Europe by Van Day 12

No further storms occurred in the night. After a bright start, Google sent us for 20 miles on a very poor dirt single track route which had been made worse by yesterday’s storm. Where there weren’t potholes to avoid there were low branches or the occasional cart or tractor. When we got up and round the hills we reached a village and a tar road which was very welcome, as it speeded the journey up a bit.

We pulled off a quiet road for a sandwich before reaching Bran where it just started pouring as we reached a car park
We donned our raincoats and got the brolly and set out up the hill to the castle, made famous by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (I thought he might have named himself after the castle but in fact it’s handily short for Abraham).

We’d expected queues for tickets, it being Saturday and the place is in reach of Bucharest, but it was quick. We got an over 65 discount and followed the crowd on the oneway system. The information boards were in both Romanian and English. The first inhabitant lived in the castle from 1211 and there was a brief mention of Vlad (The Impaler or Dracula) who lived there in the 15th century. Most of the information was about the current family, descendants of Queen Victoria and Alexander II of Russia. The ex-Queen left for USA when the communists came to power in 1949. Her descendants arrived from America in the 1990s and made some renovations recently. There wasn’t a lot to see - we climbed a few narrow stone spiral staircases and entered a few rooms. The most interesting were in 2 beautifully tiled stoves with tiled seating surrounded them put into his and his wife’s bedrooms by Frederick 1 in the 1920s. (Like yours Jan Harling, but on a grander scale!)

I bought Ailie a fridge magnet (it’s traditional now) and we paid the car park fee of €2 before undertaking several more mountain passes, this time on a reasonable road, but busy and in rain and fog.

Mr C was not impaled by Vlad or brolly

We drove 174 miles.