Travels with Spaniels: A bear in the woods, the ultimate mountain road, and a city of culture

Tonight we were supposed to be parked up at the top of a mountain pass. Instead you find us down the other side, snuggled up next to the wall of a monastery in the small Wallachian town of Curtea de Arges. But for the best possible reason. All the wild camping spots along this side of the Transfagarasan road are closed because of intense bear activity. And we know it's not a fairytale, because we saw one.

The morning started down on the plain

We have done a couple of long driving days this week, all so that we could be in Sibiu last night, ready to set out this morning on the Transfagarasan, also known as Ceausescu's Folly. It is a 90km mountain road, open for just four months a year, crossing the Fagaras Mountains which are part of the Carpathians in Transylvania. Its peak is at 2042m, and since Jeremy Clarkson named it the best driving road in the world on Top Gear, it's become a bit of a tourist destination. That's why we wanted to be sure we were on it on a weekday - it will be incredibly busy this weekend because the weather is still fine, and it's scheduled to close next week until the end of June 2020.

Zig, zag, zig, zag...

We'd agreed to stick with the preferences we'd discovered in Norway. I would drive up, and Nick would drive down. So Nick steered us out of Sibiu's tortuous one way system, and handed over to me at the foot of the mountains mid-morning. At first the climb rises steadily through a series of hairpins in woodland. Then you come to a small parking area with a handful of souvenir stalls, and the real climb begins. We emerged from the trees into bright sunlight on the rock faces around us, where there are numerous places to pull over, look at the view, and let people past. Fortunately there weren't many people to let past, the road was fairly quiet, and no one was in a hurry. The spaniels were happy to trot out and wet their paws in a stream under the waterfall that tumbles down from the glacial lake near the top.

How far have we come?

After that came the most spectacular section, long looping hairpins crossing the valley, as we gained height impossibly quickly on what seemed a fairly gradual gradient. Florence certainly coped without difficultly, and earned several pats on the steering wheel for her sure touch on the bends. Suddenly we were at the top, where a cement lorry was backing across the road between two busy car parks and the road down to the lake.

Florence pauses for a breather

I passed the lorry, and found myself in the longest tunnel in Romania, 890m, which didn't seem to have been resurfaced since the road was built in the early 70s as a ~~strategic military~~ vanity project under Ceausescu. After all the fluids in the van had acquired a nice head, we popped out the other side, and suddenly we were on our way down. The first place we had identified as a stopover soon approached, but the entry looked steep and rough, so we carried on, certain there would be plenty more options. We found somewhere to stop for lunch, but it wasn't right for an overnight, so Nick took the wheel and we carried on.

I object only to the spelling

It was at about this point that the bear signs started to appear. Every turning off the road was closed to vehicles because of bears. It seems they've been getting accustomed to coming down and raiding bins and campsites for food, and the authorities have decided to close these areas to people for the time being. We have no argument with this. It is the bears' territory, and if human behaviour is putting them at risk, then it is humans that should be controlled. However, it did make our day when we turned a bend and I yelled "Stop" at Nick at the 70% volume which means urgent, but not life-threatening. He duly braked, we both made eye-contact with the bear, sitting just six feet away from us in a gap in the armco, and then Nick had to take his foot off the brake as there was a car right behind us.

The message is clear

But it was a bear, sitting there, minding its own business, not remotely fazed by our presence, but completely wild, in a mountain forest in Europe. So on the whole, the fact that we have had to come down from the mountain and park in a city, is okay. Because we want there to be bears in the mountains. And the fact that we couldn't climb the 1480 steps to Poenari Citadel (arguably the real Dracula's Castle - shall we cover that when we get to the other one?) was only a regret to some of the travelling party. The only shame is that we didn't get to hear the wolves howling in the night.

Morning sun in Turda Gorge

Such an intense day has almost eclipsed the joys of yesterday, when we woke up in the most exquisite wild camping spot at the far end of the Turda Gorge, next to a bubbling stream. We walked a short way into the gorge, as far as was practical with spaniels on the slippery polished limestone path, and chatted to a young couple from Bromley who were keen to explore some of the places we had been. Then we set off for Sibiu, arriving mid-afternoon at a large car park next to the old town where we would spend the night.

Wild camping, Romanian style

From the top of Turda Gorge

Nice place for an evening meal

A walk around Sibiu, joint city of Culture with Luxembourg in 2007, revealed a fabulous array of architecture - almost every building was listed - and a friendly and lively atmosphere. Posters promised imminent performances of Peer Gynt and Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, as well as orchestral music and opera. We had intended to explore with the pups in the afternoon, and then return without them to eat in the evening. But Max had unfortunately managed to eat a nasty spiky burr, and had been quite poorly for a while, so we didn't want to leave him. Luckily the evening was warm, and we were able to sit outside with the spaniels and enjoy some Romanian venison with local wine.

Max seemed much recovered by bedtime, although poor Nick did have to walk him several times around the car park at 2am, and by morning he was fine. A friendly car park attendant saw us both doing our morning spaniel rounds, and as I was returning to the van with Elsa he hailed me: "Hey Lady!" He wanted to make sure we had water for the dogs. The spaniels have been as much of a hit here as everywhere else, and the numerous strays appear mostly well-fed and friendly. The two which adopted us at the Turda Gorge were delightful, and when Nick accidentally left the van door open while Elsa and I were off on a walk, he found Max sitting next to one of the strays in the grass by the stream.

Max's mates at the Gorge

There is so much to say about our first few days in Romania, and these last 48 hours have been fantastic, so I can't cram it all into one blog. But I did want to mention the language. It's both comforting and bizarre to find a Romance language, one which is largely comprehensible to someone with bits of French and Spanish, in an area so far adrift from Western Europe. After struggling with Finno-Ugric and Slavic languages it was like a breath of fresh air to realise I could understand the gist of signs without even thinking about it. The existence of Romanian here and in Moldova, is apparently a vestige of a Latin speaking population in Dacia in around the 9th century. Bits of Slavic and modern French/Italian have been incorporated in much the same way that English has Anglo-Saxon and French alternatives for many words. For some reason the language was once written in Cyrillic script, but is fortunately now in Roman. We'll work out how to cope with Cyrillic when we get to Bulgaria.