Club Motorhome Bloggers

Travelling to the ‘far’ north, Marmures County rural land of tradition and (more!) churches.  The variety of Church Architecture goes on and on.  There are Greek Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Uniate, non- conformists and …., who’s churches have been influenced by everything from Gothic to Byzantine influences and everything in between.  A few more examples

News No 5 

The Danube Delta is a very special place.  We hired a boat and guide to take us out on the Delta; we opted for a 2 ½ hr trip which took us just a little way into it.  This is such a remote and peaceful place; we have never seen the like.  And of course, it is a haven for wildlife - especially birdlife.  We were lucky to choose to go late in the afternoon, as by then most of the other boats were returning, so when we got out into the open areas we were alone.  Our boatman was kind enough to shut down the outboard motor a few times so we could experience the quiet – and it was absolutely quiet save for the birdsong and the frogs sitting on the lilypads. 

Dracula’s Castle – so called; the castle at Bran with a tenuous connection to Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes.

As castles go it’s actually a rather cosy palace which you could imagine living in quite comfortably – providing you could keep it warm in the cold winters!

It’s a week now since I last updated, and a lot has happened.  We arrived in Timisoara after a quick pass through the border.  Timisoara was the scene of the events which led up to the overthrow of Causcescuae in 1989.    A pleasant surprise was that we were charged only 7 euro when we expected to pay 52!  The rate for >3.5 tonnes was clearly shown as 52, but presumably as we are not a commercial vehicle we were charged as a car – a good welcome to Romania. 

The next good thing was considerable surprise at how good the road was – something which has continued, but not without exception!  We talk about letting the potholes do the job of traffic calming – we have seen this a couple of times, once in a serious way.  The road up to the town was excellent – yes truly excellent – and the same when we left town.  But the town itself was truly terrible and required a slalom course to avoid the many potholes and not inconsiderable number of craters!  Apparently the EU has funded the main roads but the town itself is the responsibility of local government.  Secondary roads, seem to be funded by national govern and aren’t bad certainly no worse than equivalent roads at home.

 Timisoara reminded us of Ghent in Belgium

 because that’s how Ghent was when we visited some years ago

News No 2 

We spent 4 nights/3days in Prague.  It is, as those that know know, and as we had been told, a beautiful city.  All very walkable, and we did walk it – about 9 miles each day (measured, not guessed). 

These are some of the sights [apologies to those who have seen it for themselves] 

Wenceslas Square

One week into our travels and today we have arrived in the Czech Republic.  We stopped in Belgium (just!) the first night, then on to Antwerp, where we spent a full day visiting the city.  We have been round the bypass – a worthy rival to the M25 as a car park - many times, so it was good to stop and see more.  We had obviously never looked at the maps properly before, as we didn’t appreciate just what an important port it is and always has been.  We approached it along the coast this time and it was strange to see large ships across a flat landscape with no port or coastal infrastructure to obscure the view or set the scene; unfortunately we were too slow with the camera to get a picture, but it will stay in our memories nonetheless.

w

  This place - ‘Deutches Eck’ [German Corner, we wonder how they thought the name up??!!] should be well known to river cruisers; it is the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine.

 We visited a church which was interesting enough [we’ve been spoilt – it takes quite some church/cathedral to impress us now as we’ve seen a few!], but it did have an excellent example of something we saw a lot of while we were in Germany

News No 7

So …. we have now been here on site for a week – the longest we have ever stayed in one place in our seven years of motoroming. And what do we think of 'rallying' so far? Well, a bit like the curate's egg – good in parts!

It is interesting that it was only last night when we first had a conversation with anyone about where they, and we had been in our motorhomes. Of course a lot of the people here are caravanners … our view has always been that caravanners like to go somewhere, pitch up and stay put. Here some have found their ultimate expression of good caravanning, where the typical rallyer stays 3 months, with a good many staying longer – anything up to six months; and they will have rallied in the winter in Spain anything from 4 to as many as 15 times before – often at this same campsite every year. And there are a good few motorhomers who follow this pattern too, it seems.