The Lord and Lady at the Bran Castle in Romania
We bought a few plums from the lady if the background but this little guy wanted to come home with us.
Heather in one of the small villages, typical style of houses line the street and women in typical dress, including babuchkas.
The pass after leaving the Bran Castle was lined with rocky topped mountians.
Heather, the voyeur, checks out the yards of the farm houses in the small villages.
Bulgaria says Don't worry "Be Happy" and we don't and we are!
The fog settles in as we went over the pass, we can't see much but the gps(if you can read it) tells the story of a road with many twists and turns.
We had been to both Romania and Bulgaria on a previous trip so we put in some time in the saddles and headed for new terrain in Turkey, but not without making a few pleasant stops along the way.
As soon as we got over the Romanian border we started checking the map for the "green" scenic roads and we were not disappointed, in the road that is. We rode over a great biking road, full of twists and turns but the only thing wrong was the weather closed in on us and the fog and rain didn't allow us to see most of the views at the top. As we desended the mountian and day wore on the weather cleared and we enter a gorge with sides straight up ?? metres and the road was carved out of the walls, stacked turns one on top of the other. At the top a little manmade lake full of stumps was surrounded by hotels and people were renting little row boats to go out on the water, it reminded us how lucky we are in Canada to have the beautiful and natural outdoors that we enjoy so much.
One thing we do not have in Canada, however, are castles and we visited the Bran Castle which was wonderfully restored. The castle sits at the mouth of a pass and was used for centuries by the royalty of Romania to collect taxes from the traders passing from the south into the north of Europe. The castle was also used in the production of silent movies in the 1920's. The setting was magnificant and on the other side of the pass we discovered several gorges to ride, hike and explore. We spent a night in Podul Damboritel after traveling only 30 km from Bran, here we did a great 12 km walk up a gorge in Piatra Craiului National Park, went into a small cave and had a nice lunch in a small village nestled in the mountains. The roads in this area are great for walking and for riding, and some of the best hiking in Europe is here, ranked right up there with the alps.
After getting a little exercise we felt energized and ready to head south again. Bulgaria nice to ride through and as always here in the eastern countries we had to be careful where we were riding, being sure to miss the piles of horse and cow shit on the smaller roads. In Bulgaria and Romania we saw more evidence of the gypsies, riding in overloaded carts containing everything they own. The gypsy way of life is its own culture here whether it is choosen or not and now is harvest time and many gypsies are traveling from farm to farm harvest everything from sunflowers to squash, to hay and sometimes just traveling(kind of sounds like Ken and I, the traveling part that is). We passed throung some mountians on small roads and found them everywhere, they were probably wondering what we were doing back in the hills off the beaten track, sometimes so do we!
Now it is time for Turkey but that is a another time and another story. History in the making you might say...lots of history in Turkey!
