Into wine country

From Probota to Cotnari by the back roads took us two hours. There was only one actual retracing of our route - when the road was reduced to a mud track which led into a clearing where a solitary pig was browsing peacefully. So we tried again, this time taking the less promising of the two roads, which climbed up into the hills, through villages of little houses constructed on the plan of the log cabins we'd seen in the museum (entrance hall with a room on either side) and many appeared - could this possibly be right? - to be built of mud bricks. Yet many were brightly decorated, and some were obviously new.

The shrines became more and more elaborate. The flat crucifix had already given way to three-dimensional figures, and these began to be roofed over in a style similar to the well covers - some were even glazed in.

Up the valley again, between meadows and walnut trees, and at last we emerged onto grass upland, dotted with flocks of sheep, often with a scattering of goats among them. A group of wagtails took off in a flurry of white undersides.

And there were people everywhere: in ones and twos accompanying the flocks of sheep, or whole families sitting at the roadside by their houses, where the maize was stacked, stripping the heads of corn from the long stalks. Overnight harvest time had arrived. Pumpkins had been gathered from the maize fields, where they seemed to be grown in among the maize, and arranged around the hems of the haystacks.