Day 25 - Barazca to Cetate 120 miles.

We started the day on the kind of road they use in car adverts - hugging cream/gold cliffs with mountains in the background as we moved along the Danube. Drowsy, we hardly noticed how lovely it was until a good dog chase woke us up a bit. Unfortunately, we realised after a couple of miles that this wonderful road was only half built. It would degenerate into a pot-holed dirt track for a couple of miles every couple of miles. After 33 miles, we slightly desperately begged a pension owner for a cup of coffee. We ate all our turkish delight emergengy sugar ration and buzzed into Orsova totally wired. I came off my bicycle going over tram lines on a busy A road into Turno Severin and got off very lightly with grazes, bruises and a broken mudguard.

At lunch we met a French couple who were cycling towards the Black Sea. Fed up with cycling in Romania, they had decided to get the train. At that point we were almost tempted. The mad driving, poor roads, stray dogs, heat and insects have done us in a bit. Dad keeps quoting John Cooper Clarke's Health Fanatic, starting to think we may come home addicted to 'enjoying ourselves the hard way'.

We left Turno Severin after lunch expecting to do ten miles and find a bed. When we got to the town where we thought we could stay, we were told that there was nothing till Caliphat - another 60 km down the road. We psyched ourselves up for all-night riding, thinking that, by the time we got to Caliphat, everything would be long shut. Cycling into the evening darkness was brilliant. We were on the first good road we had come across in Romania. Whole villages were out on the streets. We stopped to drink cofffee in local bars and were treated like minor celebrities. We watched a man win an epic imaginary kickboxing match against the T.V. Everyone sat at the front of their houses and waved and cheered us on. Boys were racing us out of town on their bikes (they invaribly won). Shepherds on the midnight shift stopped us to chat. All in all we got a much more favourable impeseeion of Romania by night than by day.

About 25 km from Caliphat we spotted a hotel. It felt like an oasis in the desert. 120 miles in a day is quite enough and the joys of midnight riding would probably have worn thin after having to sleep in some Causescu bunker.

Kirsty