27 April
2025 – Island Life
Miles
driven today = 106
Total Miles
to date = 4,404
This has
got to be one of our quirkier stopovers.
We are basically sharing an island in the middle of a lake with a family
of mad 100 mile a day Slovenian cyclists in a caravan, a swarm of ducklings and
a cacophony of frogs.
Deva, our
home of last night appeared to be very little more than a large commercial
estate overlooked by a castle accessed by a near vertical funicular. We popped in at Lidl and then got outta there,
jumping back on the A1 motorway. But 30
minutes later we were stopped again. I’ve
mentioned before that I am a Glastoholic.
2025 will be my 21st consecutive Glastonbury Festival and I’m
very lucky never to have had to rely on the resales to get tickets for me and
my loved ones. I’m part of a close knit
circle of friends who mainly met through the festival and our strength of
numbers and nobody-gets-left-behind philosophy mean that we are always able to
give ourselves a bit of an advantage. But
we were still a few groups short after the main sale in November, so it was all
hands to the pumps at 9am UK time to get as many more people over the line as
we possibly could.
Once that
was over and done with we continued westward on the motorway following the
broad valley of the meandering Mures River.
As it headed into the hills the A1 came to an abrupt halt. Work is obviously underway to fill in the gap
but for a good few kilometres we were diverted onto the much more sinuous 68A trunk
road where every lay-by was filled with stalls set up by the locals to sell, fresh
fruit, jars of pickles, bottles of wine and other dubious looking alcoholic
beverages. At Margina the traffic backed
up to negotiate an extremely bumpy level crossing and then we were suddenly
back on the smooth, straight motorway again as though it had never gone away.
From
rolling, forested, bear country hills with very little in the way of signs of civilization,
the surroundings gave way once again to flatter arable landscape and, just as
it did when we first entered Romania, the bright yellow of rapeseed became the
predominant feature once again.
As it
approaches Timisoara the A1 swings north towards Arad.
Half way between the two we jumped off and
made our way through Ortisoara and a couple of kilometres the other side of
there we turned right onto an unmade road which after a further mile of gravel
and potholes brought us to a fishing lake.
A narrow causeway past bemused local anglers and across the water saw us
to our island home for the night.
The ducklings
I mentioned (and I counted at least 23) seem to be without any sort parental
supervision.
A few of the larger ones
are at a stage where they feel brave enough to venture out into the big
wide World of the main lake but otherwise they all seem to spend most of their
time huddled together in this pond, on the island, in the lake, with a whole
load of frogs who every now and again start chuckling away among themselves as
though one of them has told a really filthy joke.
We are
effectively guests of a restaurant on the island, the name of which translates
as Moon, Water and Time.
They charge €10
a night for the privilege of staying here and I’m not sure if you are also expected
to eat with them, but we did.
Mainly
because I still had about £50 worth of Romanian Lei to get rid of before we
cross the Hungarian border tomorrow.
So
we treated ourselves.
We tend not
to order starters when we eat out because we end up with too much on our plates.
So imagine our surprise when this appeared compliments
of the house.
That was followed by big
bowls of chicken soup with dumplings, again completely gratis.
Unfortunately
they messed up our mains a bit.
My pork tenderloin
with brie and sundried tomatoes was rather overdone and the truffle mash which
Lisa ordered somehow ended up on my plate.
Plus the grilled veg we ordered as a side didn’t turn up until we had
almost finished.
Nevertheless
we were absolutely stuffed when the waiter appeared with freebie desserts.
I think I made it absolutely clear that if complimentary
cheese and biscuits were likely to turn up then he should save himself the
bother.
It was only when the bill came that
we sussed out why they had been so generous.
We’d been charged the equivalent of £32 for a bottle of unchilled and
unexceptional Moldovian plonk, which had effectively doubled our bill.
But we’ll
forgive them because it’s such a lovey place to spend the night.
And that
brings our time in Romania to a close.
If Bulgaria was whistle stop then this has been little more than a fly
past.
I’ve always wanted to have a good
look at Eastern Europe but with a healthy dollop of reticence and trepidation,
given language barriers and the often unfair reputation of crime, poverty and corruption.
But we’ve absolutely loved what we have seen
and having had a taste I just want to experience a whole lot more.
Comments
Post a Comment