AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE EVENTS IN THIS SECTION ALL TOOK PLACE IN 1986
THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW
THE BULK OF THE TEXT IS AS I WROTE IT THEN – SLIGHT ADJUSTMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE AID OF CLARITY NOW.

Monday, July 28th, 1986

Distance travelled 691 kilometres

I woke up early, not quite sure where I was and, even when I stood up, I struggled to remember. I pumped myself a water and, as I stretched my legs, I wandered to the road. The black Dacia was sitting under a tree about two hundred yards away. I waved.

I set off, with the Dacia in my mirror and finally came to a place called Tulcea where signs with birds on directed me towards the delta of the Danube. I drove for about ten miles (16 km) before the road stopped at the water’s edge of what I now know to be, somewhat ironically, the “St George’s “ branch, one of many channels that the Danube branches into as it finally completes its journey from a faraway Swiss glacier to the Black Sea.

The sea was out there somewhere, I supposed, but the area was very low lying and I could not see it. What I could see, stretching all the way to the horizon, was a sea of another kind, one of waving green and greyish-blue reeds.

The volume of bird life was totally astonishing. Tens of thousands of white egrets, herons and storks lined the fringes of the flow and countless ducks bobbed in the channel. I could even see a few of what appeared to be some kind of Harrier swooping low over the waving reeds in a criss-cross pattern, waiting for some unwary victim. They were too far away for me to identify and I did not hold out much hope that the occupants of the Black Dacia, now parked on the far side of the car-park, would lend me their binoculars …..

Having already lost over two days of my trip just crossing borders, I was, unfortunately, unable to spend the time I would have liked to have at the mouth of the Danube. I walked to the water’s edge, took off my boots and stood in the shallows for a few moments. Then I stepped out, waited for my feet to dry, put on my boots and reluctantly remounted the BMW and set off west. Apart from wetting their feet, my shadows did just the same.

On the far northern side of the Delta was (what was then) Russia, now the Ukraine and Moldova (not Moldavia, you fans of the TV soap “Dynasty”) . For this reason, the level of security was stifling. I lost count of the times that I had to pull over, hand over my Passport and then wait patiently until it was returned. My shadows played no part in this, they just waited a few hundred yards back up the road until I was allowed to move on. Nobody asked them for their papers.

Finally, as I drew away from skirting the border area and began the drive down towards Bucharest, the level of harassment dropped back to merely annoying.

At one point, I came to the Danube – and it had to be crossed by ferry. As I rounded the final corner, the ferryman was just walking across the ramp with a chain. He motioned me on board with his head, hooked the chain and we departed within seconds. We were at least fifty metres from the bank when the car containing my shadows appeared on the ramp. The ferry just kept chugging …. Bye bye, boys !

The rest of the passengers, seemingly predominantly farming types, crowded around, looking at the bike and, because of the similarity of Romanian to French, I was able to answer (or at least half-answer) their queries. I think the 220 KPH showing on the speedometer dial simply amazed them – they kept pointing to it and giving me smiling “thumbs-up” gestures. I did not have the heart to tell them that, on their roads and with my damaged suspension, a mere twenty kilometres per hour felt, in places, suicidal.

We came to the far bank, I gave the ferryman ten Leu, which seemed to amaze him and I was waved off first.

But, this was Romania in the 1980s. As I left the ramp two more black Dacias swept across to block it behind me and a third took up the shadow position on my tail. Particularly later, when stories of the Romanian regime’s excesses became more widely known, I have always hoped that I did not, unwittingly, get those lovely people into trouble.

The ferry had deposited me on the outskirts of the town of Braila and as I turned south towards the capital, Bucharest, the road crossed what was evidently a very fertile plain. The road was bordered with gigantic “collective farms” and the vast fields were dotted with workers. Oddly, there were also signs of Private Enterprise with peaches being sold beside the road. One single Lev bought me half a dozen. I sat on the saddle, beside the road, in the sunshine and munched them all gleefully. I later found out that the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl had begun whilst I was there and, at the Danube Delta, I was only about five hundred kilometres (300 miles) away. Those peaches were so delicious I would probably have still gobbled them down even if I had known !

While I sat there, I heard a slowly approaching and vaguely familiar “Blat – blat – blat” noise. A few moments later an ancient, single-cylinder BSA motorcycle trundled majestically past. It was in immaculate condition, with all the chrome shining brilliantly in the sunshine. The rider was an old guy in a long, leather mac with a regulation BSA Owner’s Club, pudding-basin helmet. He gave my bike the once over as he chugged past and raised one leather-gauntleted hand in greeting – but he did not stop and I did not pass him when I continued onward.

I came to Bucharest, but it was shabby and depressing. I felt no urge to linger. There were huge socialist-style posters everywhere displaying the rather odd combination of missiles and doves. Perhaps they were trying to connect their (then) President, Mr Ceausescu with some sort of peace motif. I hoped it kept working.

I left Bucharest on what was (then) the only piece of motorway in the entire country. It was not, in reality, any different in quality to all of the rest of the roads I had seen, but it did have a line of scruffy bushes separating the carriageways. The road being a motorway did not stop me getting yet another pull for speeding, however. I could not understand it, as cars were whooshing past me all the time but, on this occasion, my “punishment” was limited to a severe lecture that involved a lot of tapping on the 30 marker on the speedometer and, of course, a comprehensive baggage check.

I wanted to visit Brasov. It is in Transylvania and it is where Vlad Dracul, who we know as Count Dracula – and who bore the cheery epithet “Vlad the Impaler” because of what he did to those who displeased him, was born. When I got to his birthplace, it was a cheerful chateau like building, not some frightening, bat-infested, multi-turreted lair perched on a mountain – and it was closed.

I left Brasov and began the climb into the lower reaches of the Transylvanian mountains. I noticed that, somewhere in Bucharest, I had either lost my shadows or they had finally decided I was not a threat to State security ! I was alone at last. There was not a lot of civilisation and, after awhile, my petrol began to get very low. In 160 kilometres, I only saw one garage and that was closed. Then the BMW engine spluttered and I switched to my first reserve (it had two) and sixty-five kilometres later, with still no garage in sight, I had switch to the second. I was getting seriously nervous now and breathed a huge sigh of relief when, thirty kilometres later, in the gathering darkness, I spotted the illuminated sign for a garage.

We have all heard the jokey phrase “the lights are on, but there is no-one home”, but there is no humour there when it is a garage and you gave only a teacup of petrol in your tank. But so it proved. The lights WERE on, but it was closed. I had no choice, I pushed the bike across the road to a small lay-by to wait for it to open the following morning. I pulled out my poly-bag and spent a miserable night freezing to death and, because I WAS in Transylvania, clutching a clove of garlic to my frozen bosom (joke).