parts off it was so good....

The journey was 15 borders in 15 days to get there. Including one day with five countries.... bit of a road trek though. Take three weeks and do it properly is my advice...

SWMBO and me are off tomorrow on a 3 week jaunt round the Balkans. Can't wait.

Can't get the photos to work pal

We went to the salt mines a couple of weeks ago as part of a charity rally to Mongolia. Was one of the highlights of my trip

Another for no pics.
if your website is on your home network, you appear to have rebooted your router. I suggest a service such as DynDNS so that IP changes do not really matter.