Eclipse of the sun on the Transfagarasan Highway

An exciting day yesterday topped off last night by a small plate of chips, three bottles of cold Romanian beers and a headache this morning. I think it must be the heat! Staying at a friendly little guest house type place that Andy P booked on the internet the previous day but, as you do, forgot to write down the address, phone number, location, map co-ordinates, GPS location, name of the owner ……… well, just about anything that would have been of use to us in finding it. All we knew was that it was on the roadside, south of a town whose name I can’t pronounce, and cost 8 euro each per night. Not a lot to go on when asking a stranger with whom you have no more than three words in common if they know where the place is that you’re meant to be staying that night!

In the end Andy did the classic ET thing and ‘phoned home’ (to various members of his family before finding one willing to help – just kidding Parker lads – it’s a joke to try and make this a wee bit entertaining), to get them to access his emails and give us the address. Miraculously it worked and we arrived in darkness after first having rung the bell on some random gated mansion along the road with electronically operated gates and an owner that appeared out of the darkness. Me, being easily frightened by the dark and this being Transylvania,  pushed Andy P forward to speak to them whilst I locked the car doors and prepared for a quick take off should the person appear to be going to whisper something in Andy’s ear. Once bitten, twice shy springs to mind.

Anyway, it all ended well and four hundred yards further on we were given a warm welcome by a very genial Romanian proprietor with an excellent sense of humour, (he laughed at our jokes – or at least pretended to), when we finally reached our stop for the night. So no harm done and Andy and I have started speaking to each other again this morning in sentences of more than one word.

Lots of German cars on the road today, we presumed heading for Black Sea resorts because there were numerous beach towels flying from their windows as they streaked past. My 5 year old son Andy started waving to cars as they overtook to see if the occupants would wave back which was funny for the first five minutes but started to grate after an hour particularly as he kept up a running commentary that went something like ‘they waved; they waved; they didn’t; they waved; etc.’ It only stopped when he finally fell asleep so I wondered if it might just be his version of ‘counting sheep’.

Fantastic fields of sunflowers along the road as well, hundreds of acres of them. It made for a beautiful sight but I think Van Gogh would have had his work cut out capturing it because from memory, all he could ever manage was a vase full.

Communicating in the car with each other above the wind and road noise presents a few challenges and I have had to ask Andy to repeat things several times which has clearly irritated him somewhat. To the point that when I said we needed to call at a town to get some money out, he snapped back that we needed to call into town for me to get ‘a bloody hearing aid’. I didn’t quite catch what he said the first time but after asking him to repeat it, (I think three times in all), I realised that he was just being unkind and was probably a wee bit tense.

The highlight of the day was driving the Transfagarasan Highway, made famous by Top Gear in the days when it was worth watching. This climbs through a series of hairpin bends to nearly 7000 ft high and is a real experience. Bluebell 2 managed it no problem though she has developed an intermittent rattle that may need to be investigated at some stage, possibly sooner rather than later. And then, as we came down from the mountain, the event that I know all you ladies out there have been waiting for, the picture of Andy P in the buff at the same spot as the one his son took on the Mongol rally some six years ago, with the sweetener that a friend offered to donate £100 if Andy did it. As Andy stripped off the skies darkened over Transylvania as the sun disappeared from view but yes ladies, we have the evidence.

Cheers, Andy

James Parker

This is what you have got to look forward to James!!