Ignoring the old wives tale about swimming after eating we woke up early had some porridge, and jumped in the pool. Funnily enough no one else was pool ready by 8 so we had the cold pool to ourselves. After our quick dip we got back on the road towards Sibiu. We didn't really stop to admire Sibiu because we needed to rack up some mileage, and we were taking a scenic route to Bucharest.

 

When BBC's Top Gear filmed an episode in Romania they declared the Transfăgărășan highway the world’s best driving road. Of course we had to go check it out for ourselves. Following some pretty sketchy directions from a paragraph in our guide book we took a turn off from the main road that looked promising as it headed directly towards the biggest mountain. Shortly after turning onto the road we made a U-turn as we decided having petrol would probably be a good idea. As we headed back along the road we passed a rally car trundling along the other way. With a full tank of what we hoped was petrol we quickly caught up the other team, mainly because they were sat on the side of the road. After stopping to say hi, luckily they weren't broken down so there was no need to test our bodging skills, we hit the road together. Well for a second before we over took them. As we climbed up the mountain via hairpin turn after hairpin turn we began to reach the clouds. Glimpses of the drop to the side of the road past the trees were made more comforting by not being able to see the bottom. Undeterred we reached the section on which Top Gear filmed from the wrong way - they must have closed for the road because they didn't have the traffic and cyclists to deal with. What goes up must come down, so after the pinnacle we were treated to equally nice roads on the other side. As the traffic had reduced I took my opportunity to enjoy the road. It seems the brakes did not enjoy my enjoyment; when we pulled over to swap drivers the brakes were smoking. Since we needed our brakes to slow down, we sat by the roadside to let them cool off. I was relegated to the passenger seat as Chris drove slowly down the rest of the mountain - stopping only to investigate a huge hydro-electric dam.

 

Back on the main roads we passed through Bucharest and carried on until we hit the Black Sea at Constanta. As I have a friend who lives there, we drove in to the city to have a look around and took a minor detour down to the docks by accident. As night fell we made our way to the Bulgarian border, and have ended up camping at an unfinished resort in Jupiter (the small town in Romania, not the gas giant)

 

 

Day 6 - Transfargalbargle Highway

 

Start: A lovely christian summercamp in a tiny Romanian village

 

Finish: Jupiter