July 18-21 Kirklareli to Istanbul

The journey is over. We all arrived safely in Istanbul on Sunday.

We left Kirklareli on Friday morning. We had a break from the rugged hills and enjoyed a pleasant ride through rolling countryside to the town of Saray. The yellow sunflower fields made a pretty patchwork with the straw of the harvest and the green woodlands. Saray (pop 20,000)is about one third the size of Kirklareli but it had the same bustling atmosphere with plenty of beer, kebab, baklava, and ice-cream vendors. Turkish tea is served at tables under shady trees in the public parks, byo baklava, a most pleasant tradition and very accommodating to large groups of cyclists surging through town. We stayed at the Sezen Otel -- basic but better than the Romanian or Bulgarian small-town equivalent.

The enthusiastic welcomes did not stop at Kirklareli. Everywhere we passed men and boys (rarely women) cheered and waved, and if we stopped in a village we would soon attract a circle of curious young boys. They seemed proud that our destination was Istanbul.

The next day brought our last challenging ride, with the rolling countryside soon giving way to a new range of steep hills that remained with us all the way to the Bosphorus. The last 10km or so took us along a ridge with wonderful views of an increasingly brown landscape and distant glimpses of the sea. We camped at a picnic area near the small village of Tayakadin. It was a "bush camp", meaning no facilities, but Jon provided an excellent kebab feast for our last camp meal. We received our 2008 Orient Express cycling shirts to wear on the final day.

The last day's ride was a hilly but short 50km with a final descent to the Bosphorus at the Istanbul suburb of Sariyer. This was our formal finish line, with congratulations, refreshments and lots of photos. Then a boat cruise down the Bosphorus (more refreshments, celebration and photos) to the Ortakoy district, disembarking a few minutes walk from the Ortakoy Princess hotel. That evening we had our farewell dinner in the leafy, sunken courtyard of a restaurant with a slideshow of photos and thank-you speeches.

July 14-17 Varna to Kirklareli

Our last rest day before we arrive in Istanbul! Kirklareli is a bustling Turkish town about 40km from the Bulgarian border, and a world away in terms of people and culture. This is the fourth year of the Orient Express bike tour, and the annual migration of foreign cyclists through Kirklareli is officially watched for and recognised by the municipality. There is even a photo of the group of two years ago in the town brochure -- tourists attracting tourists! Yesterday evening we were invited to a tour of a historic part of the town, and a very pleasant restaurant dinner hosted by the mayor.

We had left Varna on Monday morning, following the main road south toward the ancient coastal city of Nesebar. The road winds through the hills with only occasional views of the sea, and a gruelling 30km climb before the steep, spectacular descent to the coast. Nesebar is a tourist trap with shops and cafes smothering the few medieval buildings, but the peninsular setting is very pretty. That part of the coast is undergoing furious development, though still seemingly in the early stages with more building sites than completed tourist infrastructure. That night we stayed at a tourist hotel in nearby Aheloi. It had a swimming pool, and a band played for an evening of karaoke and dance -- one of our best.

The next morning we followed the flat but very busy highway hugging the coast through the town of Burgas, then branched off onto a quieter secondary road through the hills to the town of Malko Tarnovo. The terrain became progressively more rugged and hilly as the day became hotter (high 30s), making it one of the harder cycling days of the tour. Malko Tarnovo is a sleepy little town. We stayed in dormitory-style accommodation at a hostel -- plain but clean with a pool and refreshments nearby.

There was a thunderstorm that night, and it was cool and rainy when we set out for Turkey on Wednesday morning. The border is high in the nearby range of hills, presumably reflecting the last stand-off point of warring peoples. It took a while to get through, with visa formalities in a cavernous hall ovelooked by the stern portrait of Ataturk. The ride into Kirklareli was short but even more hilly and rugged than the previous day. The first village after the border had vendor stands selling Turkish coffee, baklava and Turkish delight -- a delightful change indeed after the austerity of Romania and Bulgaria.

July 10 -13 Bucharest to Varna

Our journey east has taken us to the Black Sea. Tomorrow, Monday, we will be turning south for the final stretch to Istanbul. We entered Varna yesterday, a resort town that attracts tourists from all over Europe. It is a welcome oasis after the gastronomic aridity of the Bulgarian countryside. We are staying at a good hotel near the sea, with restaurants, cafes and ice-cream stands just a few metres from the doorstep. This is a true rest day, with no particular historic, cultural or scenic diversions to sap our energy. I swam in the sea this morning and then retreated to a shady park. The beach was already thick with toasting bodies.

We left Bucharest last Thursday morning as we had entered it, in a convoy escorted by the same, friendly motorcycle policeman. We reached the Bulgarian border around midday, crossing the Danube one last time, and made our way through the town of Ruse to the motel where we were expecting to camp. However, upon arrival we received the news that we were no longer welcome: "Construction workers will be staying at the motel tonight, and they will surely get drunk and fight with you..." So we stayed at an impromptu campsite with no facilities other than a nearby spring for drinking water. At least we were safe from belligerent construction workers.

We held our second talent-show that evening. I sang a song about camels and hedgehogs, followed by The Foggy Foggy Dew.

The next day we set out on a complex network of secondary roads zig-zagging through the countryside toward the town of Sumen. Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic alphabet, making navigation even more interesting, but the route was well flagged by our support team. It was one of the harder cycling days, 130 km and hilly with the steepest, longest climb at the end in the afternoon heat. There we stayed at quite a good hotel, with welcome hot showers.

Bulgaria is a softer country than Romania. The people seem slightly friendlier (construction workers aside), service is a little faster, the roads are less rutted, the drivers more courteous, there are no derelict factories, and most of the dogs have owners. The countryside is less wild, with huge fields under cultivation, though not a barn or farm building in sight. The landscape has been beautiful -- reminiscent of the South Downs, with rolling hills and towns and villages nestled in the valleys.

We continued on secondary roads for the first part of Saturday's ride, past huge fields of sunflowers in full bloom and through picturesque villages with waving children. The final route into Varna took us along a main road, but the traffic was reasonable. As we reached the coast we were slowed by a strong, cool headwind -- the breeze off the Black Sea.

July 5-9 Baile Herculane to Bucharest

We have arrived in Bucharest! We cycled into the city yesterday in a convoy, with military precision, boxed in by our support vehicles, accompanied by a motorcycle policeman who enforced our passage through the many intersections in the teeth of excitable and aggressive drivers determined to break our formation. In contrast, pedestrians welcomed us with waves and cheers.

We are staying in a modern hotel opposite the presidential palace -- the second-largest building in the world after the Pentagon. Ceaucescu demolished a whole district of Bucharest and replaced it with huge Orwellian edifices, appropriately constructed in 1984. Some of us took a guided tour of the palace and its marble-clad staterooms this morning. The same people who had ooh-ed and ah-ed over the great European cathedrals tut-tutted over this extravagent monument to Romanian Communism... (also RC)... hmmm...

We left Baile Herculane on Saturday morning, continuing up the narrow Tolkien valley of the River Cerna, then a long steep climb out over a mountain pass, and once again into an open landscape of dried-up grasslands ringed by mountains. We spent that night in an old-fashioned hotel in Targu Jiu, a small provincial town. Even the small towns have pedestrian areas, and the citizens were out for a Saturday-evening stroll, as one might expect in Spain or Italy. They are well-dressed, the children on mountain bikes and roller blades (invariably, boys on bikes, girls on roller-blades).

Sunday's ride from Targu Jiu to Ramnicu Valcea was about 130km, with about half that distance on a loop through the countryside to the north of the main road, reaching deep into the Carpathian foothills. It was our greatest combination of distance and elevation to date (roughly equivalent to riding to the cottage with two Champlain lookouts on the way). Even the downhills were taxing, requiring contant braking to avoid potholes, dogs, pedestrians, horses & carts and farm animals. The experience was wonderful though, not just visually but with the sounds and smells of a lifestyle that has all but disappeared in the rest of Europe. The road through the villages blended into the farmyards, with cows, goats, donkeys and chickens wandering at random, and the ubiquitous stray dogs lurking under the trees. We had been warned about the cycle-chasing, ankle-biting feral dogs of Romania, but most are wretched creatures who retreat if you give them a good shout. (The stray dogs are another legacy of the Communist era, when dog ownership was banned). That night we camped on the grounds of a holiday hotel by a lake at Ramnicu Valcea, the approach swarming with the local population fighting for parking spaces and a swim on a hot Sunday evening.

We headed out innocently enough on Monday morning, expecting a hilly but straightforward ride along the main road leading toward Bucharest. It turned out to be the most terrifying day of the trip, with a steady stream of heavy truck traffic often passing within a few inches of our handlebars, and a shoulder consisting of a deep drainage ditch. We arrived at the lunch break in a traffic jam just before Pitesti with knees knocking, nerves jangled, pale beneath the tan. It turned out that the tour planners had miscalculated -- that particular stretch of road was covered on a Sunday last year. The section after Pitesti wasn't quite as bad, with some of the heavy traffic siphoned off onto another major highway, but the road was full of potholes and all the other obstacles we have come to expect -- horses & carts, dogs, pedestrians, etc. We camped at a motel in Dragodana near Gaesti. It was a truck stop, and the noise of heavy traffic and barking dogs resonated in our ears throughout the night.

Tuesday's ride to the outskirts of Bucharest was short and quite uneventful in comparison. The fields and the roadside were busy with the potato harvest and the sale of its produce. We had lunch at our gathering-point, and waited in the heat for the police escort to arrive.

July 2-4, Timisoara to Baile Herculane

We cycled into Baile Herculane (Baths of Hercules) yesterday. As the name implies, this is a spa town, prized since Roman times for the medicinal properties of its hot, sulphurous springs. Today it survives as a sad relic -- 240 km and 40 years behind Timisoara. The beautiful 19th century buildings of the original spa resort are crumbling, derelict shells, while a new town stretches down the road -- seedy bars, motels, tourist shops and a market selling cheap plastic sandals (and, incongruously, Astrakhan hats). Think of Blackpool in the 1960s. This morning some of us hiked up the steep mountainside behind the hotel for a view of the town and valley. It looks very beautiful from a distance.

We have had just two days of riding since our last rest day, with an overnight stop in the small town of Resita. We rode as a group out of Timisoara on Wednesday; the first 30k or so along a busy, dangerous highway lined with rubbish and the uncollected carcases of dead animals. Then, thankfully, we turned off onto a country road leading into an increasingly hilly and beautiful countryside (punctuated occasionally by derelict factories) -- the Western foothills of the Carpathian mountain range. The hotel in Resita was on the main square opposite an elaborate modern fountain, but the plumbing inside the hotel provided only a cold, rusty trickle. Although clearly bemused by the influx of sweaty foreign cyclists, the staff were most friendly, and a live band played for us during dinner.

We set out very early on Thursday for one of the more challenging cycling days of the tour -- 130km through the Carpathian hills. Most of the climbing was in the cool of the morning. After 30km or so up and down again through the small village of Anina we seemed to enter a different world: Stunning scenery, untouched by industry or mechanized agriculture. The farming communities were in the midst of haymaking using the tools and methods unchanged in centuries -- big wooden rakes, haystacks, and horses and carts. Our passage created quite a stir, with children and adults waving and cheering. No cafes and hardly any shops, so we had two rest stops with refreshments during the day. The road was very rough; so far in Romania, good surfaces are associated with dangerous traffic, low traffic with dangerous surfaces... One final mountain pass, then a stretch of busy highway, and finally Baile Herculane, stretched like a ribbon deep in the folds of a narrow valley. The ride in gave us a good picture of the town -- commercial centre, then seedy tourist area, then crumbling spa resort lined up one after another along 6km of riverbank... and the pleasant, modern Hotel Ferdinand to end the day.

Romanian food is plain but good, and service is glacially slow. The menus read like specification sheets -- long lists of foods with weights and prices. Every item is ordered separately on a per-person basis (no sharing!) -- meat, vegetable(s), sauce, etc. You get precisely what you order; caveat emptor. The staple foods seem to be chicken and pork, with excellent pancakes for dessert.

June 28 - July 1 Budapest to Timisoara

We have arrived in Timisoara, Romania, famous in recent history as the tinderbox of the revolution that overthrew (and executed) the Ceaucescus. It is a lovely, cosmopolitan city in stark contrast with the poor countryside that we rode through yesterday. We are staying at a nice, modern hotel in the city centre.

We left Budapest as a group last Saturday, and had an easy ride through flat, prosperous countryside to our first campsite at Kecskemet, a pleasant little town full of young couples with small children that happened to be holding its summer festival. The next day's ride to Szeged was similar, ending at a pretty but rustic campsite. This was the venue of the first Orient Express 2008 Talent Quest -- a most entertaining event with songs, skits and poetry recitations. My rendering of the Ballad of Matty Grove won me a bottle of wine.

Yesterday's ride from Szeged to Timisoara was a much more testing 130km in temperatures reaching 39 degrees. It started with a ferry ride across a canal, then a long, quiet country road beside fields of sunflowers to Mako near the Romanian border (passports required this time). The Romanian section was long and hot, along a busy road to a gathering point just outside Timisoara for the final group ride into town. Romanian traffic is by far the worst that we have encountered.

The road took us through a series of small towns and villages; chickens, goats and the occasional solitary cow grazing by the side of the road, horses and carts, and enthusiastic children waving as we rode though. There seemed to be a lot of empty countryside (abandoned state farms?). Most of the villages had small shops and even some cafes selling cold drinks -- hope this will continue!

We have been joined by Sebastian, a Romanian interpreter and guide for the 11 days we will be in this country. He gave us a "city tour" of Timisoara this morning -- actually a very entertaining if rambling overview of Romanian history, ranging from Vlad the Impaler -- gruesome details included -- through to the Dec 1989 revolution.

Romanian is a Latin-based language with many words and phrases that are similar to French or Italian. This makes it comparatively easy to decode signs and menus -- unlike Hungarian, which was impossible.

June 23-27 Vienna to Budapest

We arrived in Budapest yesterday, the halfway point of the journey! The city is not cyclist-friendly, so we did the last 25 km as a group. It was exhilirating to cycle across the Danube from Buda into Pest, the great city opening out before us along the river banks.

We left Vienna and Western Europe on Monday for the short ride to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. It is easy to miss the border crossings -- we have yet to show a passport since leaving Paris. There we stayed in a boat hotel, moored on the Danube -- cramped and hot, but more comfortable than camping. Bratislava is a city of contrasts -- beautiful city centre lovingly restored to at least German standards, ringed by communist-era suburbs with drab tower blocks. We wandered around the tourist sights and cafes, then went out for a group dinner hosted by Henry Gold, the founder of Tour d'Afrique, who has joined us for a few days. He is Canadian-Slovakian.

On Tuesday we had our last long ride along the Danube -- 40 km along a beautiful straight causeway along the water's edge, with scenery reminiscent of the 1000 Islands section of the St Laurence, and a profusion of bird life. We crossed into Hungary, the border marked only by a crumbling, deserted, communist-era police building, and arrived, after considerable navigational difficulties, at a rather nasty campsite in Gyor. The next day the Danube Cycleway became harder and harder to follow, both from lack of signage and poor road quality, and we finally abandoned it for the main roads. The afternoon ride took us over a range of hills (our first significant climb in many days) and into Esztergom, a lovely town, and this time an excellent campsite. Every town seems to have a castle and a cathedral and Esztergom's are conveniently colocated on a nearby hilltop with cafes along the route... it has become very hot, 35 degrees plus in the afternoon, and we are consuming a lot of beer and ice cream after our rides. (I can still get Austrian-style ice coffees in the larger centres). There was a violent thunderstorm during the night.

On Thursday we left camp early and crossed another line of hills -- a steep 15km climb -- and gathered at our assembly-point on the other side for an early lunch and the group ride into Budapest. The tourist guides use the expression "faded grandeur", which accurately describes the overall impression of the city. Restoration and modernization is patchy, but there is always an underlying elegance. There remain small remnants of the communist era: for example, the laundry was not coin-operated, but had a motherly attendant who put everything through according to our instructions.