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Romania - Carpathian Mountains - 2014

SpinDrift

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Just back from a 3 week trip to Romania covering some 4000 miles. We followed a variation of the route in this road book http://guide4x4.free.fr/catalogue1/page5.html

The route took us along a combination of tarmac and dirt track / unsurfaced roads / forest track through the Carpathian mountains. The route was not overly challenging but we had some fun moments skirting boulders and fallen trees on tracks, winch a fallen tree off a track, recovering ourselves from a muddy badly rutted track and driving some sometimes precarious tracks. We wild camped most nights either in forest clearing or in meadows.

The LC100 performed brilliantly. We had no issues, other than the pc monitor mount getting working loose through a combination of heat (it was stuck with adhesive pads), vibration, weight and lever action. Damage wise - nothing serious - more pinstripes and the side steps are more bent and rattle more.

We had a great time and recommend Romania as a destination - it is a beautiful country. More details and photos to follow.
 
Sounds great. I have bought roadbooks from that place and looked at the Romania one, but reckoned it needed at least 4 weeks holiday to complete it all. Well done, a long trip at 4000 miles,
Did you stop over anywhere on way to and from Romania

Looking forward to the full details and photos

Any bears ?
 
Look forward to the pictures. I have looked at the exact same road book.
 
Glad to hear you arrived home safely, Reinhard, and I'm very disappointed that all efforts to meet up failed, due to me being away from my "area" on holiday. That was most frustrating.

I'm very pleased that you enjoyed your visit and concluded the trip as you have reported. Romania is very beautiful, and more essentially, quite accessible.

IMO, the people are friendly and go out of their way to communicate (which isn't so easy for them or the visitors) and it's my experience that they are very generous, often beyond their capability, and helpful.

I'm looking forward to your trip report (if you can find the time to post one), the photos and your wider opinion of the place.

:thumbup:
 
The suggested time is three weeks in Romania but we only had three weeks in total. We did a variation of the route as we wanted to visit some places not on the route and because we were short on time. We also planned to get as far as we could along the route and exit when we ran out of time. In total we spent 15 days in Romania. We stopped in Vienna on the way out and in Budapest and Nuremberg on the way back, staying in campsites some 10 to 20 minutes train ride from the city centres.

No bears, wolves or boar, but Bambi almost copped it when he skipped out in front of me on a fairly major and fast road on the last day in Romania.

Sounds great. I have bought roadbooks from that place and looked at the Romania one, but reckoned it needed at least 4 weeks holiday to complete it all. Well done, a long trip at 4000 miles,
Did you stop over anywhere on way to and from Romania

Looking forward to the full details and photos

Any bears ?
 
Multumesc Clive. Its holiday time for everyone so it can be difficult to arrange everyone's plans to meet up. Also our time window in the area was quite small. There is always next time :)

Sorry to read that you have had a spot of bother with your cruiser. Hope you get it sorted soon.

The people we met and spoke to were all very nice. We always got a smile when we said 'multumesc' (thank you) and always got a 'placere' (my pleasure) in return. No one ever bothered us when set up camp, even though people passed walked/rode/drove past. We would greet them and they would greet back. Also, notwithstanding the poverty we were never hassled by beggars.

During the trip I read a book about the problems/politics/power struggles/wars that have wracked the Balkans over the years and the worst years in Romania were described as worse than the worst Stalin years in Russia. We would have been interested to talk to people about the past, present and future, but we did not have many opportunities and when we might have, were hampered by the language barrier.

I'll write up a brief report and post some of the photos.

Glad to hear you arrived home safely, Reinhard, and I'm very disappointed that all efforts to meet up failed, due to me being away from my "area" on holiday. That was most frustrating.

I'm very pleased that you enjoyed your visit and concluded the trip as you have reported. Romania is very beautiful, and more essentially, quite accessible.

IMO, the people are friendly and go out of their way to communicate (which isn't so easy for them or the visitors) and it's my experience that they are very generous, often beyond their capability, and helpful.

I'm looking forward to your trip report (if you can find the time to post one), the photos and your wider opinion of the place.

:thumbup:
 
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Yep, it's not easy to strike up a decent conversation, unless you have a very patient translator. I've had long discussions with my father in law via my wife translating, he's led quite a sheltered life as a minister in Ceaușescu's government between 1947 and the late 60's, as Secretary of State for forestry and agriculture.

He admits that the policy of paying off the country's debts in too short a time was devastating for rural Romania, poverty and food shortages were common-place and folks producing food were allowed such a small ration for themselves, they ended up starving, sometimes to death. If they cheated on the rations, they were found out and imprisoned, charged with being enemies of the state. Few survived that. It's a gruesome story.

The very first question my wife's grandmother asked me was "how is your mother" and in the same breath "does she have enough food?" Amazing really after 25 odd years of democracy, since the 1989 revolution.

Anyway, all too serious, let's see your photos when you're ready :dance:
 
Just back from a 3 week trip to Romania covering some 4000 miles. We followed a variation of the route in this road book http://guide4x4.free.fr/catalogue1/page5.html

The route took us along a combination of tarmac and dirt track / unsurfaced roads / forest track through the Carpathian mountains. The route was not overly challenging but we had some fun moments skirting boulders and fallen trees on tracks, winch a fallen tree off a track, recovering ourselves from a muddy badly rutted track and driving some sometimes precarious tracks. We wild camped most nights either in forest clearing or in meadows.

The LC100 performed brilliantly. We had no issues, other than the pc monitor mount getting working loose through a combination of heat (it was stuck with adhesive pads), vibration, weight and lever action. Damage wise - nothing serious - more pinstripes and the side steps are more bent and rattle more.

We had a great time and recommend Romania as a destination - it is a beautiful country. More details and photos to follow.


top link is that, some good looking trails there:thumbup:

(and the bonus of some nice 60 series!!)
 
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First up, some facts and figures.

We got the ferry from Hull to the grandiosely named Europoort in Holland. Departure both ways is 8.30 pm arriving at the other end some 12 hours later. The cost of the ferry was £450.

The distance covered on the trip was 3905 miles, of which some 2000 miles were the outbound and return journeys.

We used 1026 litres of diesel for a total cost of £1097. The cheapest diesel was at just over £1 per litre in Austria and Hungary, the most expensive was UK supermarket diesel which before I left was at £1.33 – even more expensive than the fuel available at continental motorway services. No surprises there I suppose. Diesel in Romania was an average if £1.13 per litre.

Fuel consumption ran at 17 mpg – worse than last year’s Norway trip when consumption was 21 mpg. I attribute this to running on muds rather than ATs, but driving in low on the tracks in the mountains also contributed. Why muds? Because as a single vehicles driving on muddy mountain tracks I felt it would be better. Actually except for a few small section, it was not really necessary.

Austria, Hungary and Romania all have a vignette system where you have to purchase local road tax on entering the country. Austria cost Euro 8.5 for 10 days. We bought one going out and one coming back as it was cheaper than buying a 30 day vignette. Hungary cost Euro 18 and Romania Euro 7, both for 30 days.

We spent 14 days in Romania, wild camped on 12 nights and spent 1 night in each of a B&B, a 4 star hotel and a campsite. The remaining nights were spent in campsites in Vienna, Budapest and Nurnberg.

One tip from Clive about buying fuel in Romania – always carry enough cash to cover the purchase of a tank full of fuel. If the card machine at fuel station fails to connect to the bank (it happened to me once but seems to be a common enough occurrence for Clive to have pointed it out – thanks for the tip Clive), you will have to cough up hard cash. Funnily enough something similar happened to me in Norway where late one evening all the unmanned automatic pumps in a town were not working – the network was down - I had to wait till the following morning for a fuel station to open so I could pay cash.

Finding a good source of potable water is always a bit of a headache when overlanding. We ‘imported’ 40 litres of water into Romania but this obviously did not last the trip. Most houses in the smaller towns and villages have wells, and it is likely that in some places that is where they get their drinking water from. It is probably fine for someone who has grown up on that water but I am not sure I would be comfortable drinking it without boiling or sterilizing, especially as there is a risk of contamination from livestock waste or seepage from faulty drains etc. There seem to be public taps in villages and this would be a better source. We resorted to buying bottled water for all our needs. Large 10 litre bottles cost just over a £1. I didn’t keep track of it, but maybe we spent £5 on water. That is negligible when compared to the cost of the trip and gives you peace of mind and avoids tummy problems. Clive might be able to give some insight into the water source situation in Romania.

Enough rambling. On with the trip.

Day one was a long drove - Europoort to Vienna – 743 miles in some 13.5 hours. It was quite a marathon but we wanted to get the miles behind us an chose Vienna as our first stop as it was somewhere we wanted to visit. We stayed at Wien Neue Donau campsite http://www.wiencamping.at/nd/en/index.asp for two nights. The campsite is a short walk and some 15 minutes by train from the centre. Vienna is an old classic city with palaces that date back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and well worth a visit.

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From Vienna we headed into Hungary and then on into Romania. We entered Romania at a small border crossing just outside of Mako, Hungary joining the DN6 in Romania. We were greet by an unusual spectacle (well, for us anyway) – a Polish tourist and the vignette official having a very loud argument about the vignette. It seems there was a misunderstanding about the duration of the vignette. Anyway we paid ours and headed for Timisaora and continued on to Rosita.

In Rosita there were a number of abandoned industrial sites – legacy of the communist days and urban explorer heaven. No, we didn’t stop. We were to see more such abandoned sites, some industrial some agricultural, during the trip.

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We headed for the hills, forest and our first track, and our first night of wild camping in Romania.

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Below is a plot of our tracks. It varies from the route in the guide book as we did not follow it exactly because of some road work deviations, wanting to visit other places and wanting to avoid particularly narrow or very slippery sections.

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If you want more detail, please buy the book from the website in the first post. It is an excellent book. Once you are on the ground, it quickly becomes very obvious that the author has put in significant effort to compile it.

And no, I don't know why part of the track is in red.
 
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Well done Reinhard, that's a nice route an not too much on the main roads. No wonder your mpg was down!

I'm not sure what to say about drinking water. I came here in 2001, and after drinking and eating local water and produce, I went down with a bad stomach within a week. It only lasted 24 hours, and I've been fine since. It may have been a coincidence, or acclimatization, who will ever know.

With the family, we drink bottled water, and use tap water for tea and cooking. In a village, I'm sure public tap water would be 'safe' because they would be tested on a regular basis. When wild camping in the mountains, fast stream water would be safe, much the same as in Wales. It's the best water in the country. All city water is chlorinated.

Is that the Transalpina I see just east of Ramnicu Valcea? Truly, that was a better road before it was asphalted.

Great trip, I'm sorry we couldn't meet up. :thumbup:
 
The next day we continued along the track through the forest.

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The day proved interesting having to negotiate a number of obstacles within a relatively short distance. The track itself was cut into the hillside with edge sometimes dropping quite steeply into the valley below.

The first obstacle was a large boulder that had rolled onto the track - there is a steep slope just over the edge

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followed by a few fallen trees, one of which we had to winch off the track

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while the others needed a little saw action to widen the gap someone had already created

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As it turned out, this was one of the more 'eventful' tracks. We were to encounter other obstacles including fallen trees, tracks narrowed by landslips, tracks with eroded edges, deep ruts and mud, but not in such quick succession.

Along the way we passed an abandoned farm house

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with a rather shaky outhouse

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and some very nice and interesting landscapes

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an old saw mill

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a number of small villages

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Along the road we saw a number of wayside crosses - the Romanians are a very religious people

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More sights

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We also saw quite a few birds of prey

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storks (something went wrong with the resizing here!!)

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and bee hives

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Eventually we came to Baile Herculane, a spa town built around the sulphuric hot springs said to have therapeutic properties. Part of the town is modern, with high rise hotels but there are quite a few magnificent old buildings in need to restoration. It was late so we wild camped just outside of the town returning in the morning to explore further.

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Thanks Clive - as I mentioned, credit for the route goes to the author of the road book. Yes, you are right, there weren't too many main roads. In fact for the most part the roads were relatively quiet.

Regarding the water - I prefer to play safe. I have sterilization tablets but preferred to use bottled water (the tabs can leave quite a strong taste).

Yes that is the Transalpina - driven twice because of a diversion, not that I minded, even though it is asphalted.


Well done Reinhard, that's a nice route an not too much on the main roads. No wonder your mpg was down!

I'm not sure what to say about drinking water. I came here in 2001, and after drinking and eating local water and produce, I went down with a bad stomach within a week. It only lasted 24 hours, and I've been fine since. It may have been a coincidence, or acclimatization, who will ever know.

With the family, we drink bottled water, and use tap water for tea and cooking. In a village, I'm sure public tap water would be 'safe' because they would be tested on a regular basis. When wild camping in the mountains, fast stream water would be safe, much the same as in Wales. It's the best water in the country. All city water is chlorinated.

Is that the Transalpina I see just east of Ramnicu Valcea? Truly, that was a better road before it was asphalted.

Great trip, I'm sorry we couldn't meet up. :thumbup:
 
Looks like a fantastic trip. It really is a beautiful country.

AS regards water, there are geographical differences in the generally non-pathogenic organisms in water as we travel. A slight upset stomach can result until the body becomes used to them.
 
Looks like a fantastic trip. It really is a beautiful country.

AS regards water, there are geographical differences in the generally non-pathogenic organisms in water as we travel. A slight upset stomach can result until the body becomes used to them.

That's what I thought, and maybe its what I said when talking to Hughie on the phone... :lol:
 
We continued along our route with the intension of reaching Petrosani and then on to the Transalpina. Road closures because of road building resulted in waste of time and a rehashing of our route.

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We ended up wild camping south of the Transalpina and tackling it the following day.

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In the morning we headed north up the Transalpina and then on to Petrosani and the retracing out tracks to rejoin our route, but it was worth the drive. The Transalpina offers great views and the drive from the northern end of the Transalpina to Petrosani (and back) takes you through a nice valley.

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Basarabia is mostly what we now call Moldovia and was part of historic Romania. Seems they want in again.

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The road soon became more interesting

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Not much has been invested in safety barriers

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and a piece of asphalt seems to have been misplaced - but its a great road

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Heading to Petrosani

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In Petrosani we refuelled, stocked up on fresh produce and had mici for lunch. Mici are a kind of grilled skinless sausage made from a blend of beef, pork and lamb. A very tasty and relatively cheap snack that we were to have many more times, and that is great when washed down with beer. We then headed back ...

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British Lambrettas, Do you think we were carrying way too much stuff? :think:

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A storm blew in

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It was one of the biggest electrical storms we had ever encountered and was accompanied with strong wings and heavy rains. We took refuge in a B&B located with the help of the Garmin Dezl. It seems that the water in this area was also therapeutic....

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The next day we passed through an oil field. We took a couple of photos but were soon told off by a man in a car bearing the oil company logo.

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Not all transport needs oil ...

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We passed some welcoming accommodation ...

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and continued through a valley to the Vidraru Dam and the Prometheus statue

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And then on to a great track along the side of the lake.

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From here we headed north up the Transfagarasan. A great climb

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and subsequent descent.

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The descent took us onto the Transylvanian Plateau where we wild camped. Mushrooms for supper - today's harvest. Yum.

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Wow Reinhard, you didn't miss much, did you! :icon-biggrin:

One winter, were at the hotel at the top of the Transfagarasan, and we missed the last cable-car down. So we skied it! What a nightmare. Looking down the valley, we skied on the left side. Every 300m or so was an avalanche from the high slopes on the left, meaning skis off and a climb over boulders of hard-packed snow. At one stage as it was going dark, it was so steep I fell and ended up at the bottom in a right tangle.

It was the worst skiing I've ever done both conditions and my performance!:lol:

My father-in-law commissioned the Transfagarasan, when he was the Secretary of State for forestry under Ceausescu. He was up there with the workers driving a dozer to get the main rip completed before the winter set in. There's only a 3 month ice-free window between mid July and mid September. That road sees it's 40th anniversary this month!

Petrosani valley is great, we passed through there from our trip to the Retizat mountains, also to give the Transalpina a go. There's been some landslides since last year, by the looks of it.

BTW, we honeymooned in a house on one of the beaches of Vidrarul reservoir.

Great photos and memories there Reinhard, thanks for sharing! :thumbup:
 
Its a great place.

We were trying to get to Petrosani from Bumbesti Jui (this was plan B) but there were road works. As our route would have taken us to Petronsane, Petrosani Valley, Transalpina, the dam and the the Transfagarasan. We wasted quite a bit of time looking for an alternative route, including one mountain track but in the end gave up and headed for Novaci instead following a Novaci, Transalpina, Petrosani Valley, Petrosani, double back to Novaci and then continue to the dam and the Transfagarasan. If we waited a few hours in Bumbesti the road should have opened overnight - but, our Romanian not being up to scratch, we weren't sure so we went to plan C (Plan A was to approach Petrosani from Cimpu Lui Neag - but hey, with this kind of traveling, plans are there to be re-written as you go).

The Prometheus statue is rather cool - it looks like something straight out of a science fiction movie. The lake and forest around it look like a great area for camping.

The whole area deserves more time than we allowed, but partly because holiday time is so short and partly because there is so much to see, I never seem be able to slow down enough - Morocco and Scandinavia were the same. So much to do, so little time ...

btw new avatar is photo taken at the top of the Transfagarasan
 
We did a lot of cycling around the reservoir, we had a week there and never got bored.... oh yes, it was our honeymoon...:whistle:that's why :icon-rolleyes:

Taken from the dam
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Taken from our beach
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My baby
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The River Arges as it approaches the reservoir
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The dam
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Now, who would design a road way up there disappearing straight into solid rock?
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View straight down the dry side
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Sorry Reinhard, no more.... I promise :oops:
 
happy memories!
drove a tranny van up there supporting a group of bikers a few years back. Got a standing ovation at the bottom from the bikers, they didn't realise a tranny van could go that fast!! Cost me a grands worth of work on the brakes when I got home mind:laughing-rolling:

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Sorry if I posted the pics before, can't remember!!
 
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