Guns, Wet pants, Mud, Romania and a broken bike

So whats been going on!


It has been quite a while since I last posted so i'm going to have to try and fit the last few weeks into one big ass post. Here goes....


Divin, Slovakia


Rusty finally arrived in Divin a week after I had. The day after he arrived it absoloutly pissed it down with rain... so we jumped in his 4x4 and drove up into the mountains, I dont have the photographs at the moment but I will say one thing... he did nearly flip the car.


I told Rusty over the phone that I will wait for him under two conditions. 1. I get fed gulas and 2. we fire of loads of guns as it will be good training for when I get to Syria.


We drove over to pick up his mate Robo who is a lisenced gun and knife maker, meaning he can legally build a gun from scratch and sell it. He is the bollocks and his knifes that he makes are awesome. Anyway, he grabbed a load of guns and Rusty took his AK 47. We set of through the hills to a remote shooting range.


Most of the way I have been taking videos and am having trouble uploading so I will just be putting up a couple of photo's and the video's when I get home

I ended up shooting Rusty's AK, a winchester (which I loved), German Pistols, Czech pistols, Colt's, Cowboy revolver's, a WWII Russian infantry rifle (the one from enemy at the gate) and a ton of other's I cant remember, all I know is that I shot a ton of bullets all day and had a 'blast'!


These are the boys

After the ranges we went to see the owner. An old chap called Barney... now this guy... is a bad ass

Barney is a multiple Senior champion of Western Shooting. Meaning revolvers and cowboy guns etc. He travels the world for competition's and apparantly wins all of them. He has more medals and trophies in his house than we all shot bullets that day. There were plaques, medals, cabinets full of trophies from Italy, Germany, Slovakia just everywhere. He is quick. He is also a super nice dude. Didn't speak a word of english but saw me eying up these strange small axe's. They are traditional Slovakian shepherd sticks so they have a long thin oak staff with a small axe on the top and are used for protection. Barney had about 3 or four on his wall (along with about 30 Knives, swords and countless guns and believe it or not... cannon's)... So Barney pull's one down and hand's it to me... Rusty translates the word present. We only met a 15 minutes ago! I told him I would take it to Syria for protection....

In case your wondering about the groovy trousers, they're work trousers I was given to help chop down trees.


I had a great time in the tiny little village of Divin and met some great people. Ludka the next door neighbour insisted on cooking for me; breakfast and dinner. I would go for a chat with the women working in the village 'supermarket' although they didnt speak any English and we would all stand around one of the till's and one of them would pull of packet's of crisps from the shelves and we'd all be standing there eating them. When a customer would walk in they would get hidden and the giggling would commence. It was all kisses on the cheek when I was leaving and in a weird way I was sad to leave Divin. But of course I will be returning. 


Rusty is a very good friend of mine and I have spent a very long time with him in the past and we have worked together through some absolutely mental, strenuous, arduous months 6 days a week and he is a good man. He has decided to ride his BMW with his 9 year old daughter Tamara with me to Cyprus where another good mate of our's is getting married. Because of that I am more than happy to ride with him. We set of after two weeks in Divin to Hungry.


Onward!


Hungary


We have both been through Hungary before and so decided not to take our time. We went through the Hungarian planes and into Romania. 
We camped one night on an overgrown football pitch by the side of the road which was amusing.


Romania


I have been to a fair few countries. Over 23 in total, I never thought that I would fall in love with Romania... but I have.
It is beautiful and rugged at the same time. The people can be very kind, generous and giving. But Romania is very poor and some parts you can feel the poverty is hitting hard. 


I had two points that I wanted to visit in Romania. 
1. Transfargarasan
2. A lady called Monica


The first night of camping in Romania the sun set quicker than we anticipated so we found a top country club and managed to wangle it with the owner so that we could sleep in his customer's garage.... His facial expression when being confronted by a weird looking English guy on a dirty bike saying: "Do you mind if I put my tent up one of your garages mate?" was quite funny... "so you dont want to sleep in of the country club hotel rooms?" nahhhhh thats for ponses (but I didn't say that bit)

Me and Rusty both enjoy what we call wild camping. Translated to rough camping, by river's, lake's, forest's you know... out of the way where we can make fire and be men etc. So before we did the Transfargarasan road we went and did some serious off roading in the middle of no where and found a beautiful little river.

The water was perfectly crystal clear right to the bottom and parts of it were up to my shoulder's. It was such a hot day and we were drenched with sweat... as soon as we arrived we just dived in. Gear on and everything.
We set up camp by the river and made a fire. The fire is an amazing thing... as the South African's call it a Bushman's TV. It truly is, I can watch one for the entire night.

We set up camp just around the corner. In the background you can see the Transfargarasan mountain road, some of you may know it from Top Gear as apparently they drove the rode with some supercars.
Time for some wiki facts:


The Transfăgărășan is the most dramatic and second-highest paved road in Romania. the 90 km of twists and turns run north to south across the tallest sections of the SouthernCarpathians, between the highest peak in the country, Moldoveanu, and the second highest, Negoiu. 


The road climbs to 2,034 metres altitude. The most spectacular route is from the North. It is a winding road, dotted with steep hairpin turns, long S-curves, and sharp descents. The Transfăgărășan is both an attraction and a challenge for hikers, cyclists, drivers and motorcycle enthusiasts alike. Due to the topography, the average speed is around 40 km/h. The road also provides access to Bâlea Lake and Bâlea Waterfall.




The trans is only open for usually 2 months a year due to snow so there was no way I was going to miss that bad boy.


Needless to say... it was breathtaking

In the background of the below picture you can see one of Vlad the Impaler's castle's.
It was built as a punishment for the villagers for not being obedient enough to him. His men gathered all the strong men and children to lug the massive stones up the mountain. They were ordered to work until their clothes had fallen apart. All of the elderly were impaled (meaning a large spiked stick was pushed through their backside and came out of their neck whilst alive) and scattered around the village as warning. Hence his name.

After the mountain road we headed to Monica's moms house in a village called Lunguletu. Monica is a friend of Alissa's and had said she would love to have us all over.

Little did we know that Lunguletu was a type of farming village and the road we took to get there was absoloutly caked in dust. There were tractors moving at snails pace along it. The road was terrible and there were deep ditches peppered all over the road. Rusty decided to go first and I literally had to stop and wait ten minutes for him to go further ahead as the dust his rear wheel kicked up meant that my visibility was literally 4 footsteps ahead. I LOVED it, standing up on the footpegs, visor down, jacket zipped up, I teared along the bike performing well, jumping in and out of ditches. When we reached the village, I asked some truck dudes for direction's to Monica's... a kilometre up the road and their directions didn't work out.... hmmm, well let's just wait and the road will take care of us! 2 minutes later a girl on a moped turns up... doesn't speak English but motions us to follow her, 3 minutes later were outside Monica's house.

Monica and her family were unbelievably kind to us... we had our beds made, dinner, lunch, breakfast cooked and home made cherry alcohol. The back of Monica's garden leads to a gorgeous little fast flowing river where we spent about 3 hours on a rope swing jumping in with all the local kids. 

The next day Barney rings, and says he's in Bucarest, so we go and pick him up, have a mooch round the city and all ride back to stay at Monica's for another night. However.... this time.... it was pissing it down with rain..... 

We arrived at the dusty road which was by now mud. Barns says: "you up for it?" Now when Barns asks you a question like that.... you can either say no... and never live it down.... or you can pull your visor down, shout ONWARD, stand up on the pegs and ride into the unknown.....

At first the muddy track had stones and was easy to ride over... then it turned into a thick, gooey, unbelievably slippery, hellish mud. Now bear in mind none of us have off road tires fitted to our bikes. You could barely stand without slipping. I was leading and so was the first to go down...

Picked up the bike and carried on... but the mud just got ridiculous, when Barns and Rusty reached the  mud they soon both went down too. All in all, we must have all come off about 5 times each. With Tamara standing on the side as it was too dangerous for her on the back, Rusty decided to turn back and go on the normal road to Lunguletu with all of the other normal people. As one turned back we all did as it would be silly to split up incase someone came off and broke something. When we got back we had to clean the bikes incase the mud dried. It was pouring it down and Monica's mom wouldn't go inside, instead she stayed out helping and we all had a laugh!

After washing up, having a wonderful dinner we were ready to head off the next day... or so we thought.....

We got about an hour away and then Rusty's bike broke down. It wasn't sparking and one of the sensor's had gone... we had to get it to a BMW garage. Luckily he broke down outside a nice cheap Motel. My first motel of the trip! BMW came to pick up his bike and we found out that its going to take until Tuesday for the part to arrive.We have all moved our gear to a campsite closer to the garage and now were sticking it out there until then. Once the bike's back on the road were off to Bulgaria, Turkey and Cyprus for the wedding. After that we say our bye's and i'm going on to Syria and Iran (hopefully).

I have a ton of great video's, crazy riding through river's and on the mountain but will have to upload the lot back in the UK.

Much love

A few other pictures below:

In Romania,

So im in Romania, this is the first chance I've had to use the net as I have been wild camping and no access to electricity. Cant use this comp for long but will post back probably in Bulgaria.... If i can find a computer

The art of taking it easy

I stroll down to the little supermarket to buy a bottle of water and three bannanas. These are my rations for later as I decide to go for an off road ride today up into the hills. I mount my bike and set off through the hills. It isnt long before two dogs decide they want to start chasing me. I get worried as they get very close and I dont want their heads to get caught in my back wheel as it would damage it. I turn back and check my map. There are little villages dotted up in the other hill's so I decided to go and ride through them. After an hour of riding I noticed a swelling of clouds heading in a North West direction which is the direction of Divin. So I raced back. Within twenty minutes of parking my bike up in the back garden the rain came. It was so excited it just could not wait until tonight.

Helena has a large, covered back porch which overlooks her garden. I sat there in my favourite wicker chair. I decided to turn my hand back to whittling wood which I quite enjoy as I brought a couple of whittling knives with me. Hours passed by until I realised how terrible I was at it and put it to one side. I sit back and relax. I have never been one to get bored easily, and even more so I hate to say the phrase "im bored".  I have always found it annoying being out with a group of people and when the atmosphere softens someone say's their bored. Can't they just be? Relax the mind, the body will follow and just enjoy the nothingness. Maybe those that are bored quickly have a short attention span or are not able to entertain themselves with their own thoughts... perhaps this is because they have nothing interesting to think about!

I sit for an hour or so in my wicker chair watching the rain. Im content. I think of that quote I read long ago

         Your true traveller find's boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty. His excessive freedom. He accept's his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically but almost with pleasure

Aldous Huxley

I take satisfaction in this and at the same time I have at the back of my mind a feeling that something will come along. Just relax and wait for it. 

Sure enough ten minutes later, the next door neighbour Luda pop's her head over the fence. Luda live's next door to Helena and she has been very kindly cooking me breakfast and feeding me randomly for the last three morning's. Luda is standing there in the pouring rain with two umbrella's. She points at me then at herself. She motions with her finger's a walking movement and then say's the word "cafe". My point exactly!

I slip on my flip flops, roll up my jeans and off we plod down the hill to the village in the pouring rain.

I must be able to speak maybe four or five words of Slovakia ńot including swear words and can not speak any english at all. However we have fun and laugh alot walking to the village. We learn eachother's age's, name's, that she has a son Michael who has worked in London for the last five years and his age, that she is a nurse and works in a hospital in neighbouring Lucenec, how I know Jan, Helena and my relationship with Rusty and so on. Despite language barrier's, a lot can be said with hand expressions, nodding and drawing pictures with your fingers!

It turn's out that her husband Stephan and her actually own the cafe that she has brought me to. Im quickly seated and made a large coffee and given cake. They wont let me pay for anything either. I finish my coffee and cake and spend some time discussing football with Stephan which of course I know nothing about and again he doesn't speak English so he can't tell. After me and Luda walk back over to the supermarket so she can do a little shopping. I carry it all back to her house for her where she invites me in and we go through her photo albums. She gives me a massive chunk of watermelon as a parting gift.

A few hour's later, the rain has stopped, the sun is shinning, im still sitting in my wicker chair, but this time im spitting watermelon seed's into the grass. I am content. The art of taking it easy...

That evening I decide to take a stroll back to the village, I go to my pizza restaurant and after to the supermarket to get supplies plus I want to see the supermarket women as I have been spending a bit of time in there. The women working in there remind me of school dinner ladies and that's how I refer to them. Everytime I go in I ask them random and simple questions, sometime's even question's that I know the answer to, just to make conversation. After 3 day's it has paid off. I am now one of them, I am now a dinner lady. I walk in and it's all "Allo's!!!" as it is late and there are no customer's we all gather round a till and chat, I have no idea what about as we dont understand eachother at all but again the hands and laughter does all of the talking. One of the dinner ladies grabs a packet of crisps from the shelf and we crack them open and pass them around... when a customer comes in, the secret crisps get hidden and we all go quiet like school kids... until they leave and then all of a sudden the place erupts in laughter. Actually I think I'll go see how their doing....

Hello Divin

So I have arrived in Divin, a small village in between Detva and Lucenec. Im here waiting for my Slovak friend Rusty to arrive from England with his bike. I have set up camp in his mothers back garden. She is also in England so my only company is Jan, his uncle... who along with nearly everybody in this village speaks not a single word of english.

At first, the people of Divin are not all smiles and even the women in the little supermarket are upset with me when I want to pay for a bottle of water with a 10 euro note. Well I have four days here so its my mission to make them smile by the end!

My camp in Helenas back garden, you can see my shower bag hung up to the right!

After collapsing the first night Jan decides to take me for a walk on the second day. We end up walking to the ruins of the Divin castle and enjoying the view.

  

I do quite like spending time here, In Helenas back garden. However, it is a bit weird being woken up at 7 in the morning to the sound of Abba and their Dancing Queen being blasted over the village loud speaker system. They have them dotted all over the village even up the hill where Jan lives so nobody misses out!

The weather in Divin is very strange. It is boiling hot during the day but as night draws in the clouds sweep over the village and the heavy rain, thunder and lightning all get together for a huge party over my tent. Divin, as is most of Slovakia, is covered and surrounded by hills and mountains so it can be difficult to see the rain clouds coming.

The village is super cheap, it is so cheap it makes me laugh when I pay for things. My favourite pizza restaurant here serves a large pizza, ham, cheese and herbs, large enough to fill me up and it comes to a grand total of TWO POUNDS and twenty pence. Crazy stuff.

Slovakia

As I enter Slovakia, the rain follows me. I look in my mirror and see it coming up fast behind me. Within twenty minutes it overtakes me and brings it friends thunder and lightning. I ride past Bratislava and head in a North Eastern direction. Using the Horizons Unlimited Website I found a lady called Julie who had moved to Slovakia from England and had emailed her a week or so ago about camping on her land. So I had a direction to head and potentially to get out of this storm. After an hour or so of riding the storm clears and my clothes finally dry. Obviously bear in mind that I only have jeans and my jacket is not what one would call waterproof. I ring Julie and she tells me how to get to her village Podluzany, but also says its raining and thundery there. To ride back into the storm or not? Why not! 

Finding the village

By the time I got there it had luckily cleared up. In a little village called Podluzany, somewhere in Slovakia I met the nicest most hospitable family I have ever met whilst travelling. The Talbots. Richard, Julie and their two children Jinx and Garett. Richard owns an motorcycle Enduro track in his back garden, a motorbike workshop and used to take people on off road tours up the mountains...Theres a horse, cant remember how many dogs and a couple of cats....

So the family take me in straight away and I get a meal, hot shower and a bed in the house to stay the night. The next day Richard performs a service on my bike and they invite me to stay another night. I really enjoy spending the time with the family and listening to their funny stories.

To be honest, and im sure they will agree, they are truly a crazy bunch but I do love them and they have really added to my trip. I do believe its not the places you go or the sites you see that you remember when travelling but the people you meet and friends you make. 

I left the next day, we bid our farewells. The sun was shining, I had my lid up and a big smile on my face. Not for long.... whack, straight into my eye goes a huge bug. Im used to flies and bugs in the eye but this one absoloutly stung like a *****. I pulled striaght over as it was painful, I squinted into the mirror and saw it wriggling about, I pulled it out and rinsed my eye with water. It took ten minutes before I could open it again. I rode on and checked it after another 5 minutes and wouldnt you know it it had stung my eye and made it swell up, I looked like bloody popeye. On I rode. I pulled over and had to release some oil from my bike. Sods law I drop the bolt and oil falls to the floor. I arrive back at the Talbots an hour later, a little red in the face. Thankfully the piss isnt taken too much, Richard fixes me up, tightens my exhaust and sets me back off on my way! 

Slovakia is stunning to ride through, even when I take the motorway the views are fantastic.

I decide that I want to see more of Slovakia and make my destination towards the Tatras mountains. I head closer but decide to ride past them to the castle Spissky Prodhradie... apparantly the largest in Europe! Again the roads are beautiful.

I make camp that night not too far from the castle.The next day I plan my route for Divin. A small village West of Lucenec as that is where a friend of mine is from. Once there my plan is to set up camp for a few days and wait for him to get here. That night camping near the castle, I meet Berty, a Dutch dude, cycling through Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia and I meet him again randomly out on the route through the mountains.

En route to Divin, I decide to only take mountain roads and veer of the main road whenever possible. It took the entire day to get to Divin but it was so worth it. The roads wound and bend all over the place. There were continuous inclines and declines. I was constantly turning and leaning the bike right over. It was biker heaven.
I did feel as though me and and my bike connected together a lot more yesterday. For the first time it felt a lot more real. Sounds gay but we were as one. 

Bamberg, Austria and into Slovakia

 I decided to stay another night with Clause in Bamberg. We met up with his uni friend and had a miniture tour of the place, drank coffee... you know, the usual. The night ended with more uni friends at Clause's, beers and films etc until 4am... good times!

So I made my way to the Austrian border the next morning, but as I left Clause's quite late I looked for a place to camp a few kilometres before the border. I had a few hundred miles of hard riding to the border so the day was purely filled with riding.

I ended up pulling off the motorway at a place called Deggendorf, it was 7pm and the sun was rolling behind the hill's. I found a campsite which looked like a nice place, it had a beer garden, lots of people, food being cooked etc. The chap told me it was 7 euro's for the night and without realising it I found myself politely saying "no thank you" and getting back on the bike and for some reason joining the motorway.

Only as I was riding on the autobahn did I realise why I had said no to the campsite... regardless of how appealing and easy it looked, it was not the experience I set out to find. Maybe staying in Clause's apartment had made me soft and it was still early days in my trip. If I started with the campsites now I would take them more often. Start as you mean to go on etc.

I pulled of a few kilometres away into a very remote farming area. I found a nice looking farm house and asked the farm hand if I could stay the night, as he spoke no english he fetched the farmer. The farmer spoke good English and said it was "no problem!". He showed me around, I met the hunter of the farm who showed me his gun which was very exciting! Twenty minutes later the farm hand comes out with beers. We sit there by my tent... me not knowing any German and him not knowing any English. But its funny how with a couple of beers, warm weather and the sun setting we understood each other perfectly. This was the experience I was searching for and the reason as to why I got back on my bike.

That night, I was scared. In England thunder and lightning has never, not once bothered me. Here it was absolutely intense and terrifying. I was counting the lightening at 6 miles away. It wasn't just mere flashes, you could see the bolts being whacked into the farmland all around me, as if Zeus himself was throwing lightening Javelins at me, but had a few too many beers so his shot's were on the piss. It absolutely bucketed it down, the thunder and lightning was continuous and lasted until 6 in the morning. Needless to say I did not sleep.

*Will post a picture of it soon*

By 7am, the rain had stopped, the thunder had passed and the sun came out. I staggered into the farm where I was quickly seated and made a massive late coffee. Followed by bread, Jam's, honey, fresh orange juice, sweets, apples, and 2 packed lunch's, also a selection of Bratwurst sausages. The kindness of strangers.

As I made my way to Austria, I pulled into a parking bay on the motorway for some lunch and to double check my map. There were a few people around but not many. As a biker with a ton of gear people do like to look. Which is no problem, they smile and say Allo! But there was one guy standing 15 metres away who I noticed was looking at me for a long time. He was Albino looking, had his arms continuously folded, shorts and a shirt. I fixed my eyes on him as I had a feeling he was after trouble... Suddenly out comes his tongue in the most perverse way. He was rotating it and licking his lips. Obviously being heterosexual this freaked me out. I’m not unaccustomed to homosexual advances and like to think I decline in a friendly way... but this guy was different. I shook my head at him... he continued... I looked away... he continued to stare... I shouted something over to him in a threatening way and he stuck his tongue out, he was not budging. If im honest I didn't know how to react. If he had come over and threatened me with violence I would know what to do... But in this case what the hell!? So I did what any straight man would do. Put my finger up and rode off.

Next stop Austria!

Again I find myself in someone's back garden. Drinking beers with the Austrian music maestro Gerrahd.

Currently in Slovakia, will take better photo's soon, and post when I have more time!

Bratwurst in Frankfurt

So I head into Frankfurt early Friday morning to stay at my friends house for the night in the city centre.

I use the day to catch up with with mail and to look over possible routes. The evening is spent walking around the city with Nina eating pizza, drinking wine and eating ice cream.... so I decide to stay another day!

The next day's spent lounging and eating Bratwurst at a music festival in the park.

Today im in lovely Bamberg drinking traditional 'smoked bear' and eating burgers with my friend Claus. Tomorrow.... Czech Republic I guess