7/7/13 Roasting
Breakfast on a sunny terrace in Calarasi is accompanied by a pretty damn cool hummingbird hawk moth supping from the petunias just a foot or two away. I’ve no idea what it is but dad is old enough to have seen everything at least once and brings me up to speed. (I didn’t get a shot of it, so here’s YouTube to the rescue if you don’t know what I’m on about)
A mile down the road is a vehicle ferry to cross the mighty Danube, just before it starts to break up and rejoin on the last flat run to the sea. In something of a cursory nod to European health and safety legislation, the life rafts are two wooden pallets strapped to the roof of the cabin. I can tell they are the life rafts because someone has gone to the trouble of painting them orange.
On the south side of the river the long and sinuous route 3 takes us towards the sea, initially along a vineyard covered ridge overlooking the Danube. Its metamorphosis into a delta starts in earnest here, with the river repeatedly splitting and rejoining to make a multitude of lush tree filled islands in a slowly, but steadily widening fractal.
We take the opportunity to fuel up in a dusty village and grab a cold can in a little cafe. The woman there has no small coins for dad’s change, so gives him a single piece of chewing gum instead. Close enough.
As we press on through rolling countryside on a surprisingly good surface, route 3 weaves us an excellent three dimensional ribbon of tarmac between the crops on either side. The weather is glorious, and the way empty apart from the sporadic horse drawn cart. Occasional makeshift roadside stalls, hawking a little fruit or moonshine, add splashes of colour along the route. Kids wave enthusiastically as we pass through villages and I wave back, once only narrowly avoiding someone’s goose, devoid of the road sense (or prior trip to the cooking pot) that comes with actual traffic.
We hit the coast at Eforie Nord and after lunch head south to Vama Veche, our planned stopping place on the Black Sea and pretty much the furthest point from home this trip.
If you’ve got time for just one Romanian resort, make it Vama Veche… Under the old communist regime, ‘Vama’ enjoyed a reputation as a haven for artists, hedonists and free thinkers – there’s still something of a counter-culture vibe in the air. Don’t come looking for luxury. There are no five-star resorts here. Instead, rent a bungalow, grab a beer, relax on the beach by day and party in the open air at night. Lonely Planet
Sounded pretty good to us. We check into Elga’s Punk Rock Hotel which is excellent. Tiny but very clean rooms with a bathroom (OK, it’s a shower cubicle with a sink and a loo in, but it does the job), free coffee, and just a few yards from where it’s all going on. The proprietors couldn’t be friendlier or more helpful. We only enquire about clothes washing facilities and Ella (She’s the El part of Elga) has it done and drying in the sun in an hour. At £16 a night for the room I consider moving in permanently. It is scorching here though and I am three quarters boiled, so we head for the sea immediately.
The beach is very hot, as are many of the young ladies hereabouts, several with lights on full beam and the rest with not much to spare their blushes. Assailed by the depressing realisation that I’ve just seen more tits in five minutes than in the previous year, I decide to get in the sea sharpish, in the hope that it’s days of riding hot dusty roads which is what’s making me go blind. The temperature of the water is perfect. Warm enough to not shrivel a gentleman and cool enough to be utterly refreshing. Eyesight restored, we grab a couple of beers in the sun then head back to Elga’s for showers and siesta.
Dinner is tasty crap. I don’t know what crap is when I order it, giggling like a schoolboy after the waitress leaves and wondering what the hell will turn up, but it turns out to be swordfish. Then back to the beach for beer and tequila, where there is music and dancing, around a totem pole outside a beach bar called Stuff. One guy has already been partying pretty hard by the looks of things. He’s crashed out at the foot of the pole with his dog, utterly oblivious to the surrounding bacchanalia. The revellers manage to avoid falling over him until he stirs a few hours later and decides it’s probably time for a drink.
8/7/13 Still roasting, cooler with rain later in the mountains
After a well deserved lie in and breakfast, we thank our hosts and head for Bulgaria. Since it’s only about a mile away, this doesn’t take very long at all. At the border crossing, somehow I, who have left half my bike documents at home, get through with some bare faced lies and earnest looks “Yeah, that’s my insurance mate.” (ferry ticket) – while dad, who actually has all his documents but can’t remember which pocket they are in, is refused entry. In our typical Forrest Gump style, baffled bullshit baffles bureaucracy and we end up both getting waved through just to bloody get rid of us clogging up the well oiled machine that is Bulgarian border control *cough*. They probably figured that actual bad guys wouldn’t be nearly as inept as this.
Really surprisingly quickly, Bulgaria feels noticeably different to Romania. Horse and cart gives way to combine harvester, small sunflower fields to large, and while at first glance the villages look similar, many houses here have PVC windows, of which I don’t recall seeing any north of the border. Despite still being able to see the Black Sea there is a more Mediterranean feel to the place. A petrol pump attendant warns us to be careful in Serbia, in what is the latest episode of locals telling us the next country along is populated by robbing bastards. (Usually only for us to get there a day later and find them delightful and ourselves entirely unstabbed.)
We take to the motorway to get some miles done and at a service station I buy what transpires to be, what can only be described as, a frankfurter and custard slice, which I can assure you is not as good as it might sound. I wish that last guy had laid off the Serbians and warned me about this instead!
The motorway just kind of runs out after a while and the still major road heads once more into the mountains. Unfortunately, as the road gets interesting again, it also gets wet. And sandy. Heavy rain has washed swathes of detritus onto the roads as I discover in a slightly bum clenching moment, halfway round a sweeping right hander with a two metre band of sand and gravel across it. Our view starts to get a bit special though. Tree packed valleys and jagged cliffs comprise the entirety of that which is not the road winding up through them. Low hanging shreds of cloud cling to the sides of ravines, setting a scene reminiscent of the iconic mountain terrain of Japan. I genuinely had no idea that Bulgaria was this mountainous and beautiful, and rain or not, I can’t think of a better way to discover and dispel that ignorance.
Our destination is the Shipka pass. It’s a road I picked as a “maybe on the way” option from a biking roads website. The pass is historically significant: In a series of four battles in 1877 and 1878, the first three Battles of Shipka pass saw as few as 7500 Bulgarian and Russian troops hold off an attacks by as many as 38000 Ottoman troops. With massive Russian reinforcements making the fourth instalment 66000 versus 40000, a crushing defeat was inflicted upon the Ottomans. It’s still kind of a big deal in this part of the world, although they understandably tend to focus on the bit where the odds were wildly against their fellas.
Riding the north side of the pass doesn’t turn out to be a great biking experience for us because of the wet, tree covered roads, but glimpses out through those trees reveal increasingly dramatic views across row upon row of mist silhouetted hills and mountains as we climb. As the road plateaus at its zenith, a lane filters off to the monument to the defenders at the summit. Drawn by the nineteenth century artillery pieces, giant bronze lions and what is described as a truncated pyramid at the top, we take the lane to the car park and clump up the long wide stairs to the monument at the summit. Which, the security guard points out to us, closed five minutes ago. Aw swordfish!
At least the view isn’t shut, even if my rain soaked camera doesn’t fully do it justice:
Back to the bikes and off down the south side of the pass. Oh. My. Word. I’m in love. This side is dry, perfectly surfaced, I’m in the zone and its such a fantastic biking road that it gives me goosebumps. Real, actual goosebumps. I’ve been doing this a while now and that’s never happened before. The road seduces me with its exquisite curves and flawless complexion. It strokes my ego with smooth Goldilocks hairpins that aren’t too easy but aren’t too mean. It responds eagerly to my confident touch and we two are one. Just as I’m ready to pop the question, it runs out on me and a left turn takes us into the small town of Shipka. Aw swordfish.
Lonely Planet recommends Shipka IT Hotel and is bang on the money. In what is otherwise a place consisting of drab and modest but functional homes, the hotel is probably the second most remarkable building: the first most remarkable building here brings a nuke to this knife fight by being heavily gold plated, but more on that later. The hotel is clean, luxurious (for us) and friendly and at £20 for the room and breakfast, yet another bargain. Tosha looks after us wonderfully and with humour while we eat al-fresco in the cooling evening air. Meanwhile Ivan scratches his head and wonders how much his leaking pool will cost him.
Tomorrow; a gold plated building, synchronised falling off and mystery meat.
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