Clare and Ross taste Eastern Europe and Morocco

Apologies for our absence, there is no wifi in the High Atlas. We are back safely in Marrakesh, but I will start from the beginning. We are about to board a train to Fez (8 hrs) so during the trip I'll put some words to these pictures and tell you about our mamouth climb of  Mt Toubkal.

What a culture shock. We have just left tranquil Transylvania with not a bear, wolf or even fellow walker in site and we have landed in a bustling Arabic city. Weaving motor bikes, scurrying pedestrians and swerving cars are everywhere. The contrast is complete. Clare outside the Royal Mausoleum Everything in this city is the same colour and you cannot tell if a building is really old or just built. Clare looks pretty new though. Not a dry city but during Ramadan alcohol is prohibited for Moroccans. We walked miles to get my fix of beer for the trek. We have seven precious cans for the cool off at the end of each day. To gain entry to the bottle shop (the only one within 5kms of the old city) we had to show our foreign passports. Walls and ceiling of PM's offices built c1895 The city during Ramadan is a study in human nature. The dates move every year and so some years it (dawn to dusk) is a much shorter. This year the fasting is from about 5am till 7.30pm (a lo...

Our last day of walking started with a horse-drawn cart ride through the village. A very long village along two river valleys with very steep pastures on both sides. We then continued walking up the valley, entering bear territory again, before zig zaging up the mountainside. The view from the top,  of two mountain ranges, was spectacular. Having climbed about 400 metres we then walked along the ridge, slowly dropping, towards the village. Along the way we met an ancient woman minding her horses and cows. She talked to us and was surprised when we said we spoke English. Nevertheless she smiled and appeared to bless us as we left. The last 100 m descent was a steep goat track but well worth it for the beer at the village mini market. Train back to Bucharest tomorrow then a very early flight to Marrakesh Talk to you from Africa

I have walked in rain. You may well wonder why I might make that comment. The last time I donned wet weather gear was for the last 5 minutes of Day 1 of the Spanish Camino in 2013. Since then we have walked the Camino, climbed Kilaminjaro, circumnavigated Mont Blanc, walked the Likya Yolu (Lycian Way) in Turkey and the Via Francigena in Italy - WITHOUT ANY RAIN. Good for us but a bit scary for the planet. Yesterday we started from Ciocanu after a very hearty breakfast supplied by Maria, and walked in rain down secluded gullies with decaying farmhouses. The guidebook and map needed all our powers ( plus gps and compass) to interpret. We never did find the new white house and which wooden gate was it? The rain eased then stopped after a couple of hours and we started uphill through tiny communities with no sign of life save the cows and horses with there melodic, hypnotic bells. At about 1 we had a treat. We arrived at a little village on a main road. This meant we found an o...

Today we did a beautiful walk off the beaten track in Transylvania, from Magura to Ciocanu (pop 356). We suspect that our luggage may take longer to get here by car than us walking across country. We started at about 9 am and walked steadily uphill through the village and then skirting the forest for about 3 hours. The horse from day one walked with us for 50 metres but didn't intrude. We reached a windswept pass at about 2,200 metres, fortified ourselves with some trail mix of walnuts , sultanas and dried apricots then started downhill. There had been a thunderstorm at about 4am but all was dry with scattered cloud now and an icy wind when the sun was gone. There was the promise of coffee with lunch at the Tourist camp at the end of a logging road so we pressed on for another hour down a narrow ravine heavily timbered with Pine Beech and Birch. It was beautiful, isolated forest and easy to walk on a gradual downhill. The Camp was deserted save some timber workers who asked ...

I should just let the pictures do the talking about this province of Romania. It is covered by the Carpathian mountain range which runs for thousands of kilometers and touches eight countries in Eastern Europe. We are doing a 5 day assisted self guided walking tour with accommodation, food and our luggage transfers organised. So all we do is walk from place to place with maps GPS and tour notes to help us navigate. We were met at Brasov station by a Utracks staff member and driven the 50 minutes to our guest house in the tiny village of Magura. The way in was up a windy forest gravel road. Tractor tracks connect the village to closer sealed roads but these are impassable for regular cars after any rain. On Day one we did a 2 hr walk to the next village, which involved maybe 300 metres of up and down. This tested my mental reserves as it was my first walk after the bike misadventure. I knew I wasn't going to die anymore but I still suspected that I had two broken bones. ...

We aren't vegetarians We eat lean meat, though not to much of it We eat cheese as a delicacy rather than a staple We like our milk without fat. What a great place to start - we are both getting use to black (tea or coffee) as skim milk has not been sighted in 1500 kilometres so far. Ross is indulging in his furtive love of salami and even calabresi (once). Clare certainly wouldn't be stealing fruit from every breakfast buffet. We have found some gems - very nice crusty, seedy breads, several times in several countries. Some excellent soups including several mushroom soups to die for. In Romania, the variety has been good. There are muesli s as well as eggs, vegetables and yoghurts for breakfast. We have eaten interesting Turkish food and pizzas, but there are also more vegetables - sauted vegetable, pickled vegetables, vegetable soups and potato and vegetable mashes. We have discovered a nice eccletic restaurant in Bucharest, The Aubergine. which had delightfully sp...

Bucharest is a different city to Vienna and Prague, though it is a little like Budapest. So what is different? It has some obvious influences from the south and east. Modern Turkey, the Ottomans, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Greeks vie with the Hapsburgs and the USSR/Local communists for influence on the city. The city has only recent architecture (max 400 years) and most is actually only 50 years or less. It also has some very interesting building placements, juxtapositions, and ersatz period architecture. I get the impression that it was both a merchant gateway ie not an affluent imperial city, and a location without much stone. Also it has had earthquakes, fires and invaders throughout its history, destroying the infrastructure. The oldest buildings seem to be orthodox churches (tiny ones) built from brick not stone, and placed in really strange locations.  We learnt the reason for this on our free walking tour of the city hosted by a twenty something lo...

We caught an overnight train from Budapest leaving at 7pm and taking 16hrs. At the last minute we upgraded to a sleeper and were pleased we did.  This was without a doubt the slowest train trip we have ever undertaked. It seemed to be an all stations, although it also stopped many times without the aid of a station. Crossing the Border was uneventful and rather easy, however. We just stayed in our bunks and the guards came to us. At about 11pm the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and someone knocked on all the doors saying something (unintelligible to us) as they did. We got dressed and waited. After about ten minutes I put my shoes on as we thought we may have been ordered out of the train. I need not have worried as the Hungarian border guards were slowly moving along the carriage checking and stamping passports, with illegible stamps. Maybe fifteen minutes later the train started moving again very slowly and, after about 5 minutes stopped again. This time the knock was...

The train trip was pleasant and fast though not express. We travelled through flatish farmland looking dryer, less cultivated and less prosperous than Austria and Czechia Our appartment was on the fifth floor of a brand new building on the border between seedy and trendy, and about a km from the Danube. It feels like this whole area will be redeveloped from the communist era to modern in the next five years. There is very little colour here. The buildings are grey and there is little greenery or flowers. Food and drink is everywhere however. Hungarian food seems to be coffee, goulash as a soup ( authentic) a stew or an accompaniment, a fried bread like a Pide with many fillings or toppings and of course beer. Vegetarian meals seem to be cheese as with Czechia. The main landmarks are the town Hall, the cathedral and the palace , built by the Hapsburgs. The first two were both built 96m high to show symmetry between church and state. The communists added a tower to one of th...

We were delivered to our hotel in a back street about ten minutes walk from the Town Hall. This was a rather quaint hotel converted from at least two buildings and decorated in one or two hundred year old style. Ross in the lift The lift carried a maximum of three and two could sit down. You opened one wood panelled door and the second opened automatically. There were double glazed windows to keep the room warm but we needed to sleep with the windows open as there were no ways of cooling. Hapsburg Palace Vienna is a very attractive city. It is clean and busy but not impossibly conjested. It seems to have got through the war either unscathed or with much reconstruction. The food seemed similar to Prague though there were less street stalls with sausages and more Schnitzel. Beer was again everywhere though there was possible more wine and we also saw Somersby Cider, and thought of our children. St Stephens Cathedral In Prague we had done a free walking ...

The final day of the ride was quite pleasant. It was 45kms and heading south west so we would have the beautiful wind I have mentioned at our backs where it belonged. Clare's wrist, in its pretty blue cast, had held up well and I was still sore all over but physically able to do the ride which was quite satisfying. The hardest thing was actually getting on and off the bike without falling over. Clare heading up the final hill before Mistelback where our trip ended. The main challenge of the day was the undulating landscape. To a driver this is flattish pasture land. To us it was one of four 60m climbs which had beautiful downhill equivalents to reward your efforts. Ross trying to catch up We arrived at the designated meeting place which was a Pizzeria in a village about 30kms from Vienna. Our driver turned out to be a taxi driver from Mikulov and he had ferried our bags for the final 3 days. With our bikes loaded on a bikerack at the back he navigated the motorways into ...

This is a tricky post to write as I do not want to offend any readers. So I will try to be factual rather than evaluative. The first thing that comes to mind is sausages. These are fat and long and sold on every street corner in Prague from about 6am till very late. I believe that there are many varieties. The second thing is potatoes  - in every form imaginable and some not. These are often in the form of Dumplings Potato and ??? The third is meat - pork chicken beef and a little fish. These are often fairly lean and in smallish pieces. The fourth is schnitzel. All meat is capable of being schnitzed. Most meals come with some form of gravy. We ordered several different ones and couldn't tell the difference. Coffee is everywhere but skim milk is non existent even in Starbucks (a world first). In hotels there are tea and coffee facilities but no tea or coffee. Breakfast usually offers granola with chocolate chips added as the muesli equivalent. There are always nice cheese...

Can I firstly start with an apology for not posting for two days. To be honest I have been to exhausted. My body is neither young nor well nor recovered and yet "Despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" both Clare and I have   taken arms (one good each) against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? - Yes -  We have successfully ended the bike ride!!!!!!!!!!!! The second day of our return to cycling was a tough one for us - 62 kilometres along country roads with a steep climb to finish. Czechs don't do early breakfast so about 9am is the earliest we could ever start. More about food later. The scenery was similar; beautiful fields of wheat, a legume. a little wine now, corn for animals (to cold for human corn) and ploughed fields we believe are potatoes. Czechia is largely a rural country with a population of about 10 million. The ride was only difficult because of the length, our generally poor condition (we peaked to early I guess) a...

After two days of being driven from town to town my body was young again and it was time to get on the bike. I confess to being rather scared by the prospect. It was only a 33km day from Vranov Nad Dyji to Znojmo but the first 4 Kilometers was straight up. It turned out that riding was ok but stopping hurt everywhere. The countryside became a little flatter than day 1 but was just as beautiful. Lush farmland and Beech forests. Our driver the day before told us the Beech were only along the roads and then it became pine plantations. He said that Czech trees were getting bigger because they could not sell them as quick as they grew. We learner the truly exhilarating feeling of a breeze in your face and being able to peddle as hard and fast as you can without any noticeable movement. The town of Znojmo put on a show for us, with dancers and singers in the main square and a very interesting tower. We had a very nice mushroom soup   ( with potatoes of course) in a super trendy ...

We have spent today in Telc recovering. I want another week. The thought of getting on a bike tomorrow is quite scary. Telc is a lovely small town surrounded by a moat which they have turned into ponds Opposites attract Dandelions daisies and forget-me-nots The park was in full spring bloom with lush green grass full of wildflowers. At 3pm our tour company once again drove our luggage, intact bikes and broken bodies to our next stop.  Most helpful!

If the last post seemed a little bit Pollyanna-ish, it was because it was. Before day one of riding Ross came down with a cold Clare was desperately ill for 8 hrs But we started in good spirits The first thirty kilometres of the ride was as per the last post. We were taking wrong turns a bit and having to turn round when our GPS showed that we had diverged from the dotted line. On a bike this is not so bad as you cover enough distance to tell fairly quickly. We had stopped on a dirt siding on a narrow winding road and decided we needed to turn round. With his mind on which junction was our wrong turn  I (Ross) headed back , on the left hand side of the road. Immediately a car appeared in front of him and there was nowhere to go but a deep ditch off the roadside. The bike stopped well but I finished in a crumpled heap having somersaulted over the handlebars. The good news! No head wound, no bleeding and my titanium leg was intact. The bad news! I felt like I had been ru...

Well we have started to ride The landscape is truly beautiful. Fields of clover and rapeseed. Small villages and country lanes. The drivers here are very courteous either waiting for you or giving you a wide berth.The weather was a little hot in Prague (28max) but is now great for great for cycling (20max). We are surx  prisinglyourselves that we are managing the exertion. The hills are not to steep or long. Today's ride of 54 Kilometers with total climb of 650 metres will leave us tired but intact.