Travels with Spaniels: A border crossing, Blair Witch and the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains

Our departure from the campsite at Tiszavasvari was slightly delayed. Sunday mornings are our day for a scrambled egg breakfast and we had also decided not to move on until we had watched the Wales v France Rugby World Cup quarter final, and what a nail biter that turned out to be. We then headed south where we planned to stop at a nature reserve which promised water buffalos and various wildfowl and, on arriving we discovered we could take the dogs around with us. However, a hot Sunday afternoon in October did not seem to be the best time for anything much, other than a lone stork and some herons. Even the water buffalo seemed to have gone away for the day. They might well have been further down the long track but it was too hot for the spaniels to walk any further.

Nothing like a game of ball

We set off again across the rather boring plains of southern Hungary before fetching up at a picnic site by a large lake. It was heaving with locals who had come out to have a BBQ and enjoy the unseasonal weather. The temperature has been in the mid 20s, rather than the 16℃ or so that is normal for this time of year. Consequently we had to park up and wait for some space to become available. The sun sets here at 6pm and the temperature drops so it wasn't long before everyone had gone home and we had the car park to ourselves, other than a couple of Finnish girls sleeping in a stealth van.

The next morning we took the spaniels for a lovely walk around the lake, managing to fit in a game of ball on the way back. Having topped up with water from a tap in the corner of the car park. We had hoped to dispose of the toilet cassette but the WCs were closed up. A visit to Aldi on the outskirts of Debrecen took care of the weekly shop and we were forced to buy half a dozen bottles of wine to get rid of our £30 worth of Hungarian Forints. Needs must when the Devil drives.

Bit of a queue to leave Romania

We crossed the border into Romania just before lunch and, for the first time on this trip, had to show our passports. While Hungary is in Schengen, Romania is not, and the border police were out in force. Fortunately traffic was light and, having had our passports scrutinised by an unsmiling woman, we think she was new and trying to make an impression, we entered our fifteenth country on our tour so far. The border controls the other way seemed just as strict as there was a two mile queue of trucks waiting to get out of Romania. We had to cope with the loss of an hour, Romania is two hours ahead of British time, and we stopped to get some cash as we switched from Hungarian Forints to Romanian Lei.

The currency is pretty

What we hadn't bargained for was the quality of Romanian driving. While the standard since leaving Finland had been a little shambolic, Romania is in a class of its own, probably best described as frenetic, although not bad tempered. This was brought home to us as we carefully obeyed the 20 kph limit through the border crossing, only to be overtaken by 40 tonne trucks doing triple that speed. By the time we had negotiated the ring road around Oradea, think the Paris peripherique but with just two lanes, we discovered a number of local customs.

A reminder that not everyone made it home safely

Speed limits are advisory and seen by many Romanians as minimums rather than maximums. I lost count of the number of times we slowed to observe the 50kph limit in villages only to be overtaken by everyone else doing at least 70 kph. Apparently a continuous white line is a challenge, rather than a bar to overtaking and the correct procedure is to get within 2 inches of the back bumper of the car in front, pull out, then cut back in as close as possible usually because something is coming the other way at some speed. Obviously drivers of Audis and BMWs were best at this. Not surprisingly Romania has the highest level of road deaths in the EU, something you are reminded of by roadside memorials.

Can't say we weren't warned

We discovered two other hazards as we drove deeper into the country. You see a lot of loose dogs in Romania and some of them decide, with no warning, to wander across the road.The other thing to look out for is horses and carts which share the roads with modern vehicles. Romania is still classed as a developing country and draught animals are still part of the landscape although the authorities are increasingly restricting what roads they can use.

Parked by the gorge

We were therefore somewhat relieved to turn off the main road and make our way to the small village of Vadu Crisului where we dropped anchor at a small picnic area in a limestone gorge close by a river which we shared with a Czech couple in their small van. Just across the river was a railway line with trains rattling by every 30 minutes or so. The line followed the edge of the river through the gorge so we could hear the echo of the train hooters some distance away. Most of the trains are local but the service through to Vienna passes once a day.

Convenient for the station

The downside of the clock change was that it was pitch dark and quite cold when Max needed to go out for his morning pee. But the sun soon came out and we enjoyed a walk along the edge of the river on a path where a mountain goat would have been at home. After thirty minutes we arrived at what had obviously been a hostel of some sort but had now fallen into disrepair. Set as it was among the woods, it brought to mind the building in the Blair Witch Project, where the protagonists ended up standing in the corner waiting for the evil to arrive. Quite how they got the materials there to build it is a mystery. It was sited 50 feet above the river with only a rough path as access. Perhaps that's why business was not particularly good.

The spooky hostel

We continued to head east following the signs to Cluj-Napoca. As we did the landscape began to change with the flat plains giving way to outcrops of the Carpathian mountains, and the road began to switchback up and down the increasingly steep climbs. As we approached Cluj we turned onto a small side road for the 30 km journey to the village of Petrestii de Jos where we had identified an overnight spot that had been the subject of rave reviews on our Park4Night app. I therefore write this parked on a grassy area by a small river, on the edge of the Cheile Turzii National Park. Since arriving we have been visited by two local dogs, very friendly, and a couple of hundred sheep wandered down for a drink, accompanied for some reason, by a donkey. We thought it might have been in charge.

Visitors

This will be our first night in Transylvania, an area that has been dominated by a bewildering number of countries and people. Originally the Kingdom of Dacia, it was subsequently conquered by the Romans, Visigoths, Huns and Slavs before the Magyars arrived in the 9th century and it became part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It then passed to the Hapsburgs before being absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire until Romania came into existence at the end of WW1. There was more squabbling after that before it definitively became part of Romania in 1947. However, for me, and many other people in Western Europe, Transylvania only means one thing. So, tonight, I have garlic flowers around the door and a wooden stake handily placed by the side of the bed. You just can't be too careful.