Weather: ☁️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, bread and cheese from the supermarket in Hilda on a picnic bench)
Track: 🇷🇴🇹🇩 (2 out of 5, a lot of searching for the track to get to the road, from there pleasant roadwalking)
Hotel: 🛏️🛏️🛏️ (3 out of 5, helpful staff and good food and company)
Name of followed trail: E8 + voluntary roadwalk to Madei
Special mention: Change of plans, breaking trail today 😢
So today is a big one for us. After 171 days of following E8, we have chosen to change trails and follow the Via Transilvanica for the Romanian part of our journey to Istanbul.
We wake up with the valley below us filled with clouds. An amazing view. We think all the beauty that the E8 has to offer and how little people get to see it. Romania does not market itself well (or at all). We’re sad to miss out on the mountaintrails ahead, but we both agree on breaking trail.
For now, we soak in the beautiful sunrise as our breakfast view.
The trail is still hard to find, eventhough the track improved to farm track at first. It disappears again and, like yesterday, we bushwack our way through the forest to find the markers again.
We take a moment at the spot where we officially break trail. It’s hard to let go of our plan, our dream. Hard to accept that we took on more than we could chew.
Yet we are proud too. Proud that we made it this far, proud of how we did it as a team. We look back on all the beautiful things we saw and did on E8 in Romania thus far, with a big smile on our faces. It’s been a rollercoaster, but we absolutely love hiking here!
So we break trail with all these emotions off sadness, pride and gratitude, yet we’re able to leave it with a smile and our head held high. After leaving E8 our main aim is getting off this hill and on to the road. This proves quite the challenge, because the track we are following is not on the map… 🤔
It definitely goes the right way, so we follow it anyway. We meet a man in a car that wants to know where we’re going. When we tell him, he gives us directions in Romanian. He also makes a biting gesture with his hand and says “hang-hang-hang” pointing behind him. Ok. Agressive/ hungry shepherd dogs I guess… The fun keeps coming..😅
Lucky for us, the dogs we meet today are quite docile, but “hang-hang-hang” is my new favorite warning 😂. We reach the road without further issues and we’ve never been happier to just walk on tarmac. It’s not the most interesting, but the traffic is considerate, so we’re fine with it.
We find a brand new spring and have a good refill. Yesterday we had limited water because we didn’t make it to the planned campspot, so we could use a bit of water!
In the village of Holda, we find a small shop, where we get bread, cheese and ham for lunch. From here, we continue to Brosteni and take a smaller trail here. We enjoy was watching the houses, the (vegetable) gardens and the modes of transportation we see coming past us.
Around 16.30 we get to Madei, where we check in to our hotel. The lady is surprised, because she hadn’t seen the booking, but we’re welcome anyway.
We have plenty of time to have a rest and start our plan B. We have a plan for the next few days, but we need to find our way to the Via Transylvanica after that.
At dinner we meet Anca and Titi, a Romanian couple that are friends of the owner. Anca speaks German and Titi a few words if English, so in 2 languages, we have a chat about our journey. Nice to meet them.
Back in our room, it’s time to go to bed. It’s been quite a day today.