First today a reflection of our 10 days in Romania. For any regular readers you probably know our thoughts. We liked Romania. We liked Romania a lot. The countryside, in the areas we travelled, was stunningly beautiful, the people were friendly and welcoming, it is still very inexpensive and so far remains relatively undiscovered (we didn’t meet a single Brit in Romania). Much of the same could be said of Bulgaria, but what was appealing with Romania, and in our opinion much less so with Bulgaria, was summed up by one little scene yesterday. As we drove through the village of Sapanta, our home for the past two days, several people were out with brooms manually cleaning the streets. In rural areas people are clearly poor, if you are farming with a horse and hand tools you’re never going to be materially wealthy, but they don’t look it. The villages and their houses are overwhelmingly cared for. It’s a country that doesn’t look down at heel, it just looks old fashioned. We are therefore keen spend more time in Romania before looks like everywhere else in Western Europe, which, as a member of the EU, it surely will.
Today has been a day of relaxation to recover from yesterday’s long drive. Once upon a time I would have driven 260 miles on side roads and then done a full day of sightseeing the next. When we were both about 25 years old we once drove from Britain to Florence in two days without using motorways! Oh to be young.
Basil rests after his exertions yesterday
The weather forecast led us to believe that we would spend the day pinned inside Basil but the rain has never materialised. Sarah already discovered yesterday evening that our campsite is set in lovely mountainous forest with some pleasant footpaths. The paths in the area are all colour coded and I got a map from reception. So this morning we put on our walking boots, packed our waterproofs and set off. I’m not a big fan of forest walks. In Britain when you go walking you nearly always have changing vistas, even if the land is often not mountainous, but when you walk in forests the views are very limited and unchanging – trees, trees, trees, trees and more trees.
Anyway it was good to get out in the fresh air. The walk we had envisaged completing was thwarted by long grass. The path had not been walked on sufficiently this season and with Melek’s eye still not completely cured we thought it unwise to make him hike through grass twice or more his height. So instead we stuck to relatively well used forest tracks. We travelled up hill until we reached the high point where we found what appeared to be a look out point. Only a few tens of metres away from the wooden structure we were shocked to find a trough filled with grain and another full of rock salt. These were clearly there to attract deer and we surmised that the look out tower was to house hunters. Not very sporting is it? So in answer to who killed Bambi – no one yet – but if intent is 50% of any crime, Bambi’s not long for this world.
Rock salt and grain in the foreground, snipers nest in the background
Sarah and the dogs pose at the scene of the crime – to be!
The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the Slovakian sunshine, catching up on administrative tasks and reading. Sarah has, of course, been back for a walk in the forest and Mabel is now as filthy as a warthog who’s just finished a mudbath. Tomorrow we plan to explore the local area.