As I’m currently imprisoned due to inclement weather, it has
given me time to catch up with my trip to Romania at the beginning of June! Was
it really that long ago? It was all part
of a cunning ploy to avoid the media hype of a Diamond Jubilee celebration and
to see if by visiting the country with more bears than the rest of Europe, we
could rectify or misses in California the previous year.
This was a seven night trip which started by flying into
Cluj and driving the 300
miles through Transylvania ending in
Bucharest from where we flew
home. The trip was split into three chunks, travelling about a 100 miles
between each staging post. The majority of our time was spent with two nights
in
Zarnesti and
two in
Brazov each of
which are just 20 miles apart.
After collecting the hire car at Cluj we set off for
Sighisoara. We aimed to
stop off at the
Turda
Gorge and at
Medias.
Wildlife wise it seemed to get off to a good start with stonechat and bee eater
seen from the car soon after leaving the town.
Attempting to interpret instructions from the guide book, we
got into Turda but found poor signage and the lack of detailed maps meant we couldn’t
find the turning, ending up in Campia Turzii. On reaching a junction we
attempted to loop back to retrace our steps. The road we found ourselves on was
a comparatively new duel carriageway which we discovered had no exits for
almost 60 km until you get back to Cluj!! We were able to see where we wanted
to get to and from a distance the gorge looked very nice.
Deciding now to give the gorge a miss, we tried to locate
the historic town of Medias, one of the oldest in the country. We managed to
get as far as
Tarnaveni
and once again managed to miss a turn and become horrendously lost. This was
much to the amusement of the inhabitants of the town we decided we needed to
turn around in and again found it difficult to relate what was on the map with
what was on the ground. Detailed maps of Romania do not exist the best we could
acquire was a 1:700,000 which are next to useless when trying to find anywhere
off the main road.
Not wanting to waste more time, we tried retracing our steps
back to a road that would, we hoped, lead us to our destination for the next
two nights in Sighisoara. Eventually arriving, we found our accommodation to be
right by the entrance into the historic city. After a well-earned rest from our
long day, we headed into the town for a relaxing meal and quiet drink before
turning in for the night ready for the following days exploration of the town.
 |
| View from hotel room balcony to the Sighisoara clock tower (c Rotton Yarns) |
 |
| View from clock tower to hotel - my balcony canopy is in the centre of the picture and our hire car is the first car on the right in the street below (c Rotton Yarns) |
Our day in Sighisoara was spent slowly following the perimeter
route of the towns old wall, taking lots of photographs en-route of the
historic buildings. There were two notable things about the wildlife in the town;
first there were no swifts but lots of house martins. Given the antiquity of
the town, this seemed very odd. Also, it was odd to see common redstart sharing
the rooftops with their relative, the black redstart. The latter was not a
surprise to see, being quite the norm for any European town, but the common
redstart was certainly a surprise.
The following are a selection of pictures from around Sighisoara.
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
 |
| (c Rotton Yarns)
|
Later in the day, we attempted to follow instruction in the
guide book that would take us to the Brieti
ancient oak wood pasture just two miles from the centre of town. Only ten
years ago, the site was under threat of being destroyed to make way for a
Dracula theme park. It was only after local, national and international
objections were the plans shelved.
After several attempts, we eventually found what seemed to
fit the directions. However, instead of an oak wood, we found ourselves in a
hanging beech wood on the side of the hill with not an oak in sight! Foiled
again. The only consolation was the sighting of a lesser spotted eagle which
I’ve never seen before.
No comments:
Post a Comment