We left Voronets having been wowed by the monastery and with plans to see more of the same. The idea being to go North via another monastery and cross the mountains to Sucevita.We'd been told that the direct road had been cut by the terrible rains of the earlier part of the summer. However we figured that we ought to be able to make it with the tandem. Things turned out a little different.
After visiting the first monastery we headed up a white gravel road into the mountains. The scenery was lovely, the leaves on the trees were beginning to to change colour and the were so many hay stacks looking like chrysalises of an invading alien army. We'd heard that rain had made the road impossible or at least difficult to pass with a car. We figured that by bike it wouldn't be too bad. After all carrying a bike on our shoulders, even a tandem, is a lot easier than a car!
After the last village we took a rest and made the mistake of asking a local whether we were on the right road, misunderstanding his response and not realising our mistakes until too late. The local indicated that we couldn't go on and we must turn around and take a road that would be come up on our left. We followed, or thought we followed, his direction and took what looked like a forest road that came along. It didn't look much but we figured that this was probably bypassing some sort of blockage caused by the rain and flooding. Man were we wrong! At a point the road became impossible to cycle on so we started to push. We should have turned back at that point but we didn't. Hours of pushing later a thunderstorm started, it was clear that we were not on a road that was going to take us where we wanted to go and it was too late to turn back that day so we set up camp. We were short of food, had no water and were worried about sharing a forest with bears. Fortunately the bears weren't interested enough in us to show themselves.
GPS position N 47°41.639" E 25°41.180"
No comments:
Post a Comment