Istanbul or Bust - Vampire Country

It was day three of our trip (new readers might want to start here) and we'd just left the small town of Komárom in Hungary. We had four working bikes, just over a thousand miles behind us, and a long way to go. We'd lost a fair bit of time getting Steve's exhaust sorted, but it was worth it just to have him not cause accidents, let alone to know the bike was going to be reliable.

But we were running late, and we needed to be past the Romanian border by the end of the day to stop the trip going off the rails. To add to the fun, Romanian would see us officially enter Eastern Europe, the clocks jumping forward an hour at the border. Nice to know, but not great when you're already behind schedule. So we hit the motorway towards Budapest and made rapid progress.

Budapest felt like the crossroads of Europe. It was the point where we started to see country codes and place names on road signs and vehicle registration plates that took a bit of thought. NL, D, A, I, easy enough. SRB - Serbia. UA? Now I was stumped. Ukraine? Ukraine! A coach went by with MD on the plate. Moldova. It really did start to feel like I was a thousand miles from home.

Cruising at a steady 77mph, the SMT was giving me economy I'd never seen before, even with luggage and a tent strapped across the back. Mark and Steve were seeing over 70 to the gallon. All because we were sticking to the speed limit - maybe the tree huggers have a point. More importantly, the miles were ticking by and by late afternoon we were past Szeged and approaching the end of the motorway, at Makó.

As soon as we left the motorway, the road deteriorated, as did the driving, and the paranoia started to creep back. We'd heard that the roads in Romania were going to be bad, and the driving in Bulgaria even worse, but we weren't even at the border and people were doing blind overtakes and driving on the wrong side of the road.

Romanian border, trucks and the campsite

To enter Romania we'd need our passports for the first time since Holland. It was a Schengen member, but hadn't yet got all of the controls in place, so passports were still being checked. I was expecting a bit of grief, being only too used to the happy smiley people of the UK border force, but all it took was a cursory glance at my passport without even taking my helmet off, and I was through. The others came through behind me and we pulled in at the first big petrol station to fill up.

Border towns tend to be grotty, and the Romanian border at Nădlac wasn't the best. In a poor part of a poor country, it was crawling with touts pushing their favoured outlet for petrol, currency or a Rovinieta, the Romanian vignette. In Romania, unlike most countries, vignettes apply to all roads, not just motorways. It's not applicable to bikes though, and I'd changed some cash just before we entered the country.

I'd first tried to get some Romanian Lei before leaving home, nipping round to the bureau in Wimbledon. They were able to fix me up with a fistful of Euros, Lira and Leva, but when it came to Romania all they could offer was 16 Lei, and though I was no expert on exchange rates (it was £3.25) I had a gut feeling that wasn't going to buy me a pint, let alone see me through three days in the country. As it turned out, I was only half right.

It takes a while to get four bikes fuelled, so we usually pull over near the shop after filling up and have a quick tweet, coffee, pee, whatever's needed. While hanging around this time, a chap came over, looking inquisitive. My defences were back up and I was expecting hassle, but he was just a truck driver who'd spotted our UK plates and was wondering where we were from, where we were going, and just fancied a chat.

It was the same everywhere really, but it took several days for me to lose the paranoia and move straight to being open and friendly with people. I felt a bit guilty for thinking the worst of anyone who came near me, and I'd like to think that one thing I learned from this trip was to be more open with strangers - expect the worst and that's what you'll get. 

This chap specialised in transporting cable to car factories. Nissan, Toyota, Honda; Sunderland, Derby, and Swindon. He'd clearly seen Britain at its best! Just as we were about to head off, a kid appeared with vignette stickers under his tshirt, stuck to his torso. His trick was to go up to cars and offer to wash their windscreens, under the guise of which he'd have a good feel around and see if he could lift the vignette off the glass. He seemed a bit baffled when we said we wanted to keep our Austrian stickers, despite them being valid for another 7 days. I'm sure there's a Romanian word for souvenir, but none of us knew what it was.

After the border came the trucks. The border was relatively free-flowing for cars and bikes, trucks were another matter, parked up in a queue by the side of the road for mile after mile after mile. With so many drivers hanging around, often far from home, services had sprung up along the road to see to their needs - mostly tyre repairs and hookers.

I've seen them in Spain and Italy, standing by the side of main roads looking for business, but I've never seen so many, working so overtly, as in Romania. At one roadside stop the next day, while Steve and Mark looked longingly at a knuckle-duster-with-built-in-flick-knife flick-knife in a shop, I watched the scene at the other side of the road. A queue of trucks by the side of the road, and two hookers sitting having a smoke break. Meanwhile a couple of kids came over, chattering away, running their hands over our bikes looking for anything loose enough to pocket.

I am conqueror of all Romania - kneel before me

From the border we headed for somewhere to spend the night. Before we left I'd put a bunch of campsites in my satnav, so we'd never be more than an hour or two from somewhere to stay at the end of each day. It wasn't really worth camping at all, accommodation being pretty cheap in that part of Europe, but the lads were determined to use their tents and I couldn't be bothered to argue. Not until they started trying to camp in ditches, anyway. There was no way we were going to make it much past Arad before the end of the day, so the nearest one was Camping Route Roemenië, which didn't look like much from the website but it claimed the owner spoke English and that'd be handy if nothing else.

On the way there we had our proper introduction to Romanian roads. These tended to be pretty well surfaced for miles at a time, suddenly turn into rubble for a bit, and then go back to normal. Roundabouts, often surfaced with gravel and rubble, involved guessing at exits in the absence of any signs. The tricky bits were railway crossings. Anywhere else, they were laid so the top of the rail was level with the road surface. In Romania the rails stood proud, and had to be ridden over like metal kerbs. Crossings, yes. Level, no. I was glad I was on the big KTM - I'd bought it with a big trip in mind, and this was turning out to be it. The combination of big engine and long-travel suspension seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

We were all pretty tired by the time we turned off the main road to find the campsite. Tarmac became shale, shale became dirt, and there it was. As we pulled up, the owner appeared, gave us a smile, and told us to park up wherever we liked - it wasn't exactly rammed and there were plenty of spots to choose from.

Keeps the wind and rain out, but not the noise of dogs and roosters

Cornel, the owner, was a great host, and the campsite was far better than it looked from the photos on the web site. My new tent was up in no time, so I went to deal with the paperwork while the rest caught up. Four tents, four people, four bikes, and four bottles of beer, for €34. Bargain! Cornel asked if we'd eaten, and offered to sort us out a meal. The choice between some local grub or a boil-in-the-bag curry wasn't hard to make, so we sat down for some home-cooked goulash and a few more beers. As the food appeared, so did a bottle with no label.

Plums are rather plentiful in Romania, and the locals had a tendency to turn them into a substance called țuică - not that different to slivovitz, rakia or any other plum-based Balkan moonshine. We were told of a limit to how much they're allowed to make, which obviously they ignore, and this batch, had been twice-distilled under the cover of smoke from a campfire while out fishing. With only a 90% chance of it making us go blind, we tucked in, and found it smooth but lethally strong - just what the doctor ordered.

Cornel left us with access to the beer fridge, payment via honesty-box, and we rounded off the night with deeply awful conversation before heading for our tents. Romania had a bit of a problem with stray dogs, and as I laid in my tent all I could hear was packs of dogs howling, hopefully from a distance. The beer, țuică and long day's ride meant before long I was off to sleep, waking occasionally to fight a battle of wills with my own bladder. Around 5am the dogs went to sleep, just in time for the roosters to start crowing, and wake the dogs back up. Ah, the countryside. So tranquil.

Day 4 began fairly early, as we needed to make up some time. I was aiming for us to at least make it over the top of the Transfăgărășan, the road proclaimed the best in the world by Top Gear a couple of years before. So we packed up quickly, waved Cornel goodbye, and hit the road towards Sibiu.

It must be a blood bank. Haha! Oh, please yourself.

At times it felt like somebody sold the country a job lot of 50 limit signs and they'd been planted around the country at random. The motorway hadn't yet been built, and towns and villages tend to stretch along the roads, almost blending together. This meant progress could feel slow even when the road surface was good. And it mostly was, at least on the main roads, with signs along the side of the road advertising the EU money that had been poured into the country. People in the UK often get the hump about foreign aid, but it's easy to be short-sighted. It's hard to complain about a few potholes after an English winter when you've spent whole days riding on roads that haven't been resurfaced since the Berlin wall came down, if they were ever sealed in the first place.

The trick, I realised, was to latch on to a local. When they sped up, we sped up. When they slowed down, we slowed down. We're told speed kills, but that's not the whole story. What kills is speed differential - if you're sticking to a limit, and everyone else is doing double, then at some point you're going to either be clipped by someone overtaking badly, or rear-ended by someone who misjudged the closing speed. Do what the locals do and everything'll be alright. So we did, and the ride got easier.

Now there's foreign

Somewhere along the road between Arad and Sibiu, I caught up with a truck. Looking at the back of the trailer, I couldn't see a reg plate. When I saw the country code, I realised why my brain hadn't spotted the plate: Arabic numerals. I felt further from home than ever - between us we'd covered London to Tehran. This was better than a weekend ride around the home counties.

Nothing unusual about a hundred foot scimitar, nothing at all

One thing the old eastern bloc countries did well was mad stuff by the roadside. I'd seen a massive wooden eagle in a Czech field next to the motorway a few years before, but it was probably just an advert for beer. Romania moved things up a notch, with proper communist-era monuments. And tanks, which are hard to miss, though Mark, Simon and Steve managed it.

Makes a massive scimitar look a bit weedy really

As we rode through Romania, we passed through poorer, rural regions and towns which seemed better off.  In the villages there were very few local cars, mostly just trucks passing through. Most local traffic was on foot, or the odd bicycle. In one village I saw an old woman pulling a gas bottle along on a metal cart. Kids appeared at petrol stations with empty drinks bottles to buy a litre or two of fuel for the stove. And people still get wound up about foreign aid!

Around lunchtime, while filling the bikes, we stopped for lunch at a Turkish truck stop west of Sibiu. Looking at the menu, obviously in Romanian, we realised we had no idea what anything was, other than the meat being indicated by weight. The waitress helpfully leaned forward, pointed at the menu, and said something which clearly implied "you want this". Another lesson learnt - trust the restaurant staff, they probably know best.

Turn left for fun

By mid afternoon we were past Sibiu and mountains dominated the horizon. The Carpathians seemed to have just appeared from nowhere. One minute, grassy plains, the next, mountains, with no foothills. There are a few roads over the top, one of which is the Transalpina. That previously treacherous road had recently been upgraded to be an arterial route between Sibiu and Bucharest, which meant it was no fun for us. We were taking the other option, the Transfăgărășan, Ceaușescu's folly. A military road built over the mountains, it was a hundred miles of winding tarmac - part country road, part Alpine pass, part river valley - rising to over 2000m and with a surface that made me wonder just what the Top Gear guys were on when they declared it the best road in the world.

We stopped for fuel at the bottom, and while hanging around we saw something we hadn't really seen much since Austria: motorcycles. Four supermotos came roaring down the mountain road and pulled in to fill up. One was on the supermoto version of the bikes Mark and Steve were riding, and seemed rather excited to see another pair of XTs parked up. While he was having a good look at the bikes, two American muscle cars went past and turned up towards the mountain. We'd see them again later.

Riding up the north side of the Transfăgărășan

The mountain road started out as a dead straight line towards the foot of the mountains, and then started to wind sinuously upwards. The road had only been open a couple of weeks when we arrived, the previous winter having been longer and colder than usual. While landslips and potholes had mostly been dealt with on the north side, any real damage had been removed by cutting out a rectangle of road surface, but not replaced. Riding safely was a matter of picking a path between the gravel-filled holes, often using the other side of the road.

Stopping for some sightseeing

As we gained altitude and broke out through the tree-line, we stopped by a monument to those who'd died building the road in the early 1970s. While parked up more bikes passed us in both directions - this was clearly a Romanian biking Mecca. From the monument we headed on up to the top of the pass. While the rest of the road clings to the side of a valley, winding with the rock and gradually climbing, the highest part looks like it's been nailed to a vertical cliff face. It was quite good fun to ride, but better to just look at as a feat of engineering. Really quite remarkable, if ludicrous.

Twisty bits

At the top, we stopped to look down at the classic Transfăgărășan vista, facing north over the valley. It was sunny but cold at 2000m, and there were still vast areas of snow beyond the souvenir stalls at the side of the road. Simon and I added to our fridge magnet collections, Steve went for a wander in the snow, and then it was time to make a move. Just before getting on the bike I noticed my headlight bulb had blown, which wasn't great considering the first thing we needed to do was ride through a half mile long tunnel. I had the spare with me so made a mental note to replace it when we stopped for the night.

Parked up at the top

The ride down the south side was no less spectacular than the ride up the north, with a near vertical drop down the rock face to the top of Bâlea lake. This is a glacial lake blocked at one end by an enormous dam, and the road skirts the eastern shore for mile after mile. We were below the tree line, and it was quite late in the day, so shadows made it hard to pick out the road surface at times. This wasn't great, as the surface deteriorated quickly, every corner covered in sand or gravel. But we were on the right bikes for the job, and before long Steve and I had caught up with the two muscle cars we'd seen earlier. They were stuck behind a maintenance truck, and the twisty nature of the road meant they were having trouble getting past, so I took the chance to show them why two wheels is better than four and shot past. They were having none of it and Steve, from his position behind, had a great view of two horrible overtakes into blind corners as they hoofed it past the truck to catch up with me.

Riding down the south side of the Transfăgărășan

What followed was some very spirited riding, something I'd promised myself I wouldn't do because any crash could jeopardise the entire trip. That promise was less broken, more smashed into smithereens, as I hustled a somewhat overloaded KTM along the lakeside. Feet out round corners, in case the front started to slide, standing on the pegs while barrelling along a broken surface, eventually I saw them fade away in my mirrors and decided it was probably a good time to stop before my luck ran out. I spotted a lay-by with a metal picnic bench and thought that'd be a good place to stop, and made sure I had my helmet off and looked suitably settled by the time Steve caught up.

Steve had similar ideas, and quickly got his stove out in the hope that we could be sitting drinking coffee when Simon and Mark arrived. We didn't quite pull it off, but we did have a brew on by the time the two muscle cars pulled in. They were driven by two yanks, based in the UK, doing a tour of the best mountain passes in Europe, and they handshakes and smiles all round. A Camaro and a Mustang, with a 800bhp between them, bested by a two-wheeled tractor that was handling like a drunk pig, and they were only too happy to have taken part in the fun.

When in Transylvania...

It was getting quite late in the day, so we made a move for the next campsite, which I'd picked for the name, if nothing else: Camping Dracula. We were still quite high up and there was a chill in the air, so I was pleased to see they had wooden huts. Face with the choice between £3 each to sleep in our tents, or £5 each to go halves on a chalet, it was a no-brainer. These were better than the one in Hungary, with comfier beds and a couple of power sockets for recharging.

Bijou

Once we were unloaded, I got on with the most important thing: buying beer. Four large bottles from the restaurant bar cost the princely sum of 16 lei, exactly what I'd picked up in Wimbledon. Rather than not being enough to buy a single drink, it was enough to buy a whole round. Romania has cracking scenery and cheap booze. They should put that on a poster.

Maps plus beer = new friends and their illegal booze

Before we called it a night, I needed to fix my headlight and get some dinner. It'd been a long time since lunch, but the restaurant was absolutely crawling with kids and none of us really felt like dealing with the noise, so dinner was mostly liquid. While hanging around outside our huts we got chatting with some locals from the next one along. They were a couple from Bucharest, who spoke pretty good English, and his or her dad, who spoke some French. I've heard that for a while, after Ceaușescu fell out with Stalin, French was the default second language taught in Romania. As we chatted about our trip, how lucky we were to be able to afford to do it, and how tough life could be in Romania, the younger chap produced a bottle which, while it did have a label, contained a familiar clear liquid which definitely wasn't what it said on the label. Any chance of an early night vanished in an instant as Mark and I started necking țuică. I've no idea what time we called it a night, but we felt pretty rough in the morning.

The ride down from the mountains was a fairly dull one, as roads go, but it offered enough distractions. We passed through areas where scythes were still being used as agricultural tools, and horses and carts were still the primary means of getting around. Romania felt like one of the poorest countries we saw on the trip, but it's somewhere I'd love to go back to, just to explore properly. We were only there two days and we hardly got a taste of the place, but what we did get was enough to make us want more. Friendly people, great scenery, and cheap as chips.

At Pitești we picked up the main transit route south, with a new EU-funded motorway to Bucharest, skirting the city on a local ring road, and then another new road to the border at Giurgiu. The contrast between roads funded by the EU and those not was stark, and none more so than when we left the motorway north of the capital. The ring road was the worst we saw in Romania, remarkable considering how vital an artery it was for getting trucks past the city. The surface varied from reasonable, to poor, to appalling. Huge sections had been dug up, leaving nothing but rubble, which caused the trucks to slow to a crawl. At times we were all standing up, riding as if we were on dirt, as even the tarmac was rutted like dried mud. At one point I found myself in a rut and realised that the crap at the bottom was likely to give me a puncture, something I didn't have time to deal with, so tried to change line. Absolutely no chance - the rut was six inches deep, if not more, and I was stuck in it.

A pleasant spot for our last meal before Bulgaria

Eventually we got to the new road heading south, which was bizarre. A four lane dual carriageway running from Bucharest to Giurgiu, with a 90k limit most of its length but dropping to 20km/h at times for pedestrian crossings. Ever tried doing 12mph on a dual carriageway? Not great. But at least the surface was good, though sideways glances at junctions showed side roads rapidly turning into gravel or dirt.

We arrived at Giurgiu early enough to use the last of our Romanian cash to have a proper lunch on a hotel terrace. After that, it was time to visit Bulgaria.

Read on here.

Istanbul or Bust - The Easy Bit

Our first stop on the journey (new readers might want to begin here) would be Harwich, where we'd be taking the overnight ferry to Hook of Holland - a cross-channel ferry with a hotel bolted on top.

For some it'd be a fair slog just to get to the channel - Mark had a couple of hundred miles to do from north Wales and set off around lunchtime, Steve was heading straight from work in London, Simon was coming from Brighton. I had a choice between going straight from work, or riding home, loading up, and riding past my office again on the way to the dock. So my trip started with a ride through rush-hour London with luggaeg and a tent across the back. It only adds a couple of minutes to the commute but it does take a bit more commitment when filtering through traffic.

Come 5pm and I had everything handed over at work and it was time to hit the road. The bike seemed to be running OK, with no sign of the problems it'd had before. Or so I thought. Ten miles or so later, in the outside lane of the A13, the engine died and my heart sank. I grabbed the clutch, knocked it into neutral, and desperately headed for the hard shoulder. Bugger.

The first thing I did was check the two fuel taps. To my relief, I found one was closed, and a few seconds later the engine fired into life. Panic was replaced with unease when I put 18 litres into the 19 litre tank. No warning light meant the new pump didn't have the right sensor, so I was looking at a 4500 mile round trip through bandit country with no idea how much fuel was in the tank. Ah well, at least it was running, and I could just count miles. I took the chance to buy a spare headlight bulb, just in case, and hit the road again.

Next stop was Brentwood, where I filled up on Proper British Food at a Toby Carvery, before two weeks of foreign muck. After that it was an easy ride to Harwich where the ferry would be waiting. The boat wasn't due to leave til almost midnight, but loading helpfully starts before 10pm, so everyone has time to get themselves over the dutch drink-drive limit for the next morning. As I rolled in to the petrol station next to the dock, Mark and Simon were just filling up, so we parked up, talked excitedly about wolves, bears and landmines, and waited for Steve to appear. And waited. And waited some more. After a while we got bored and headed for the dock, boarded the ferry, strapped the bikes down and headed for the bar, dumping our stuff in the cabins along the way. As we were finishing our first pints in the bar, Steve turned up. This was a good sign - if we could all make it to the Essex coast, Asia should be a doddle.

Our trip happened to start the same weekend as the MotoGP race at Assen. This meant there were a fair few bikes on the ferry, more than usual, and I'd been told dutch police would be hanging around the port the next morning with breathalysers. Taking the change of time zone into account, we were effectively going to be riding off the boat well before 7am, so we limited our drinking to two pints, just to be on the safe side. And a round of large whiskys, because Steve didn't quite believe me about the breathalysers.

Next morning, getting off the ferry took ages, which was just as well because Mark had missed the announcement about heading to the car deck. He eventually appeared and we joined the queue for passport control. No sign of any police other than the usual border checks, it seemed the rumours had been unfounded. That was until a couple of hundred yards later, where we were diverted into a car park where Holland's finest were waiting to check everyone's breath was minty-fresh enough. There were several vehicles parked up, presumbly belonging to people who'd tucked a bit more away the night before, but we were fine, so we hit the road, aiming for Germany.

Snigger

The ride through the Netherlands was as dull as ever. It's flat, featureless and involves far less hard porn and soft drugs than might be expected. Germany isn't better, when sticking to the Autobahns, offering little more than roadworks and little vouchers every time you go for a piss, which are usually spent on coffee to guarantee another voucher at the next fuel stop. Because we had a long way to go, and I had a thirsty bike with no fuel light, we stuck religiously to stopping every hundred miles or so to fill up, give our bums a rest, and swap piss for coffee.

I knew that once we got past Hungary the fast roads would end, so I was hoping we'd make good progress over the first two days. Ideally to the Austrian border on the first day, with Nuremberg as a fallback, and somewhere near the Romanian border on the second, or at least to Budapest. That meant keeping stops to a minimum, starting early each day, and getting miles done. A plan scuppered when at 5pm we were still a hundred miles short of Nuremberg, sheltering at some services in the middle of a storm, dripping wet and no sign of the weather improving. I was game for finding a cheap hotel nearby, getting an early night and making an early start the next day, but was vetoed by the other three who were dead set on spending their first night abroad in a tent, regardless of the weather. Simon found a nearby campsite on his phone, I punched it into the satnav, and we headed back into the rain.

We ended up at Camping Rangau, near Erlingen, where we scored a large, mostly-waterlogged pitch, with an archipelago of tent-sized islands beween the puddles. Our host let us hang our kit in a hut for the night, where it almost dried out, and we finished the night with beer, schnitzels, flick-knives, heavily fortified coffee, and earplugs to block out the noise from the party next door.

The next morning we were up early, but not before most of the caravans and motorhomes around us had already made a move. Tents really don't seem that common these days, the trend is very much for mobile homes, to the point that one campsite I looked at in Romania was entirely hard standing, completely unsuited to tents. That's not camping. That's, well, I don't know what it is but it's not  camping.

No caption required

We were already running late, and our next two stops were the most pointless on the, trip, but still completely essential. First up was the tiny Austrian village of Fucking. The locals are known for being a bit annoyed by Brits thinking there's something funny about the name, which I'm sure says more about them than it does about us, so we only stopped long enough to take a couple of snaps and buggered off sharpish before anyone appeared with a pitchfork.

There is nothing funny about the name, OK?

Next up was a quick pilgrimage. Mark and Steve were also KTM owners, and we were a stone's throw from Mattighofen, the M in KTM, so it was time to take the bike home to see where it was born. It was Sunday, so everything was closed up, but the bike was still running OK and I didn't feel the need to shout at anyone.

Actually the bicycle factory, but shhhh

This wholly unnecessary 2 hour detour had left us way behind schedule, so we headed straight for the motorway, stopping for fuel and Austrian vignettes and some kind of cannabis drink that Mark bought for a laugh without looking at the ingredients. With no time to lose, we hustled the bikes on towards Hungary, hoping Mark wouldn't pass out on the way. Northeastern Austria is fairly flat compared to the rest of the country, so the scenery wasn't amazing, but the miles clicked down quickly enough until we stopped for fuel at St Poulten.

As we left the services, we were faced with a roundabout with two exits: one signposted for Salzburg, from where we'd just come, and the other for Wien (Vienna) near the Hungarian border. Mark was on point, and promptly took the road back towards Germany. He didn't hang about either - for the last 600 miles we'd cruised at a steady 77mph or so, but now he took off like a scalded cat. We followed, at least trying to stick together, even if we were going in completely the wrong direction. I was on the quickest bike, so I wound it on, caught up with him after a couple of miles, and gesticulated to suggest that perhaps he might be going the WRONG FUCKING WAY. He waved his arms a bit, apparently trying to tell me that his satnav had gone a bit wonky, and then, rather than slow down to let everyone regroup, sped up. In the distance I saw him take the next exit from the motorway, and assumed he'd stopped to wait.

When I got off the sliproad he was nowhere to be seen. Steve and Simon caught up and we had a quick chat to try and work out where he might have gone. Steve was certain Mark's brain had blown another fuse and he'd turned right at the junction, rather than left to rejoin the motorway in the other direction. Simon and I waited while Steve went hunting. After a while he returned alone and we headed for the services we'd just left, in the hope that we'd find Mark waiting. Of course, there was no sign of him, nor was he answering his phone. We cut our losses, sent him a text saying we'd meet him at the Hungarian border, and hit the road again.

Mark, it turned out, had assumed that I was the only one behind him, and had tried to catch up with the others, who he thought were already heading towards Vienna. Chasing someone in front of you can be hard. Chasing someone behind you is downright impossible. Fortunately he'd got our message at some point and he was waiting at the last services before the border.

While there, we took the opportunity to buy vignettes for the Hungarian motorway. In most countries, this involved buying a sticker that does two jobs. First, it told the authorities you've paid. Second, it gave you something to leave on the bike to impress mere mortals when you get home. For Hungary there was no sticker, rather a vehicle reg being scribbled on a bit of paper, then entered into a computer. While billed as progress, the souvenir-hunter in me was rather disappointed.

Fully fuelled and with our bikes in the system, we headed for the Hungarian border. Hungary had signed up for Schengen, meaning no immigration checks when entering from other Schengen countries, but hadn't yet taken down the border posts. While the main sign of crossing from Germany to Austria is a change of speed limit, this was the old Iron Curtain, NATO to Warsaw Pact, and still felt like a proper change from one country to another. Huge concrete structures, and ghosts of men in big peaked hats, with bigger guns, demanding to see papers before shooting you on the spot as a traitor. But that was all in the past, and nobody gave us a second glance.

Steve complained he was on the verge of falling asleep while riding, and there was absolutely no chance of us getting to Budapest that night, so we headed for a campsite we'd found in the nearest major town, Gyor. I was expecting Hungary, having been in the EU for almost a decade, to be the last of the fully modern countries before we got into bandit country. A notion rapidly dispelled a few minutes off the motorway, as we rode past the first working horse and cart. The campsite didn't look great, and we were all feeling a bit edgy, so I picked the nearest campsite my satnav knew and we headed into town to get some local currency.

As we rode through town, every head turned to see us pass, and I had visions of being stopped at gunpoint by a gang of locals, mugged and left lying in the gutter while my bike went off into the distance. Complete nonsense, of course, but the mind does strange things when you're somewhere you don't know, and it really felt like we were somewhere properly foreign. It doesn't help that Hungarian is an unusual language, related only to Finnish and Estonian, so every sign is complete gibberish to foreign eyes. We felt a bit like this every time we entered a new country, and I had to make a conscious effort to lower my defences a bit and not assume everyone was out to get me. Expect the worst and that's what you'll find, guaranteed.

It looks small on the outside. It was small on the inside too.

Once we had some cash, we headed for the campsite my satnav was suggesting. This was the Pihenö guesthouse, a small hotel and restaurant with a campsite at the back. We'd not booked, not knowing where we were going to finish up each day, and nobody there spoke the English, French or German we had to offer, so after much gesticulating and awkward mumblings on both sides we ended up with a four-bed chalet for the night. Pretty basic, with a separate shared block for showers and toilets, but roughly the same price as the camping pitch the night before. The guesthouse had a ready supply of cold beer and it was impossible to feel lonely with three mates and a million mosquitos for company.

Basic, but up to the job

The exhaust on Steve's bike had come apart at some point during the day, so he and Mark set about trying to bodge it back together with tin cans, jubilee clips and desperation. Meanwhile, Simon and I waged war on the swarm of mosquitos that had made it into the chalet, so we didn't get eaten during the night. We rounded off the night with a few more beers, then headed in for some competitive snoring. Everybody won gold.

The next morning we got up, got clean and headed in to the guesthouse to see whether there was any chance of breakfast. This time we were led round the corner to a dining room with a breakfast buffet laid out and asked, in perfect English, "would you like ham and eggs?" Result!

Everyone on a trip has a role to play. Mine was to do a bit of planning, then nag everyone all the time to get a move on because it's hard to cover miles when everyone's dicking about with their phone, pissing or drinking coffee. Simon was the photographer and our guide to communist eastern Europe. Mark had the most important role of all: boundless enthusiasm for absolutely everything. But that didn't stop him taking on a second: the one who needs to eat nine times a day, and they'd better be proper meals, a Twix won't do.

Several hours later, when we eventually dragged ourselves away from the breakfast table, we loaded up and hit the road. If we weren't at the Romanian border by sundown we'd need to start butchering our schedule, and it already wasn't much more than "be in Istanbul by Friday".

Inevitably, the repairs to Steve's exhaust hadn't worked. It was a bit loud, not terrible, but it was in Steve's head and when you're far from home and need to press on the last thing you need is a personal demon. He had a fiddle with his satnav and reckoned he'd found a motor factors in a nearby town, so we followed him off the motorway. The destination turned out to be a franchised main dealer for some brand of car or other, and wasn't much use, but we were pointed to a Honda dealer that was, to quote, "second right, at the roundabout, then a bit further along on the right". Again Steve set off in the lead.

The first sign we were lost was when we crossed the Danube. The directions to the dealer definitely hadn't included Slovakia, so we turned round and headed back to Hungary. Steve was clearly getting a bit frantic because he pulled out into traffic and almost made someone swerve into a lamp-post. Words were exchanged, though fortunately not insurance details, and we headed back across the border. Steve had wanted to go to Slovakia to add another country to the tally and I'd had to veto it on grounds of time, but I was secretly rather pleased he'd taken us there anyway, even by mistake.

Back in Hungary, we parked up outside a hypermarket while Steve went in search of parts to bodge the exhaust again. While we were waiting, a friendly chap walked over and asked us in clear English where we were from, where we were going, and what on earth we were doing at a Tesco in Komárom. It turned out he was Slovak living in London, back visiting family, and while he was slightly off his patch, with the help of some other locals he was able to point us back towards the Honda dealer.

Lifesaver

Steve went in to try and explain the problem, which elicited that head-scratching, breath-drawing reaction we've all seen from a mechanic a thousand times. What we hadn't seen before was the owner appearing, declaring (in Hungarian, but I can take a hint) that while he couldn't do anything about it, he knew a man who could. He got in his car, we followed, and he took us to a house in the suburbs where a father and son team shot meaningful glances at a mig welder. While Steve got on with the negotiations, Simon and I chatted in broken German to a local on a mobility scooter about the weather, our bikes and anything else our limited vocabulary allowed.

Baliga and son, we salute you

 
After giving the exhaust half an hour to cool down (they get rather hot, and my arms have the scars to prove it) they set to work, stopping only to bicker like close family members do. Having declared the job done, we were invited in for coffee. It was hotter than hell outside, and felt like Lucifer himself was stoking the fire, so we jumped at shade and hospitality. Heading round the back, we were led past a large barking dog and down towards a basement. Paranoia came back for a moment, but the chap just wanted to show us what he had downstairs.

Our host, as well as being a welder of some skill, was a former racer. Among the bikes gathering dust in the garage were a classic Honda race bike, a Pan Euro with 250,000 km on the clock and a CB750 with a fair bit of crash damage down one side. Between hand gestures and grunts we gathered that he'd hurt himself quite badly crashing the CB and that'd put paid to his racing days. With the tour completed, we headed upstairs for a coffee, made to feel like honoured guests.

Coffee taken, and repairs made, it was time to settle up. The price? Ten quid. Hungary was shaping up to be a pretty friendly place. With the bikes back in working order, it was time to hit the road and go in search of bandits.

Read on here.