Well that was a lot of fun, and Romania very interesting.
Ready to go, bike bag strapped to the rack.
The roads are wide and smooth and empty
Except when they're not!
The start of the Transfăgărăşan highway
In the mist you can start to see the Carpathians
The road climbs through Transylvanian forest
Above the treeline and it starts to get misty
Which did start to spoil the view of the snaking road...
At the top (2100 m) there's Lake Balea - which I couldn't find until I nearly stepped in it.
The road then starts to descend by going through Romania's longest tunnel, which was narrow, unlit and full of fog. And the sound of lorries.
So back down the way I came.
So what's Romania like for cycling? Well there weren't that many other cyclists barring the odd person on a three speed going to the shop or the next village. There were six other road bikes I saw on the mountain, and a number of hybrids that had clearly been taken up in a van to freewheel down. On the sunday I saw a group of lycra'd up mountain bikers offroading in the forest, but that was it.
There are not many roads. What's marked as a minor road on the map is basically gravel and sand. The trunk routes (E-roads) are mostly single carriageway with a narrow shoulder & deep ditch and nose to tail traffic. The other roads are as wide as the trunk roads but fairly quiet. The problem is you can't avoid using the trunk roads at some points. Also if the road goes to a town in the next county, well no-one needs to go out of county do they, so this:
will suddenly turn to this:
and be marked exactly the same on the map.
The drivers are amazingly good. Yes, all traffic laws are disregarded completely, and there being few roads means there will be big lorries on the "minor" roads, but they also don't have the British presumption that they should be able to continue at full speed no matter what. They simply will not blat round a blind bend or over the brow of a hill, because there's a very high chance of there being a pony and cart there - there are at least as many carts as cars on the back roads. Within minutes of being back in England I had two drivers in succession trying to get through a pinch point at the same time as me and running out of road.
Would I recommend it for cycle touring? Well, yes and no. The people are great, the countryside interesting, other than in the mountains it is flat and wind-free with some rolling bits. But using the E-roads (where unavoidable) can be a bit hairy - you absolutely must stay in the narrow shoulder apart from at bridges, with lorries one side and either gravel or a deep ditch the other. A lot of give and take is needed. The drivers are fine about it though - there will be other cyclists, pedestrians and ponies on the road too.
More pictures, and bigger versions of the ones above
here