Thursday 4th July 2019
Back in 2012 I had ridden my motorcycle into Romania specifically to ride the Transfăgărășan Road. The road had been featured on the BBC programme Top Gear in late 2009 and they described it as the worlds best road.
Unfortunately my visit had coincided with extreme rain and floods and I only got to ride the north side in very poor visibility.
With the weather much better in the area this time the plan was to tow the van over from Curtea De Arges to Cârțișoara.
The first part of the plan involved leaving Bulgaria to tow the caravan over to Camping Curtea De Arges to stay one night. This would give us an early start to climb the Transfăgărășan on Friday. The Balea tunnel at the top of the pass was scheduled to close from 1.30pm to 4pm due to a bicycle race so we wanted to be on the north side before it closed.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 313 Cumulative: 33,838
The trip today was difficult. Once into Romania the road surface deteriorated to the point that we were slowed to a crawl.
There was an amusing moment at the Romanian border when the guard asked to look in the caravan. He took a cursory look inside then turned to me and asked if there were passengers on board. I replied in the negative and he turned with a grin and said “Are you sure?”
We were held up at one point when we joined the end of a slow moving funeral cortege and were unsure if we should pass. I waited for a long break in opposing traffic and slowly drifted past without incident.
The road surface in the last 30km was quite appalling. Massive potholes that needed to be avoided required a lot of concentration. Some where unavoidable and on arrival at the campsite the crack in the bedroom mirror had grown by about 9 inches.
There was no-one in reception on arrival so we called a number posted on the door and were told to pitch where we wanted. It was relatively quiet but became busier later.
It was a relief to be stopped and settling for a beer.
Friday 5th July 2019
We were packed up and ready to roll by 10 o’clock as planned leaving us three hours to pass through the tunnel. We filled with diesel in Curtea and made reasonable progress delayed only by periods of rough road surface and the need to climb at 20mph and second gear to spare stress on the car.
At one pinch point near the dam we were passing parked traffic and a moron in an Audi refused to give way and we all came to a halt. Signalling to me to reverse out of his way I did the reasonable thing and turned off the engine.
The impasse was broken when a policeman approached said moron and told him to move. Idiot.
The nearer the tunnel you get the roads smooth out and widen and I wished I’d had my motorcycle.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 129 Cumulative: 33,967
Content that the super duper HD dashcam had recorded the last 3 hours climbing, twisting and turning I stopped at the top to take a couple of pictures.
Unfortunately the only non university educated member of the coppersontour team failed to offload the videos before they were overwritten on our trip to Bran on Saturday. Doh!! 🙁
Fortunately, Kim had taken some shots enroute too.
At the first opportunity on the descent we pulled off the road to have a coffee and wait for the Tour of Sibiu bike race to pass.
Once the road reopened we made our way 12km or so to our next stop Camping De Oude Wilg in Cârța where we intend to stay 3 nights.