Europe by Van Day 7

Day 7

I woke at 5.30 so thought I’d get up for a lovely shot of the castle bathed in early morning sun. Instead I could barely see outside for mist. This gradually burned off and the castle gradually emerged. Here is a collage - last night at the top.

It’s another sunny day and Mr C had determined on dashing over the north-eastern corner of Hungary to reach Romania. He decided the best route was the motorway but was taken aback to find he had to pay €28 for the vignette. No English was spoken so a helpful man who was hanging about explained he’d need to show proof of ownership of the vehicle. Once that was sorted the helpful chap asked for a tip of €5 but settled for €3. He was very pleasant about it. Times are hard in Hungary. (I had been about 30 years ago to Budapest and that area with Pat, the friend we caught up with recently in Saltaire. Her then partner had left her and she was needing something different).

After the Tatras mountains of yesterday today has been miles of very flat plain. The crops are mainly wilted sunflowers waiting to be harvested.

After the M3 we left the motorway and drove on the 49, a 2-way road, very patched up through many long villages with queues of lorries.

When we reached the border we went into the non-EU line and sat behind a Moldovan bus for ages before a Polish driver in the EU lane told us to go move into his lane in front of him as we’d be there hours waiting for the serious checks on the Moldovan bus and Ukrainian cars. Again the Hungarian official needed our vehicle documents and took ages going through the passports. He never spoke. (We do have a lot of stamps). Then it was a Romanian official, much cheerier, who asked where we were going. I showed her the destination Kentaur Kamping near Atea on my google map on my phone and she laughed and directed us to the place to get the vignette and the money exchange. Campsites etc need cash not cards in Romania. The border crossing took an hour.

It was only 15 minutes, ending on gravel tracks to reach the camping field. There were no other vans. We were charged 100 Lei for the night, about €20. It is very quiet - we are near the farm houses because that’s the only shade from the 35 degrees, looking over fields of maize. It is cooling thankfully. We are on EEST, now 2 hours ahead of UK.

We drove 226 miles today. Tomorrow will be much less - according to google, which always is overly optimistic, it should be under 2.5 hours to Babou Maramoures. I expect 3 at least. There we’ll explore and chill.