Saturday February 21, 2015, 89 km (56 miles) – Total so far: 3,574 km (2,221 miles)
Day 48: Vulcănești to Luncavița – 89.4km
Today was the day I would finally leave Moldova for a new country, Romania. Moldova had been an amazing country, one of the most enjoyable so far but it had been unexpectedly tough taking a lot more out of me than I originally thought it would, so in a way I was glad to finally be setting foot in a new country. But first things first, I had to ride the last 50 kilometres between me and the border.
Moldova of course threw out another wild card in the morning by picking a very unexpected surface for the climb out of town. Instead of continuing with tarmac they decided to lay down cobblestone for the first half of the climb. The Moldovan road planners really were just trying to mess with cyclist’s heads by the looks of it! After a nasty climb along this surface I made it out of the valley which Vulcanesti lies in and onto a quieter road which would take me west to the Romanian border.
This quieter road followed the usual Moldovan pattern of climbing straight up ridiculous hills at an unnecessarily steep angle. And of course there was a strong wind in my face for most of this. Moldova really didn’t want to let me go without a fight.
I continued battling the winds as the road turned south and brought me all the way to the southwestern corner of the country where the Romanian border post lies. As I arrived into this last village there were two roads I could take. One led up a hill into the village and the second followed the river along some flat land beneath the village. Looking at my map I could get to the border by taking the flat route so I followed this for 2 to 3 kilometres smiling to myself that I had avoided the last hill of Moldova. Unfortunately for me the road led me right underneath the bridge which marked the border crossing but there was no way up to it from where I was. So I had no option but to backtrack all the way back to the original point and then climb the last hill into the village. Moldova had got the last laugh over me.
When I did reach the correct border crossing point I flew through in no time at all. The Romanian border guard was a cyclist as well and was delighted to see me. He waved me through straight away and I was soon onto a perfectly smooth tarmac road which would lead me all the way to the town of Galați where I needed to get a ferry in order to cross the Danube so I could continue my journey southwards. Along this road I met two road cyclists, the first I had seen in a very long time, since Germany as far as I remember. There was a strong wind against me here but Romania had kindly sent out a freight train through the border just after me which kept me blocked from the wind as I cycled alongside it. That was very considerate of Romania!
Unsurprisingly the dogs were pretty aggressive all the way into Galați. It seems I had made the right move by going south through Moldova, for the most part their dogs seemed to be a bit more relaxed. Most people going through Eastern Europe bring either pepper spray or a device which emits a high pitch frequency that scares off the dogs. I however decided to chance my arm (very much literally!) by leaving home without these. Instead when dogs attacked I would shout “Back!” at them, this seemed to work surprisingly well in most cases. Maybe it was my harsh Irish accent that they didn’t like, I’m not sure, but either way it put a few of them off lunging at me so it seemed like a good enough method of dealing with them.
After a few chases from lone dogs (the packs of wild dogs were nowhere to be seen yet but I’m sure Romania would have plenty of them in store for me!) I made it to Galați where I followed a bike path along the coast all the way to the car ferry across the Danube. At this point so close to the river’s delta, the river is quite wide so a bridge was never built. This meant I got to relax in the sunshine as I made the 10 minute journey across the river by boat.
The scenery on the far side was all very nice, made up of wide flat plains with a view of the Danube on my left. The only thing that ruined it was the crazy headwind/crosswind. Despite it being against me when I was going west this morning it was somehow against me going east in the evening. I just wasn’t going to question it anymore.
I battled on against the winds as the sun was beginning to set and kept an eye out for a wild camping spot.
As the sun was setting I couldn’t see anywhere that looked like a good wild camping spot. There were constant villages along the road and in between there were just wide plains with no cover. So, when I was leaving one village as it was getting dark I stopped when a farmer beckoned me at the side of the road. He spoke only Romanian but he got the point across that it was getting dark and that he wanted to invite me to stay with him for the night. I hadn’t been invited in by a local person on this trip so far so I decided to take him up on the offer. So I followed him over to his house where I left my bicycle in a side shed. This is where things got a little strange…
As we went into his house (which was made up of only one room which was a kitchen/bedroom) he kept raising his voice. It was obvious I couldn’t understand him but he kept shouting louder to get his point across. In addition to this he kept poking me everytime he shouted. This continued for a few minutes as I tried to make sense of what he was on about. I was starting to feel a bit uneasy at this stage. But that was nothing compared to when he ventured to the corner of the room and picked up a white plastic bucket and took the lid off it. Inside was a strange white broth with a strange looking piece of chicken in the middle of it. He kept pointing at it and pointing at me and shouting even more in Romanian! I thought maybe he was offering it to me to eat it but then he started shaking my coat as if he wanted me to take it off. And then he started pointing to his groin! Whatever the hell he wanted me to do with the chicken I didn’t want any part in it! So, I excused myself as quickly as I could.
As I left the room he followed me out into the shed. He started poking me more, shaking my coat even more,pointed back to the room where the bucket still lay with the lid off and then started making a motion as if he was rubbing his groin! A couple of friends who I’ve relayed this story to have come up with some very eloquently described interpretations of what the hell he wanted to do with the chicken but I won’t relay them here! I was already on my way out when he started doing these motions so these only made me speed up the process. Before he opened the gate to let me out of the yard he made the international symbol for money and continued shouting. He could feck off if he thought I was giving him some money for this enlightening experience! I shouted at him to open the gate which he did and I got the hell out of there in the dark and set off down the road with no idea where the hell I was going to spend the night.
It was a fairly crap experience, I had to make sure to evaluate people a bit better before accepting any invitations. I had stayed with a couple of local people in my earlier cycling trips in North Africa and the Middle East and thought I had built up a fairly good judge of character. In my desperation to find somewhere to sleep when there were no wild camp options available I had made a lapse in this judgement. I just had to make sure to be a bit more careful in future.
Anyway, back to the present and I was cycling along a dark country road in Romania trying to find a place to camp when there were nothing but wide open plains on either side… In the end I found a small hillock which just about hid me from the road. I ended up having to make a 10 minute journey along a muddy track to get there. The mud clogging my wheels meant I had to carry my 45kg bike most of the way. It was a nasty end to the day. When I finally got to the hillock there wasn’t any flat land to camp on so I had to pitch my tent at an angle on the slope. The strong wind which had been blowing all day continued all night. So with the angle I was sleeping at and the strong winds it was very hard to get to sleep. This cycle touring business was really proving to be a character building experience!
Irregular Adventures 