A Difficult Morning
At 09.45 we were ready to go, but Poki wasn’t. Her battery was flat. The fan had been going all night. A quick application of the battery charger soon righted matters and we were on our way. The campsite owner, a lovely lady with excellent English, advised us not to go into Baia Mare because of the roadworks. She advised us to turn left once we got to the main road. The sat-nav seemed happy with this. Our destination was Suceava. After a few kilometres we noticed some places we had passed last night. We stopped to check the sat-nav. Sure enough we were going back to Kosice! Dennis then remembered he had looked up the mileage from Kosice for his blog last night and had forgotten to reset the sat-nav for Suceava.
A quick turn around and off we went again, The journey was very slow. Beautiful and interesting through tiny streets and villages but we were’nt getting anywhere fast. Soon we came across road works. 10 kilometres of them with four sets of traffic lights, each with a long wait in the hot sun. At one point I thought we were going in an odd direction, but I have to try and trust the sat-nav. However, when we came to the Ukrainian border crossing point it was obvious something was not right. A young border policeman said we could not proceed into Ukraine as Poki was too heavy for the tiny bridge. We advised we didn’t want to go into Ukraine. He suggested we recalibrate our sat-nav and helped us reverse and turn around.
At this point I decided to check if all main roads were toll roads in Romania. Was this why the sat-nav was taking us on such small, indirect roads. I should have checked before. Yes, all main roads are tolled, but not with a system of toll booths. You need a “Vignette”. This you can obtain at petrol stations or online. I quickly paid for one for 10 days online, about £14. We then managed to find route 18 and at last, by 1300, were on the right, direct route.
Festival
During the morning we had passed several lovely old wooden churches, also some other very large churches, presumably mostly Catholic but some Russian Orthodox as well. In the small villages we passed local villagers dressed in traditional costume attending church. Apparently it is the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul today.
Storks
There are storks nests on the electricity poles all through the towns and villages. The babies are in different stages of development. Some are perched on the edge of their nest stretching their wings, preparing for the day when they leave the nest. They will have a very long journey to fly to Africa for the winter.
Main Road 18
The 18 is hardly a major road. In the U.K. it would probably only be classed as a B road. It is also extremely winding and we climb up and down through mountains. Winter ski resorts and parked snow ploughs indicate the somewhat cooler winter temperatures.
As we continued the weather started to look rather ominous. Dark clouds were gathering. I checked the weather for our area and it advised zero percent chance of rain. However, as we continued we passed through an area where it had rained. As we continued it looked even more ominous.
Some interesting sights during the day
Wood carving is very prevalent here. Beautiful gateways. Even old, tumbledown barns have lovely carved doors.
We also saw a number of trucks full of bee hives parked at various locations through the mountains. Often close by were stalls selling jars of honey.
As so little progress was made this morning, we are just over 100 kilometres still from Suceava. We stopped to camp shortly before 5 pm and soon after putting up the tent and starting to cook dinner, the threatening weather arrived and we had a brief heavy shower with some thunder. It has cooled things down beautifully and hopefully it now be a fine day tomorrow. It is a lovely red sunset, so hopefully that bodes well.
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