Romania - Clive's House and Excursions

[clivehorridge]

Sunday, 25 October 2015

To kick this thread off, it was a beautiful sunny morning, no rain, we had friends visiting for the weekend, Cris and Mara, and it was his birthday. We'd also gained an hour with the clocks going back and I'd completely forgotten, so we also had a bonus extra hour.

So we went out. Those on the forum that visited us (Romania 2015 thread) may remember going to a monastery in a cave. Cris had tried to get there in his very nicely restored MK 1 VW Golf, but with all of 50mm ground clearance, it just wasn't going to happen .

Im not going to bore you with the monastery photos, they can be found on the Romania 2015 thread, but I did want to show some pics of the area in autumn and some shots from the Dichiu, that's the road that was in low cloud and we couldn't even see the front edge of our bonnets, let alone the lovely views I'd promised, before you guys brought the rain from the UK

So, views from the Dichiu in autumn...





The road climbs above the tree-line which is at about 1,400m above Black Sea level...









You can see the road ahead, winding its way around the contour of the mountain (Sinaia)



After 10 km or so, there's a left fork, which takes you down towards the monastery, but before then there's another 5 km to the reservoir and beyond the reservoir is the gorge and stream feeding the reservoir.

For those who remember the gorge, I recall someone asking how big the cave was that we saw. I didn't have a clue, so this time we stopped and went inside. It's a man made tunnel, goodness knows why, that runs horizontally into the solid rock. We followed it for what must have been 150m, and it kept on going after that. We went no further, there were some timber props where we stopped, but one day I'll venture further in.

Here's Cris and Mara emerging... (Looking a bit blurred)



We also went further along the road beyond the monastery. It "ends" at the mountain rescue centre, but there was nothing stopping us continuing...



Not really a track, more of a footpath, but what the heck...









Then in it dwindled out and we found ourselves just driving on the mountain. That's where this and a few other shots were taken (Rogues Gallery) and least said about them the better.



Coming back down I tried to take some video with the iPad. Very shaky and generally not good at all. The rattling noise is my bunch of keys in the ignition I hope these links work...

View attachment trim.7EE2420E-AF25-4B1C-A7B8-ACEC19AAD0E2.MOV

View attachment trim.03E71148-D542-41E4-883C-BDBDFFEF9F77.MOV

View attachment trim.95EAE33E-DFD6-4352-847F-42F1AAE55C12.MOV

Then it was back along the roadway in the valley for some 18 km or so and back onto the Dichiu and then the journey home....

Various autumn snaps on the way to close...

 

[Chas]

Those links worked Clive but they're all sideways.

 

[clivehorridge]

Those links worked Clive but they're all sideways.

mmmm

I had the iPad vertical to reduce the amount of dash in the frame... bugger. Not much I can do about that.

Lie on the floor Chas, or rotate your monitor... What to say?

 

[Shayne]

Mine came up in windows moviemaker Chas which has a couple of looped arrows at the top left of the screen to flip the view if that's any help .

I thinks its a great idea to post vids of all the places your going to take us next year Clive , a vid a week should do it

 

[clivehorridge]

Mine came up in windows moviemaker Chas which has a couple of looped arrows at the top left of the screen to flip the view if that's any help .

I thinks its a great idea to post vids of all the places your going to take us next year Clive , a vid a week should do it

I'm convinced there's a track from there up to the ridge. I'll try it from the top next time, and see if I can get the two tracks to join hands somehow.

Not giving up yet...

 

[Rich Sims]

Good pics and vids. Works fine on ipad.

 

[clivehorridge]

Good pics and vids. Works fine on ipad.

Aha! There you go Rich, Apples with Apples as they say!

 

[clivehorridge]

Sunday, 1 November 2015

It was my friend Marius' birthday on Friday and he and his family spent the weekend with us up at the house, out of town.

First the bad news, on Friday night, disaster struck Bucharest, when there was a fire in a night club. 30 people have lost their lives and first reports are that the fire safety and evacuation facilities in the club were way less than minimum, yet all the authorizations were in place. Today (Sunday) 12,000 people marched through the streets of the city as a mark of respect for the victims (some 300-400 were in the club at the time and there's 200 still in hospital) and also in protest over the bribery that goes on when it comes to Government controlled authorizations, issued under the control of corrupt Mayors in the 6 Sectors of the City. Marius' cousin is one of the victims, thankfully not killed, but he's critically ill in intensive care. He's in a coma with inhalation burns and asphyxia, he may not survive. He and his wife have lost almost all of their friends to the disaster.

So it's been a weekend of mixed emotions, nothing other than the disaster on TV and a lot of accusations as to how it could have happened, each of which incriminates more and more underhand activities. It's a shame that 30 innocents have to die to bring this behavior into the open. The city is in mourning.

But the lighter news is that Saturday saw a bit of tidying up in the garden, mainly raking up the walnut tree leaves, and today Marius and I took a little ride up to the hill. This would be familiar to the Romania 2015 mob, and photos from the hill have been posted by me more times than I can remember.

I could start with a couple of photos of our cat enjoying the sunshine, just because I can. No quips about upside down or sideways pics and videos please, you'll have to receive them as they come, it's all iPhone and iPad today!





It's beautiful weather at the moment, clear blue skies and although very sunny and certainly not cold, there's a fresh autumn chill in the air.







The hill gave up its lovely views as usual..., only this time in autumn colors...













Anyway, instead of doing the usual circuit around the top of the hill, to go back the way we came, we ventured straight on over the edge to try to get onto a track lower down that I've never been able to find before. It was a bit tricky getting down to it but here's the start of a short run along it... As I said, only iPad vids so it will be wobbly (no not you Pete) there's more dashboard than scene, a dirty widescreen and a lot of its into the sunshine...

vids to come on edit (over an hour of uploading vid 1 before I gave up!).

As you'll see, we went through some narrow stretches and some forest, which was lovely, and came out onto a hill overlooking Paltinul hydroelectric reservoir, on the other side from the main road (also familiar to the Romania 2015 mob).

Then we spent a good hour trying to get down to the reservoir, to no avail. We ended up at a shepheard's enclosure and he told us there was no track and no way. So there was no option but to retrace our way back. Shame, it would have made a great round-trip for 2016. Work in progress





Here, it was so narrow, I was driving with both sides well above the level of the track, tricky to say the least, too much either way would have pitched the truck at a hell of an angle and probably done some body damage to the sides....



Here's the the clearing where we saw Paltinul in the distance...



You can just see the dam at the end of the reservoir in this shot...



That's about it until I can edit in the vids, hopefully on Monday from the laptop...

Courtesy of utoob, here are the vids..

http://youtu.be/o0yTHrRK88o

http://youtu.be/91DUGxX1ZfM

http://youtu.be/35icnw4tSI8

After losing the track as we emerged from a forested section, we had to reverse on a very steep slope, which meant me hugging the edge of the trees as close as possible, to take a left, back the way we had come. Nothing in the next video represents how steep it was, it felt like 45 degrees back up through the forest ....

http://youtu.be/CNICC5JuXuo

http://youtu.be/TJqntKQDGPo

http://youtu.be/e8Soz7n61tU

a few more to come...

Till the next excursion...

 

[Chas]

That countryside looks absolutely gorgeous in Autumn Clive, teasing us here in damp UK you are.

 

[clivehorridge]

That countryside looks absolutely gorgeous in Autumn Clive, teasing us here in damp UK you are.

Tee hee, I'm so childish sometimes Chas...

 

[Chas]

Sunday, 1 November 2015

It was my friend Marius' birthday on Friday and he and his family spent the weekend with us up at the house, out of town.

First the bad news, on Friday night, disaster struck Bucharest, when there was a fire in a night club. 30 people have lost their lives and first reports are that the fire safety and evacuation facilities in the club were way less than minimum, yet all the authorizations were in place. Today (Sunday) 12,000 people marched through the streets of the city as a mark of respect for the victims (some 300-400 were in the club at the time and there's 200 still in hospital) and also in protest over the bribery that goes on when it comes to Government controlled authorizations, issued under the control of corrupt Mayors in the 6 Sectors of the City. Marius' cousin is one of the victims, thankfully not killed, but he's critically ill in intensive care. He's in a coma with inhalation burns and asphyxia, he may not survive. He and his wife have lost almost all of their friends to the disaster.

So it's been a weekend of mixed emotions, nothing other than the disaster on TV and a lot of accusations as to how it could have happened, each of which incriminates more and more underhand activities. It's a shame that 30 innocents have to die to bring this behavior into the open. The city is in mourning....

That awful fire has been on the news here too, I read on the BBC site there were only two exit doors and one had to be broken down before people could get out it didn't actually say it was locked just had to be broken down.

 

[clivehorridge]

The whole story seems to be a catalogue of a disaster waiting to happen, and sadly it did.

Inadequate exits, flammable interior decor, no windows, no water on the premises so no sprinklers, only one fire extinguisher (and too small, sounding like one you'd have in your truck), the list seems endless.

The fire started from indoor fireworks, can you believe!!

Totally incredible, and the more that comes out about officials signing off inspections that haven't been done, well, the whole sorry tale is nothing short of criminal.

There will be many investigations of a lot of people after this. It's just so sad that so many had to die.

 

[clivehorridge]

No luck with editing the vids in. I'll have to go the utoob way methinks...

 

[StarCruiser]

Seems to work fine for me via tapatalk Clive. Does take a while to upload and convert but all seems fine afterwards. I guess it depends on how long the videos are.

 

[clivehorridge]

Seems to work fine for me via tapatalk Clive. Does take a while to upload and convert but all seems fine afterwards. I guess it depends on how long the videos are.

Yes Rich, I have had success without using a third party as it were, but for some unknown reason, not this time.

I've decided to upload them to utoob, mainly to avoid the consumption of memory on my devices. Strange though, I've just uploaded 6 vids, each taking less than 5 mins to publish. For no reason that I'm aware of, the 7th was uploading at speed times between 200 and 1,500 minutes which is ludicrous!

I've cancelled no 7 and I'm going to give it a rest for a moment. In the meantime, I'm editing the links into the above thread.

 

[clivehorridge]

OK, a quick update, 7 videos now edited into post #8 above. Hope they're not too boring.

With regards to the club fire in Bucharest, the bad news is another casualty has died, bringing the number of deaths to 31.

However, the good news is that Marius' cousin has regained consciousness this evening, and he's quite coherent which is the best news. They were very afraid he would have suffered brain damage. Now he has 30% burns to deal with.

 

[Chas]

That's great Clive, the You Tube vids are stunning.

 

[clivehorridge]

Good to hear they're working OK Chas

 

[StarCruiser]

Great vids Clive. Glad to hear Marius's cousin is conscious though 30% burns and the memory of his ordeal must be horrible. What's his name? Hope he is soon comfortable and on the mend.

I bet you were glad of your paint protect film on your truck with the branches. I always hate it when you get a stick flip up under the truck. Makes such a bang I get out and look under it convinced I've put a hole in the fuel tank or wrenched something off but nothing ever looks different.

 

[clivehorridge]

The biggest relief is that he will survive. His hands and eyes are in good shape as I understand it.

His name is Iulian, BTW. I know you guys don't know him, but life can be cruel sometimes. He's one of the luckier ones. The remains of 2 girls were found yesterday, in the debris where the toilet facilities were.

Yes, the plastic wrap is doing well!

The branches and bushes sound worse on the videos than it does when driving. Also, sounds like the keys jangling and other such noises seem much more pronounced.

It did take a bit of a battering this weekend though, narrow lanes and trackside bushes, but it scrubbed up clean and shiny at the car wash yesterday!