Will, Ben and Nevil

We left Brasov looking for adventure - armed with a detailed walking map of the Rodneii Mountain range in the Carpathians, North Romania, and our errant Canadian, Nick.  Despite the area being a national park with lots of walking and climbing on offer the little town of Borsa that we chose to stay in appeared not to have noticed. It has high fashion shops and lots of ”super” markets but not a weather forecast in sight! This was unfortunate as we were eager to find out when the clouds would bugger off to allow us to do a bit of walking.

The great BBC was the best we got, via internet in a shed full of small boys blowing each other to pieces on screen. It looked promising so we chose to stick it out for a couple of days and tested out my (Will’s) new sleeping bag by parking in the cloud on a pass at 1400m. The windows froze on the inside and I couldn’t spread my honey in the morning, but I slept so it must work! We still couldn’t see the mountain tops, or anything else for that matter, but tried out our boots and stamina by exploring the grazing and shepards huts and then trying to find somewhere to watch a rather important rugby game. After Romania had beaten Holland in a Euro 2008 qualifier and we’d assured the patron we weren’t dutch we were allowed to watch Jonny and co punish the French over some 50p a pint beer and plum brandy.

Unfortunately for my throbbing head the BBC came good the following morning and we began our days expedition/serious hangover cure by walking UP and breaking the ice with some locals at a soon to be frozen waterfall; a school group and a teacher with Vuica (the local 70% proof medicine) . Still aching we climbed beyond the ski lift and everyone else and made the main ridge which was crisp with ice and absolutely stunning. Head recovered we had an awesome days walking in an empty landscape not disimilar from Ben’s home county of Cumbria. We’ll have to come back and do the whole lot at some point in the future, apparently it takes 5 days and is all around 2000m high!