Having spent weeks paring down our belongings, our load consisted of a 750kg, 8ft x 5ft trailer, a full estate car and a bike on the back. This restricted our speeds to 55mph. This was actually quite enjoyable, as we were able to sit at a steady speed, without having to worry about all that hassle of overtaking in a right-hand-drive car.
Day 1 – England to Germany
We drove down to stay with Julie’s parents for a day, then set off to visit my mum and grandma on the Sunday, setting off on our journey in the evening of the Monday. A steady drive down to Folkestone and the Channel Tunnel saw us safely deposited in France shortly after midnight, French time. The crossing was brilliant, really quick and no hassle, but the tunnel was boring. Julie says she would have prefferred the ferry, just to get out and stretch her legs a bit, even if it did take much longer.
We had decided to try and get some miles in before trying to sleep in the car, so we drove through the night on the E40 motorway and got as far as half way across Belgium by 4am, before I decided I’d had enough and needed to sleep. We pulled into a service station on the motorway and managed to grab a couple of hours, very uncomfortable sleep. The seats of the car wouldn’t fold back as we had so much stuff in the car, so we were trying to sleep upright. Not the best!
Setting off again, through Belgium and into Germany, we left the E40 and joined the A3, which took us right across Germany to near the Austrian border. By 7pm we were exhausted, so found a motel by the motorway (Max’s motel) which gave us a comfortable room with a shower (bliss!!). We got a lovely evening meal in a Greek restaurant in the nearby village of Laaben??, which nestled in a tight valley with cliffs soaring above. The meal was entertaining, trying to translate a Greek menu written in German, but our host was good fun and we enjoyed our meal.
After a cracking night’s sleep and a traditional German breakfast of meat, cheese and bread, washed down with lashings of strong coffee, we set off again.
Day 2 – Germany to Hungary
By now we could tell we were not in England; unusually shaped ‘onion’ churches, and little hillside chalets became more prominent, as we crossed into Austria and skirted the northern Alps. We found the well-signposted motorway to Hungary, crossing the border just south of Bratislava. The 32degree heat was punishing. We were greeted in Hungary by a massive thunderstorm which, after making the car feel like a sauna for a few minutes, lowered the temperature to a more comfortable 26 degrees. We’d been trying to acclimatise to the heat by not using the air-conditioning, which worked quite well. 26 degrees felt nice and cool!
I’d wanted to save a whole day crossing Romania, so we pushed on as far as Szeged, on the Hungarian-Romanian border. It was dark, and we had another thunderstorm as we approached Szeged, so we were faced with trying to find the little hotel off the motorway in the dark, with rain bouncing off the road. Unfortunately, the region was paying host to the International Kayakking championships, so the hotel was full, and we didn’t hold out much hope of finding another one! Luckily, after a lot of driving about trying to find a hotel, we managed to find a delightful little hotel in the centre of Szeged, hotel Bella. It was gone 11pm by this time so the restaurants were closed, but the helpful receptionist ordered us pizzas from a cafe nearby. After a grateful shower, pizza and a sit in the courtyard garden watching the thunderstorm roll by, we collapsed into our bed.
Day 3 – Crossing Romania
Finding Romania was easy. After a good breakfast, and a chat with a friendly Puerto Rican guy whos son was in the kayakking championships, we set off for what I hoped would be a relatively easy drive across Romania. How wrong we would be! We crossed the border, then found easily signposted roads to Arad. It was so similar to Bulgaria, we felt right at home. We’d seen on the AA autoroute that a section of a new motorway might have been completed, the A1, which, if it existed, would save us a lot of time. After enjoying a stretch of the new motorway we were back on normal Romanian roads, single carrage way, loads of lorries and pot holes, this road would eventually lead us to the bridge crossing to Bulgaria. Our mistake was finding, and believing, a signpost that implied that we could get back onto the A1 and finish our journey to the capital on a good motorway. The road was almost empty of other traffic, and we found out why when it unceremoniously dumped us in the middle of nowhere, with not a single place signposted that we could find on our map. It took us about four hours, plus an hour to get round some roadworks, until we got onto a road we recognised, and we were still less than half way to Bucharest.
After that we were unsure whether or not to trust the signs we saw, tempting us back onto the A1 to Bucharest, so we decided to follow what the waggons were doing. We figured lorry drivers usually know what the situation is. We finally did manage to get back on the motorway, which took us all the way into Bucharest,not seeing any signs for Bulgaria or even Ruse, we totally missed our turn-off to Bulgaria. All of the other countries we had travelled though signposted the way to the next country really clearly, even having mileage to cities within the next country. Not Romania. Bulgaria was not mentioned even once, let alone Ruse, Varna or Sofia. Instead, the piddling little town of Giugiu, on the Romanina side of the border, was signposted, which was probably why we’d missed it on the motorway. We had a nightmare 1 1/2 hours to get out of Bucharest (we’ve since met three other people who have had to pay taxi drivers to lead them out of Bucharest!), then managed to find the bridge over the Danube and crossed into Bulgaria. The Romanian side of the bridge was horrible, like driving into an disused industrial wasteland, but the Bulgarian side which started exactly half way cross the bridge, was lovely new tarmac, and then we were on good roads again. Home at last!
It was really late by now, so we decided to get close to Popovo, our destination, and sleep in the car, rather than bothering our hosts so early in the morning we pressed on, arriving at a layby south of Byala at about 3am.
We’d made it. 3 day’s solid driving, 2000 miles covered, and all we lost was one hub cap. But we’d survived the journey to Bulgaria.
Fascinating reading, Jolyon.