The Long Road Home

Now I’m in the westernmost bit of the Czech republic at the border with Germany.

I’m in Frantiskovy Lazne which is a v genteel spa resort all yellow Habsburg buildings and promenades and a bandstand. People are having all sorts of treatments with sulphur water and peat (apparently), and lots of things I’ve never heard of.

It’s gone really cold. I’m wearing both my shirts under my jacket, and long-finger gloves and new overshoes. Makes everything more difficult, I’m much more clumsy, and my eyes water in the wind and mess up my glasses. Just little things.

Last night I was in a village in the middle of nowhere, stars and moon and thick hoar frost on the fields. I stayed at a b and b with radiators lovely toasty warm. Was thinking of camping out in frost on the Sichuan Tibetan plateau, don’t know how I did it, I’ve gone soft since then.

I’ve also become FAMOUS (here, momentarily). Thanks to Toufik at Reuters Prague, two Czech TV channels did interviews and filming. This included rather dangerous-looking bits where I was riding along whilst the cameraman was crouching in the open boot of Toufik’s car whilst he drove. I’ve never seen them do it quite like that in the tour de france.

Since then, people wave, shout, toot their horns, clap, talk with me. Amazing really. A petrol station gave me a huge sack of energy drinks in cans which I had to apologise and mostly leave behind as they would have pretty much doubled the weiight of my kit. Some people asked me where my support car was. Men in overalls at a factory cheered. A lorry driver stopped to take photos. I was amazed I got onto Czech Tv because they’ve got such huge real sport stories of their own.

People have really been really welcoming even before the tv actaully. A bike shop in Trebic went mad when they realised I’d come to their shop from china, took photos, replaced brake blocks etc for nothing and gave me a (huge) pair of socks. They pumped the tyres to 90psi with a track pump. Feels great riding on these good roads with decent tyre pressure.

And the roads in the eastern Czech republic were just gorgeous, swinging gently up rolling hills, bending this way and that. I had a few days of warm autumn sun when everything was lit in beautiful colour, virginia creeper bright red in willow trees, yellow oak leaves and yellow sycamore leaves, manor houses and churches, spiders webs drifting across and sticking on my stuff. Blue hills, sun, and complicated shadows of bare tree branches over the roads. For miles I had the sun in my eyes squinting at the lines of roadside apple trees, sun reflecting silver off fallen apples and white dog daisies and chamomile daisies in the verge.

There were pretty towns with lovely squares where the buildings are painted with shepherds and cupids and people in togas. Then I had the sort of foggy cold days on which you look out in the morning, and really DON’T want to get on a bike on the road. Would be nice to stay in, get a bus, sit warm somewhere, have coffee and biscuits. Best not to think about it. Just go. When the sun comes through, you get glorious silver light and the grass is bright bright green like paddy fields and the woodlands look just magical.

Now I’ve just got to get across germany and holland and I’m home. I’m eating too many pancakes. That’s about all the news I’ve got.

Some photos from Sue’s interview with Nova TV in the town of Kamenice and Czech TV in Prague.

Thank you to Toufik for sending them to us.

view more images from this album

A big thank you to the Czech Reuters team and Toufik Dallal for arranging the coverage!

Seems Sue is becoming a bit of a celebrity. With her 3rd TV interview completed she’s only a few weeks from home

Thank you to all at Reuters Hungary for making arranging the interview.

This is from Francesco, one of the team at the M’Lop Tapang street children project in Cambodia, with news about the sports playground being built with the money you’ve been giving:

"In M’Lop Tapang (MT) street children’s refuge courtyard, children now discuss daily on who’s going to play the opening game, and what sport (basketball, volleyball, soccer) will be the first one to be played.

"The total area of the playground is about 600 square meters. We will divide it so that there is going to be a small playground for young children (50m2), a small deposit room and a good shower room (40m2).

"The sport facilities will occupy around 500 m2. The area will be multi functional: it will be a 18 meters wide and 25 meters long. This means that it can be divided into 2 regular size (18m/9m) volleyball courts, or into a basketball court and also a soccer court (5 on five).

"The first work to do is to pave (concrete) the access (a 10 meters long alley) and the whole area. At the same time the kids will paint the internal walls and the access to the playground in bright yellow, M’Lop Tapang’s color. The walls (over 100 meters in total length) will be a permanent board for kids to draw and will be always happy and bright. We want the kids to be in charge of most of the work.

"Since the rainy season is ending, we will not build the roof cover immediately, so that the playground will become available sooner.

"Our idea is truly that of creating a community playground that can be used by kids from 4 to 18. Mothers working at the market will be able to bring their children to play in a safe and happy environment. Here our staff will be able to build relations with the children and their families from an early age, the best strategy to prevent children from working in the streets at a later age.

"The sport facilities will be accessible throughout the day, both on a drop in base and on more structured training activities. Particular attention will be given to girls, who too often have no access to any sport facility nor are allowed to "play".

"Children working in the streets will be able to drop in at the playground for a basketball or volleyball game. At the same time they’ll be able to take a shower and our staff will provide life skills training and learn how these kids can be best helped by other activities at M’Lop Tapang, such as the clinic, remedial school, or drop-in centre for drug users etc.

"Kids have been involved in the decision to create a multipurpose playground and will be the centre of the development of the centre. They will paint it, advertise it, manage it through our team of street volunteers (ex street children working as peer educators).

"Our outreach team expects more than 100 children will use the facilities every day, while tournaments will be developed during the weekend.

"The street volunteers are excited by the fact that they will be able to reach a greater number of their peers and build strong relations. In the words of Tren (17), a street volunteer with a background of drug use and life in the streets, sport is what helped him to quit drugs and learn to live in the community, and this playground will be his tool to help many other kids like him. Watta (16), who until 3 years ago was living on the beach and now is the top student in his class, is keen in teaching volleyball and soccer to younger children as that is "the best way for them to learn to accept rules". Danin, a 13 year old girl who attends the centre daily and lives in a hut a few meters from the playground suggested that we have activities for girls, especially volleyball.  Danin is keen for the centre to stay open until sunset because many girls will be able to play after 5pm, when their mothers go back home and they do not have to look after their siblings.

"Setha, the outreach manager, who will supervise the activities run at the playground, is extremely excited: hundreds of kids he meets daily cannot attend the other MT centre facilities because they need to make money on the streets for their families. The playground in his opinion is the best way to provide happiness and "a break" in their lives. He’s convinced that he and his team will be able to make sure this break from work and dangers in the streets becomes longer and eventually last all day long.

"Finally, as part of an educational campaign on the environment, the outreach team is planning a small clean-up/recycling initiative linked to the playground: the idea is that kids will bring some plastic (from the slums, their homes, etc) as a token to use the facilities.  The plastic will then be picked up by the public garbage company and properly disposed rather than abandoned in the streets.

"We are approaching a few sports people in the hope that they will take part in the opening day, and without a doubt some will accept to witness a special day for the kids of Sihanoukville."

That’s the letter from Francesco. You can find out more about M’Lop Tapang, and the street children and the centre at  www.mloptapang.org

A huge thankyou to everyone who’s making all this possible, especially the top corporate sponsors Deutsche Bank, Prudential, Crosby Capital, ADM Capital, and also Virgin Atlantic, Kodak and Beeline Bicycles.

AND if you have been enjoying this project, please also think of BEN HAINES from Reuters who is a VOLUNTEER, and who set up and run this website in his spare time from his bedroom or somewhere, uploading files etc thru the night, and making podcasts etc possible. He is the top behind-the-scenes person without whom this project would not work.

If you have ideas on what more we could do to help at M’Lop Tapang or elsewhere, pls just drop a line.

Today I rode through a small slice of Slovakia into the Czech Republic. Before that I spent a few days crossing Hungary.

Everything today was soft and green and yellow and brown. It was easy. The roads are SMOOTH. All the roads from china even through to Romania and Bulgaria had continual bumps and lumps and the tarmac would be squashed up in ridges from heat or broken off or rutted. And then heaps of gravel, or whole sections just earth and gravel etc. You get jolted and pitched and bumped all day long. Now on these European roads I can just ride smoothly along. It’s gorgeous. You can look around. Easy peasy.

You can refelct on things. I was riding between lines of towering yellow shivering poplars that looked just like the ones far away in the Uighur oases of north west china. I saw the Morava river a flash of blue water just like the river near Borjomi in southern Georgia. A train went by rusty red engine and line of container wagons slowly overtaking me, like the huge trains did sometimes on the steppes in Kazakhstan. When I think of it all, I can hardly even believe myslef how far I’ve come.

Hungary’s Great Plain east of Budapest was actually quite tough. The wind was against me so I battled for two days across the open land, betwwen huge expanses of wild yellow grasses tossing in the wind and marshy green tussocks. At the end my hands are cramping with squashd nerves and it’s monotonous and I just want to GET OFF THE BIKE. But I saw wild ducks splashing out of reeds, white egrets standing alone, lapwings crying and flapping up from still water. Occasionally there are old wayside inns, white with huge roofs and arcades of low arches, geraniums. The wind was just sweeping over the open land. Around Hortobagy, the few houses there cling together, the wind scouring over the village. There were ww2 tanks left in the villages as memorials of the huge battles fought across the Plain.

Hungarian towns seem terribly well behaved sober and clean. People walk little dogs on those long retractable leads. People have their toddlers in HAMAX CHILD SEATS on the backs of their bikes. So safe and proper. There are bicylce paths with people standing nicely at the kerb when the little red bicycle is showing. Children are being taken to violin lessons. Students are carrying badminton racquets. There are TOURIST INFORMATION CENTRES with people in green shirts to help you. There are CAMP SITES. The petrol stations have astonishingly clean toilets and shops with coffee machines and CDs. There was a quiet demonsration going on in the middle of Debrecen, people politely listening to speeches in front of the reform church.

In the villages there are spanking nice houses all well painted with sharp square corners and rows of flowers. Ladies are buying flowers and pedalling home on their bikes. There are shops with trays of pansies for sale. I haven’t seen any donkeys for ages. It’s all so affluent and comfortable compared to anywhere else I’ve seen. It’s dramatically different from Bulgaria and Romania.

The huge pale brown fields have huge tractors, you see lines of dust far away as the tractors turn. The earth is fine and dry. I sat in fields to brew tea and watched the tractors go to and fro.

I arrived in Budapest in glorious late afternoon sun. I thrashed through massive suburbs. Traffic was snarled up for miles. Finally in the middle, the Danube looked fantastic. The Parliament building also looked fantastic all spires and gothic pinnacles. In the old city, you heard pianos from open windows, and peple practising trills on trumpets. Lovely lovely Europe. Tourists were listening to guides and pushing prams on cobbles noisily, the wheels going all the wrong ways.

West of Budapest, I saw numerous pairs of well-turned-out mostly middle-aged german and swiss people on cycling tours with nice clean bikes. So many!! Up till now, if I’ve seen another foreigner on the road, it’s a BIG EVENT, as you only meet one about every two months or so, so you absolutely STOP and talk frantically for 20 minutes in sheer delight at the company. I was all readyto stop and chat, but there are so many of these Euro ones that of course people don’t stop to chat, they just bowl on by. Some did stop. Each pair had a little ring-bound guide with maps, and notes saying there’d be no shops of this section for 10km so remember to carry food etc. I just boggled at it all, to be honest. In my head were those Kazakh steppes over 40 degrees, Kyrgyz mountains with hail coming down and the ice-white Pamirs under black clouds that I was too scared to even look at, and China’s remote wildernesses where I made so many mistakes and floods in Azerbaijan and lonely hills of Turkey etc.

When you’re there, you just battle on with getting through each bit, and it seems normal, but this week amongst the green and in the soft kind sunshine of europe, I stood there by the road with my little bike, talking to people, and even I could hardly believe what I’ve managed to get through. I felt I wasn’t explaining anything properly at all. Riding alone thru those places suddenly all seemed so far and so different from riding these gentle lanes. I didn’t know how to explain what it was like.

I stopped for a day in Bratislava. Sweet squares, towers of the city walls, the little cathedral. Cafes. Well dressed people (not me). Most exciting was (a) seeing my parents for a day and (b) a WASHING MACHINE.

Today I crossed the border into the Czech Republic on a minor road south of Breclav. Ther were two chatty policemen, one czech, one slovak, standing in the road listening to a music radio station. No stamps, no fuss. No huge queue pressing on foot for hours to squeeze through a stupid narrow turnstile (kyrgyzstan-kazakhstan); no long series of barriers, and trucks piled with scrap metal (china kyrgyzstan). No soldiers and border police at questioning me at 2am (georgia-turkey). No men with mustaches singing oh susanna (georgia-azerbaijan). Quite tame really.

I’m aiming for Prague now.

Yesterday I rode into Budapest in Hungary. Today I’m really tired and havng a day off the bike. In the next couple of days, I’ll write about what’s now happening in CAMBODIA with the money you’ve given for that project, AND also announce the winner of the Virgin Atlantic competition… Meanwhile today here’s a short update about the project in Pakistan.

The media have been reporting quite a lot this week about the South Asian earthquake, because it’s now one year since it killed more than 73,000 people in north pakistan. During the past year, NGOs such as UNICEF, and the Red Cross Red Crescent have been helping people rebuild homes and schools etc.

But the NGOs also say there’s still lots of rebuilding to be done. And they say people’s mental state can be poor, with obvious signs amongst children especially of post-traumatic stress (eg nightmares, bed wetting, unexplained sudden crying, manic behaviour changes). Thousands of those who died were children, who were killed when their schools collapsed on top of them.

Parents and community members tell field workers that they would like to see activities in addition to education which could bring normality back to the surviving children’s lives.

In the affected areas, children play in the streets, mainly cricket, and girls and women do not normally participate. Sports and games are almost never implemented in schools, there are=A0no after-school sports or recreation programmes, and no sports/play facilities exist.

In this context, we are raising money to enable NGO Right to Play (RTP) to set up simple sports programmes to help the earthquake-affected children have some fun, stay safe and healthy, and regain confidence.

RTP has already run similar programmes in Pakistan, for children at Afghan refugee camps, with great success reducing problems such as truancy and drug abuse. The RTP field workers have left the Afghan camps now, as planned, but sports activities, including girls’ cricket and badminton teams, are now still running as a result of their work.

To run similar initiatives now with pakistan’s earthquake survivors, RTP needs just under 300,000 USD. We are trying to raise a chunk of this, and RTP has meanwhile been hunting other sources to raise the rest.

We’ve raised over 25,000 USD thanks to Deutsche Bank, Prudential, Crosby Capital and other corporate donors, and lots of individual contributors.

The very good news is that RTP has now received 280,000 USD from a group of Swiss donors for this Pakistan programme. This means that the RTP project, which aims to reach 5,000-10,000 children, can get started late Oct early November.

So we look forward to see how the implementation progresses… Thanks to the RTP staff, especially Julie, for updates, including photos, which I hope we can put up on this site (thanks Ben - again).

As I mentioned above, there’s also news from the Cambodia project working with street children. I’ll write up about that later (thanks a lot Lisa at ADM for your update from Sihanoukville. ) AND, with help from Angelina Wong at Virgin Atlantic Hong Kong, also let you know who won the free flights competition, which lots of people entered, especially from Deutsche Bank and Reuters.

Goodnight from Budapest! Now I’m going to plan my route up from Hungary into Slovakia, and then sleep.

I’m now in the town of Oradea, in western Romania, close to the Hungarian border. I’ve been riding through Transylvania for the last few days.

It’s quite easy - hills, but nothing like turkey, never mind NW china etc. These are wooded gentle hills, mild hairpins from time to time, nothing drastic. There are villages dotted everywhere with church spires and autumn sun and the shadows of trees and smell of woodsmoke. I’m doing long days, over 120km, just rolling and rolling from one valley to the next.

Now there are foggy mornings, chilly, then mostly blue sky and sun later. Loads of insects and bugs are out, sometimes I’m going through nasty clouds of flying ants getting in my ears and everywhere, grass full of furry caterpillars, and very thick spiders webs which stick across you when you go into the verge.

Places are hungarian, german, romanian. You see all different styles of houses including (a) small old pink and yellow cottages with arches into farmyards, (b) wooden cabins with wide eaves where people pile their stuff and sit out (c) squat square bungalows mostly dark green, with roller shutters. Etc.

There are farmyards with wells that have a huge tall post, and then the bucket on the end of a beam. Chickens running (surprisingly fast), dogs chasing pigs, barking, other pigs just flopped at the roadside.

People are ploughing fields with tractors, collecting sweetcorn by hand, grubbing for potatoes, cutting grass with scythes, loading hay or marrows onto horse-drawn wooden carts. There are loads of horses and carts clip clopping along, all registered with wood number boards on the back. Men in green hats with cord hatbands (look sort of Austrian to me) say bun giorno (or something). There are bent old women in black, standing alone, clutching a tree, or leaning on sticks.

The verges by village houses are covered wth roses, michaelmas daisies, yellow chrysanthemums, and there are rows of marigolds and mysembrianthemum (?not sure spelling) down by the wall, hanging baskets with petunias, pots of geraniums.

Along the fields there is purple clover, dandelions, pale blue cranesbill (a new plant), and a thing with spikes of yellow flowers like snapdrogons. Hillsides of thistles and teasel, rose hips and blue sloes, and grassy fields dotted with purple autumn crocus (very nice).

Sometimes I take the minor roads cross country, especially if it’s a more direct route. Mostly it’s been ok, but I got lost on the hills east of of Cluj-Napoca, where the road became one of those awful rubble tracks, uphill, confusing junctions etc. After ages scrabbling uphill, I stood at a sunny windy road junction, white tracks leading here and there across hillsides of green and yellow stripes, a wayside cross. No idea which way I should go. In a car you’d just think how annoying, and bash on till you got somewhere, but on a bike you really don’t want to go up extra hills etc. Very frustrating. I eventually got to a place on the map, and sorted it out from there.

I’d not thought about him for a while, but TIMURLANE even came here. How extraordinary is that. His Mongols raided in 1241, and apparently the German towns here started out because Germans were invited to fill up land timurlane laid waste. I went through Sigisoara, one of the Saxon German towns, which has huge clock tower, Lutheran churches with the hymn boards in old gothic writing, and a lovely graveyard all ivy and horsechestnuts and tombs of german people, identified by job - tradesman, railway official, mayor. Scruffy schoolboys were shouting to each other in german, organising football games.

There are also people in most surprising costumes - men in startlingly big black wide-brimmed hats like Zorro, and women and girls in enormous pleated long skirts. I think these are Hungarians, but not sure.

I am a bit scared of some of the people. Barefoot kids and wild looking people roaming about, especially at the edges of towns. I haven’t seen such poor wild children since I left the tibetan bits of china. And lots of dogs. After that knife-throwing incident, I stopped in another village and was buying some bread quite normally, but when I tried to get out of the shop, the door was blocked wth people. I heard shouting and barking and saw there was a horrendous dog fight going on outside, a black big muscly dog was biting the neck of a white fluffy one and lots of poeple gathered round. A man was ramming a wooden hand cart at the dogs, but bits broke off his cart and the big dog still was going at the little one. Finally poeple threw water and it got sorted out but then the men started fighting, and it was all awful. I got quite worried about stopping in little places.

BUT I have to stop, and of course most people are perfeclty normal and nice. In one Hungarian village I was chatting in a huge half-bare shop, and they forced me to take a whole bag of bananas, chocolate, salt crackers and drinks without paying. I’m still eating their stuff.

The towns are just full of very proper Culture. They were doing Aida at cluj napoca, Ploeisti has a huge list of art and dance classes you could enroll for, there were organ recitals at Sigisoara, chamber music by Dvorak, Rimsky-Korsakov in Targu Mures, and plays by Ibsen, Tolstoy, Tennessee Williams. That’s just in October.

Now I’ve pretty much finished Transylvania, and Romania. I’ve now reached flat flat land in its far east. You see the lorries driving towards Hungary’s Great Plain silhoutted against the evening sun, far ahead. That’s the way I’m going too, aiming to cross the Great Plain and get to Budapest.

Sometimes these days I feel suddenly really lonely. You look bakc at the road you’ve just ridden and it’s empty, and you sit sometimes for a moment finishing a cup of tea by a field and it’s lonely. Don’t know why I feel it more here than in places before. It’s ok, you just have to turn back round look forwards hum a tune think of people smile at someone - and it’s ok. In fact, I should be fine, I’ve had quite a lot of poeple to talk to, after I was on Romanian TV news. Fame! Actually I wasn’t sure if they’d broadcast any of the film which they did on a dull rainy day in Brasov when I was really cold and wet. But they did, and in the days after it was on, people even asked me for my autograph etc in the street. One big lady clapped her hands, knew my name, told me all about myself, and gave me kisses on both cheeks. Bit of a surprise. Nice of her really.

Well it rained pretty much all of bulgaria. I kind of got used to it, wet feet, hurried cold stops standing up for a hot drink at petrol stations, wet roads.

At Veliko Tarnovo it did stop whilst I sat out in the old streets with some ENGLISH people (first ones) who were visitng the property a friend had jusr bought. People seem to be snapping up houses etc al over the place. Veliko Tarnovo is beautiful, cobbled streets, a mediaeval citadel, church bells. But the water spouts were gushing rainwater onto the streets. I got wet and cold looking for some warm things to wear on my otherwise bare cold legs. It was Bulgarian National Day. A band was sheltering from the rain in a cafe fingering clarinets etc waiting to play for the vice president or somone.. Lots of shops were shut. I was looking for some thick stockings - easy to get in remote chinese villages actually. All I could find in Veliko Tarnovo were some fishnet stockings with patterns. I got two pairs.

Rain evry day. At first didn’t wnt to ride in rain, but no choice really, it’s ok but you can’t help getting soaked to skin, so you don’t stop long anywhere.

I bombed it to the border in one day over low hills with lots of lorries churning up dirty cold spray. The sun came out like a miracle for an hour as I descended to the Danube at Ruse, and I saw the river momentarily a flash of gold on water. There were flyovers and industrial complexes and stray dogs. The sky did amazing effects, light streaming in bars from angry grey clouds, then a sunset pink clouds edged with bronze. It all seemed very dramatic and romantically european, fit for Caspar Friedrich David (is that the right way round?) or some other painter, dark, gothic.

So, across the huge metal Friendship Bridge Danube from Bulgaria into Romania! Grey and brown and wet. But exciting. On the Romanian side people fishing with brown cane rods, man trying control two horses and an alsation at a junction.

I rode to Bucharest (under more rain). Yellow grass on low hills and hill farmers standing by their cars looking at their sheep. The Wallachian plain was just flat wet fields dark brown ploughed earth, to horizon, whole expanses not a single tree or hedge. In the villages, there were low damp green cottages, Little fences round homesteads, chickens, cows inside on beaten earth. I saw ferrets and cats with mice in their mouths.

Some houses with fancy roofs with dormer windows, pointy tops and turrets. There are flyposters in all the villages for ‘personal transport to france and italy’.

I stopped to brew quick tea at roadside milepost. Quiet, distant dogs barking, chilly wind shaking the leaves in a rare sparse avenue of trees, leaves rattling, falling.

In one village I stopped at a barn-like cafe, and some men sitting round a plate of smelly smoked fish invited me to join them picking fish off the bones. They were explaining something loudly to me with big gestures, in Romanian, which of course I didn’t understand. They showed me photos of stag horns. No idea what it was about. And then got out horrendous large daggers in leather scabbards from somewhere, and said something about police and did throat-cutting actions and then they started throwing the daggers at the wall. So much for my quiet quick cup of coffee. They weren’t very good and knives were banging on the floor. Is this a traditional village pastime? Crikey. I got out my minuscule penknife (gift from a sweet Turkish fourteen year old) to try and distract them and make them stop. It worked for a moment, but they threw my knife as well. People were saying ‘no problem’ to me, but I finished my (nasty ‘Ness’) coffee as quickly as possible and thanked them for their company and left. Things like that might be funny if you are two people, but alone and when you really don’t understand, it’s just weird and scary. I leapt on my bike outside and pedalled away.

I plough on, getting soaked and dirty and cold.  The worst is to have wet cold feet all day.  Finally I’m in Bucharest, with tramlines, gorgeous villas with fancy plasterwork, rococo public buildings, statues. Flooded roads, pedestrians (and me) getting drenched by puddles splashed up by cars. I saw a glimpse of Ceacescu’s monstrous palace, but then was battling six lanes of traffic across the huge piatas and up Bulevardul Nicolae Balcescu. A hot shower and dry clothes are just so lovely after a whole day wet and cold.

On sunday there were morning services in the churches all over the city centre, I went to about five, and stood in each with people in headscarves and children and young men alone, packed in, kneeling or standing. The singing was just fantastic. You look up at dark arches and then just shut your eyes and the basses and baritones and tenors are beautiful.

And now I’ve ridden up through Ploiesti and Sinaia to Brasov. The road goes up gentle bends through fields then woodland. Things start like the English arts and crafts movement. There are cottages some with wooden tiled roofs, little porches with columns and fancy arches, curved and humble and endearingly home-made, geraniums in pots. Yellow chrysanthemuns, purple cosmea daisies, dog daisies, roses. Horses and wooden carts,  carrying stones and gravel, horses twitch and kick the ground whilst their drivers stop at cottages and chat or deliver things. Tiny village shops with everything on shelves behind the counter, six different sorts of sausages. War memorials, roadside crosses with little roofs or in special cabins, water wells like jack and jill nursery pictures, with wheels and roofs and buckets to pull up your pail of water. People call out "salve" or "saluti". Fancy talking almost in Latin, couldn’t believe it.

As you climb towards Sinaia, things get gothic, and grander and grander, houses like big swiss chalets with terribly steep pointy gables, fancier and fancier wood panelling and carving, onion domes and towers. At Sinaia is the grandest of all, the Romanian royal summer palace, built between 1880 something and 1914 and which has gloomy marquetry pictures of German castles, stained glass windows with men in floppy berets with feathers, a dark wood library full of Corneille, Goethe, letters of european aristocrats. Creaking, polished, massive, dark, stuffy.

Then I left Sinaia and rode speedily up over the rest of this chunk of the wooded Carpathian mountains, then desending to Brasov. Brasov was apparently a place where German Saxons had a trading colony, it’s GORGEOUS, lovely townhouses round a square with a clock tower. Nice even in the rain this evening. I did an interview with Romanian tv (hello Antena1 and thanks Anca at Reuters Romania) and had nice tochitura cornmeal and sausage etc - had to try one of the six types - at an inn on the square. By the way thanks also Justyna in the bureau for the map and friendly tea!

It’s still cold and rainy. I threw away the fishnets. Not much use. In Bucharest I went to a big old department store where the mannequin models had shocks of sticking out plastic hair and nice middle aged ladies gossiped at counters. I asked for old lady’s stockings and got a thick woolly pair just like in a Chinese village. Exactly what I wanted.