Picture of the church in Iasi in which Petronela and I were married

Our ultimate destination, Iasi. This is the church in which Petronela and I were married

I’ve done it. I’ve booked the ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland as the first stage (or is it the second?) of a summer trip to Romania, repeating the trip of last year though more leisurely and with a rather different, less direct, route to the Romanian border (yet to be finalised).

Definitely to be avoided is Budapest, a beautiful city along the Danube but a nightmare to navigate, literally life-threatening. The M0 motorway around the city is a death trap with some of the worst driving you’ll see anywhere in Europe, tailgating at 100km or more (last year I just avoided a 5 car pile up). We’ll also avoid a camp site near Munich where a left-over from the Nazi regime almost had me abandoning my usual peaceful disposition; in fact the facilities at the site looked not a lot different to an imagined WW2 concentration camp.

For bloggers who do not regularly read my posts I should explain why the decision to go is a momentous one. I was waiting for my medical consultant to say it was OK (you’ll find things about my medical condition in past posts) but, in the end, I thought I’d go anyway and made the ferry booking. Romania has superb doctors!

Recording on film and digital

Having made one momentous decision, I thought I’d go for broke and make another – begin to post again on my almost abandoned classic camera/film photography blog, grumpytykepix. But I’ll be recording our trip here, having abandoned the horrible Facebook which I used for previous trips. For this I’ll use digital camera or iPad (and perhaps a little C41 film which, both monochrome and colour, I can get processed and scanned in Romania). So I might be able to do one or two posts on grumpytykepix, or when using ‘legacy lenses’ on a digital camera.

Mini, our classic mini which took us there and back without a problem in 2006

We (ie my wife Petronela (P) and I) first did this trip in 2006, in a classic mini, camping – not a single problem so the toolkit, just a screwdriver and 1/2in spanner, were not needed!

VW camper: Lofty2Romania

In 2015 we did the 4,635 miles round trip in Lofty, our 1972 VW camper; a few problems – part of the ‘fun’ of the ‘dub’ –  but P didn’t appreciate it much. And we had mother-in-law shouting to be let out as we navigated multiple one in three hairpins in the mountains. Unfortunately I can no longer handle him for long journeys.

Lofty with me, having just caught the ferry back as the stern door closed. Late arrival resulting from a ‘little’ problem solved im record time by a superb Dutch garage

In 2016 we did it by flying (I hate flying, or rather I quite enjoy flying but hate the waiting, often chaos, and being ripped off in airports now). It’s a pity as Jet2.com, which I like, is only 15 minutes away at Leeds-Bradford airport. Hiring cars when in Romania also was not good, not financially nor for the nerves with 1,000 Euro deposit possibly to be lost thanks to some crazy Romanian driver.

Dacia Duster: Dusty2Romania 1

Last year we did the trip in Dusty, our 2013 Dacia Duster. Really wonderful but taking both our two-man tent and a large one with kit for 6 people to take P’s parents to Transylvania strained even the really capacious Duster. This year we’ll take just our 2-man tent and put the parents in ‘pensiune’ (B&Bs) when we take them somewhere.

Why not Hull ferry?

As we live in Yorkshire you might wonder why we don’t use the ferry from Hull to Holland. It’s a night sailing so apart from the fact that we enjoy a daytime crossing (I love the sea), the mandatory cabin makes it expensive. The disadvantage of using Harwich  is the long drive, the most obvious route, A1 and A14/M11, being dreadful. So we’ll leave early in the morning and take a lazy drive down through Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, camping for the night a few miles from Harwich at a pleasant camp site behind a pub (Stranger’s Home) before taking the morning ferry. The pub has decent food so no cooking for me!

First stop over the other side, for a night, will be Arnhem, on one of the excellent Dutch camp sites (Camping Warnsborn) – only matched by those in Austria and some in Germany. We used it last year on the way there and back.

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