London to Bucharest Cycle

This Saturday we had to cycle around 65km on busy roads, where our main aim was to hold the handlebars tight and pray we don't get smashed by a passing truck until we reach Vanju Mare. This is where we switched to a secondary road, which, to our surprise, was recently rebuilt and offered gorgeous views of the surrounding hills. At around 19:30, we stopped in the small village of Balacita, where we met Adrian, who, when he heard our story, had no hesitation to invite us into his home and offer us a bed. Silviu went to play a quick football match with the kids in the commune, while Adrian invited some of his mates and prepared a traditional Romanian bbq, just in time to see Real smash Juve in the Champions League final. We were impressed by Adrian's hospitality and would like to thank him and his friends for making our evening special.

An early start to our Sunday proved to be a good idea, as we cycled the remaining 65km fairly quickly and arrived in Craiova by 12:30. After a quick stop in the city centre, we had to catch a train between Craiova and Rosiorii de Vede. This was a decision based on the fact that the only two roads from Craiova towards Bucharest are very high-traffic and, while we assumed risks throughout the trip, the risk-reward ratio on this one was not worth it. The remaining 60km from Rosiori to Videle were adventurous, 1/3 being on occasionally flooded gravel roads, so pushbike was again the main sport. At our destination, we found a nice accommodation, where we enjoyed our last evening of the trip and had time to look back at our adventure.

In the morning, after enjoying another free breakfast (gotta love Romanian hospitality) we started the last leg of our trip with 1 extra cyclist (Liviu, Silviu's dad, took an early train to cycle the last 70km with us). We rode along secondary roads, which were mostly fine apart from a long stretch of potholes, which proved too much for Alex's bike rack and broke on one side. 5 metres of rope and 15min later we were back on the road. We arrived in Bucharest early and were greeted by Radu, Silviu's uncle who did the last few kms with us up until a kebab shop, where we stopped to eat before we made our way to the House of Parliament at 19:00