Jones

We said our fond farewells to Raul and Tina, who have been the most welcoming people ever, and given us a real insight into both present day Romania, and its more recent Communist past. Thank you both! We then both headed in our different directions. Our route took us back around the east side of the reservoir and across the dam to the south, so that we could take the more southerly route westwards, through the Bicaz Gorges.

The gorges are very impressive and certainly worth the trip, although finding a parking spot that isn’t crammed with souvenir stalls is probably more difficult than the narrow road itself. Rog did have to drive in the centre of the road a few times to avoid “low ceilings” – rocks that might have been less than 3m above the road.

Eventually we did find space to park in a lay-by, and I got a couple of snaps. Sadly the sun wasn’t coming out to play much, but you can get the impression of how fantastic this place would be in the right weather, and maybe even more out of season.

As we drove to the top of a pass, we saw a massive parking area for a hotel / bob sled experience and parked up. Rather than scaring ourselves silly though, we took Flynn off for a proper walk into the mountains. The scenery was stunning and the sun even peeped out of the clouds occasionally.

I also used my Seek app to spot various flora and fauna. This is a Fly Agaric mushroom…

And this is a brown bear.

I think their AI needs some training on German Wirehaired Pointers and brown bears.

Our original destination was Sighişoara, but driving through the hairpin mountain roads had been a slow business, so we decided to stop sooner, at the thermal resort of Sovata, famous for its helio-thermal* salty lake, Lacul Ursu, or Bear Lake. 

*As Wikipedia actually says, definition needed. Don’t most lakes get warmed by the sun? The more special thing is being geothermal, surely.

To the north of town, we found a great big empty car park that thought it wanted to become a field, so made a pleasant stop-over for 50 lei (a tenner).

It was at this point that I discovered that one of Jones’s outside lockers was flapping open. Back at the campsite, Rog had got his pump out of it to give Raul’s rear tyres a bit of air. He didn’t put the pump back into the locker, but onto our bed to recharge, and the locker never got locked. Basically, the locker became an un-locker. According to R, nothing super expensive has gone missing, but nevertheless the small things will add up.

After a tea, a chill and a shower, we explored Sovata a little. Bear Lake had sadly been hemmed in by restaurants and spa, so we abandoned our circumnavigation and had a drink while people watching.

Dinner was at Ciuperca Mică, and was very good. We shared a tomato and olive oil chopped salad on bread to start, and then Rog had cow’s tongue (small part of) and I had a sour duck, red pepper and sun-dried tomato stew with funnel cake. Raul had bought us a funnel cake the day before, and it wasn’t something I expected to go with stew, but in this case it absolutely did.