Romanian Roads Revisited.

The main road from Cluj to Gura Humorului was our baptism of fire; thereafter the main roads varied from OK (with the odd pothole) to new, smooth tarmac, sometimes as many as three lanes of it, with white lines.

Off the main roads, it's another matter. Minor roads were often unmetalled, and liable to fizzle out. You'd turn off the main road onto a good metalled surface, only to find yourself, a mile of so further on, driving on loose stones and dust. No doubt the problem was in the map as much as in the road.

So, for example, on Sunday evening we took what we thought would be a short cut back to Falticeni, but which turned out to be a meandering drive through the hills in fading light.

On Monday, the map implied that there was a direct road connecting Humor and Arbore. We took the only turning in the village, which lead us along a good road, which gave way in turn to a good metalled road except over bridges, to an unmetalled road, to:

a point where the road was cordoned off because it ended in a sheer edge where the bridge had been completely removed, and beyond this point (by way of a ford) to a pair of closed metal gates.

It was a beautiful drive, from the broad river plain up into green hills strewn with haystacks and meadows thick with autumn crocuses, where geese wandered between the wooden houses with their elaborate metal roofs; there was something to look at for every yard of the ten miles of that dead end. And when we had retraced our route all the way back to Humor, we still couldn't see what other road we might have taken, nor identify on the map the road we had followed.

At dusk, the roads fill with pedestrians each leading a single cow - or at most, two.