A Day in the Mountains

Day 130 Monday 8^th August 2011  

We had our breakfast and got going on Route 1 towards the turn of for Route Dn7C which is the Transfaragasan. The Top Gear programme had hyped the road as the best in Europe. Yes, it was an excellent ride but I still think that Stelvio pass in Italy tops it. We said “balls” to Vlad the Impaler’s castle (Bran Castle) which wasn’t too far away for us to visit but we were sure that it would be a tourist trap and we were not here to see the commercial sites of Romania – we wanted to meet the people and see how the place ticked. It is very difficult to see Eastern Bloc influences in any of the towns or cities that we visited. Unlike Russia and Ukraine there were not many of the old square, grey Soviet style concrete tenement buildings that make up large parts of Soviet cities.

We were very lucky with the weather which gave us a sunny cloudless blue sky throughout the whole day and perfect riding conditions. The bikes performed well and the 90kms of the Transfaragasan were soon munched up and we had completed our self allotted task for the day. We reached the lowlands and set our sat navs up for the journey westwards towards home. We had no Romanian maps or European maps for that matter so we had to rely solely on the routes picked by our electronic friends and, as it turned out, it got us to the town of Arad just a few kilometres from the Hungarian border and where we found ourselves an expensive Best Western hotel in the centre.

Beginning of DN7c - The Transfaragasan

And there's plenty more where that came from.....

Our appointed task tomorrow is to try and get through the Hungary/Romania border early and then travel the 480 kms across Hungary to Austria and find ourselves a hotel in Euroland. This will put us just about 800 miles away from Calais and maybe just five days from now we could be home – just depends on our stamina and the reliability of the bikes which, up until now, has been perfect. There are many out there in Bikers Land who poo poo the humble BMW 1200GS and say that it is not up to the task of round the world riding – Ok we have made some modifications like heavy duty suspension but the trusty old steeds have taken us over 15,000 miles already on this journey so I have no complaints.

Ah !!  The open country roads, wind in your face....

Let’s just hope they hang on for another few days and get us safely across Le Manche to Blighty !