Transfagarasan

Dear Everyone,

I'm still reeling from the marvellous weekend up in the clouds with Lidia and Marian. The Transfagarasan is the highest and most dramatic road in all of Roumania and up there, nothing else but the view and the clean air seems of any importance. We left the hassles of every day life at the foot of the mountains, and as we climbed further up, our heads cleared and our spirits soared.

The road climbs to 2,034m in altitude finishing at Bâlea Lake, our destination with its wood cabin for coffee. The original Bâlea Lac Cabana which stood there until fairly recently burnt down, but is being slowly rebuilt. Building materials were strewn around the back of the cabin, but the front loggia is finished and looks quite lovely. What a lot of people there were, cars packed like sardines into the spaces reserved for carparks and one policeman becoming gradually more hysterical by the minute trying to steer people in and out in some kind of orderly fashion. We decided that policing the parking at Bâlea must be some kind of punishment for policemen who commit an offence! Or the short straw of the week. He was truely fighting an ever-losing battle. The road is only open from around mid-June to early October depending on the weather so the crowds flocked to experience the incredible air before the snows returned. Many set up their barbecues and picnic tables lower down the road - they'd obviously been to the top before and couldn't cope with the fights for a parking space!

The views are spectacular and awe-inspiring. The hairpin bends quite take your breath away for you don't know what's coming next. Just when you think things can't get any more beautiful, they do - a usual happening in this ever-astonishing country filled with such harmony between earth and sky. The Bâlea Cascada conjures up thoughts of mountain fairies and elves, for it's a magical sight.

The northern section of the road is used as a part of the yearly cyclist competition, Tour of Roumania (Roumanian: Turul României). The difficulty of this section is considered to be very similar to the Hors Categorie climb (literally beyond categorisation) in the Tour de France. We met a group of cyclists up at the cabin as we sipped our coffee and decided that they were either extremely courageous or completely mad - gorgeous legs, whatever the diagnosis.

The road was constructed between 1970 and 1974, during the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu. It came as a response to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Ceausescu wanted to ensure quick military access across the mountains in the event the Soviets attempted a similar move into Romania. Consequently, the road was built mainly with military forces, at a high cost both financially and from a human standpoint—roughly 6 million kilograms of dynamite were used on the northern face, and about 40 soldiers lost their lives in building accidents.

It's quite impossible to imagine such a road being constructed in only four years, for it is a mean feat both in length and altitude. Such sadness for the loss of young lives mingled with admiration for this incredible route that links Sibiu to Pitesti and my mind to some kind of spiritual plain that I have never experienced in any other country than this.