It takes us several hours to get out of Romania. The truck needs a wheel replacement, but nobody will let us stop on their land to do the necessary work.
We get into Bulgaria and stop at a monastery which has a hostel. We sit down for beers wondering whether we are camping or in the dorms. Eventually it emerges we are in dorms, although I only find out by asking.
I inspect the dorms, but the mattresses are like hammocks and the dorm I am supposed to be in stinks. This latter fact may be due to a number of old men with missing limbs sharing the dorm – it later emerges one has relieved himself from the backside in his bed. I decide I would rather sleep on top of the truck.
After a cheese infested dinner, and chicken gizzards which we feed to a cat, Tipperarian Hughie suggests we ‘going for a walk’. Despite me wearing sandals, and with Dave and Meg wearing flip flops, this walk turns out to be a climb to the top of a 250m hill in the dark, the cliff face of which faces the monastery. In daylight, this is a pay attraction featuring caves. Only Andrew (Welsh, wannabe adolescent psychotic) has walking boots, but he has the balance of a three year old.
It turns out to be good fun though, and we take a midnight swim in our underwear in an icy cold pond. This is briefly re-invigorating, although we are possibly subject to hypothermia*.
During the walk, I rip my colourful surfer dude trousers bought in Bude in Cornwall just a month or two earlier. This turns out to be the first of a number of trouser episodes on this trip.
By the time we reach the bottom of the hill, I am knackered. It has been a clear sunny day and Meg and I get on the roof to bed down.
*the next morning, Hughie goes to see the caves, and it emerges that the pond is infested with water snakes
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