Had a great evening in Brasov despite the constant heavy rain. Walked into town, saw the Black Church and hit a trendy restaurant bar. Wine went down well and we got back to the hotel very wet.
This morning - more bloody rain and our gear is still wet from before! Tanked-up the bikes and went over to Bran to see the Dracula castle. It's pretty cool but it was constantly chucking it down. Dino was getting fed-up and started going on about turning back home.
Anyway, carried on to Fagaras where I hoped to do the Transfagarason highway. We were told that it's closed but carried on anyway. It was still chucking it down - couldn't see where we were going, the road surface was shocking and there were rock-slides everywhere and lots of debris and pot-holes. In fact I witnesses one whilst taking a pee - the whole road was blocked behind us!
We persisted through the fog, cold and rain until we got to a sign and road block indicating that the pass was closed. We ignored that and road around it. 30 minutes later I was shivering, snow started appearing next to the road and eventually blocking most of the road.... We carried on to the very top where we met some Lithuanian bikers who had just made it up from the other side. They assured me that we'd make it through but that we'd need to remove our panniers at strategic points.
We rode through the narrow gap of snow (more than head height on either side of us) and made it to a metal 'door' which blocked the entrance to the tunnel. There was a narrow gap cut in metal door which we squeezed through after removing our panniers. The tunnel was freezing and pitch-black. With panniers re-fitted we went through the tunnel only to find a smaller metal gap cut in the other metal shutter that was closing off the tunnel. This time the hole was very narrow and raised of the ground. With some bits of wood and rocks forming a ramp on either side - Dino's bike made it through. My one was trickier as I have stupidly wide handlebars but we eventually squeezed it through. We then had a choice of basically riding down a rocky meltwater river to re-join the road or having a go trying to ride on/through the snow. The Lithuanians must have done the river as there were no tyre tracks in the snow. Dino gave it no thought and blasted through the snow with no issues - I did the same. Immediately the weather improved. The fog vanished, the rain stopped and the temperature rose.
We had some fun blasting down the rest of the Transfagarason with the usual interruptions (having to stop to let heards of goats pass, etc).
Our next stop was the Virdau dam. The sat-nav took us on a really muddy logging trail. It was fun, but after a couple of km it was obvious that we'd struggle to do 30km of it without crashing so we returned to the 'tarmac' and made it to the dam (which is very spectacular).
Dino is now running on fumes but we've come across a place with excellent little wooden huts. 50lei for the night (£9) so we're not roughing it tonight! They even have a good wine selection.
Tomorrow we go down towards Bucharest after seeing the rest of the sites on the way down. Lets hope the rain stays away as it was getting a bit depressing.
Ass-pain: 2/10
Beers: 30 + 2 rums + 2 cherry grappas + 3 bottles of local white wine + 2 rose
Mechanical problems: 1
Theft count: 0
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