Şopotu Nou and a circular route


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Europe » Romania » Banat » Caras Severin
February 6th 2011
Published: February 6th 2011
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22-6-2007 Şopotu Nou and a short journey in the neighbourhood

By 11 or so I was in Şopotu Nou and the heat was being to build up. The village was extremely quiet and I was pleased to see an open door into a courtyard where I found the village bar and shop. I sat and drank a great deal of some bubbly lemon drink and started to think about the next stage of my journey.

It wasn’t long before I set off again and initially picked up the trail quite easily. As the path reached the river I was amazed to find a car drawn up with a couple sunning themselves in bathing costumes beside it. It was such an old fashioned rural landscape, their presence seemed very strange. I was in a broad valley with fairly steep sides and there were little houses dotted around, some of them forming little groups of buildings. Each was built of wood and had a large area of green around it terminating in a wooden fence. The houses had gardens growing flowers and vegetables. Less happily, many of them also had dogs which I found quite menacing.

About ¾ of an hour into the trail I was once again scratching my head asking myself where the marking had disappeared to. I kept going back over my trail and a couple of times I ran into an old lady dressed very traditionally all in black with a black headscarf. She was out doing a bit of gardening. She told me that I needed to cross the river and waved vaguely towards it. “There is a bridge” she said. Her overall opinion, however, was very firm. “You should go back to where you came from.” I tried not to be discouraged by this and went in the direction she pointed in. As I wandered along I came across the sunbathing couple once again still stretched out by their car. The other thing I now noticed beside the car is the path marker I have been searching for and a firm blue arrow pointing to the middle of the stream. “Surely not” I thought to myself. “I can’t be expected to just wade out in midstream. Besides which, the discouraging old lady says there’s a bridge!” I wandered back and once more encountered the great disapproving one but just as she was sharing her opinion of my expedition with me again, along came a young couple with two children. “We’ll show you the crossing,” they said and led confidently down to the river. Once arrived the Dad took of his boots and started to wade across. Now, in my opinion, wading across a river is quite bad enough without taking off your boots to do so. I followed him fully shod. I noted that he chose a part of the river where there were no protruding islands. As a result the flow of the water was much more even and there were no sudden deep drops or areas where the water races. It came up to our knees in the middle but we were both soon on the opposite bank where he bade me a courteous farewell and waded back to his waiting family.

I headed off up the opposite bank of the river and soon picked up signs for the path. A little way along I also discovered a pontoon bridge! It wasn’t easy to spot as it was made of lengths of dark rope or wire whose structure puts me in mind of the game of string called “cat’s cradle” which I used to play as a girl. There were 2 parallel ropes at one level which acted as supports for a series of planks parallel with the flow of the stream. The occasional plank was, inevitably, missing. A little above these were two more parallel ropes which acted as a hand rail on each side. The whole thing swayed as you crossed it and blended in very completely with the surroundings.

As I wandered happily along I was greeted by an old couple working in their garden. I sat and had a chat with them for a bit and drank delicious cold water from their well. I continued on through lovely green meadows fringed with trees and with the occasional wooden house. It wasn’t long before I was stopped by an old man in a traditional straw hat. I checked with him that there were no hidden difficulties ahead and he spotted the map in my hands. “Where did you get that map!” he exclaimed delightedly. I explained that it was a photocopy of the map from the relevant volume of the pre-revolutionary series “Munţii Noştri” (The only map available for this area) “You see the name written at the bottom there” He pointed to the name of the author. “That map was drawn by my old friend Vasile!” “Give my best greetings to your friend” I said “Ah!” he replied “Vasile is a very old man now.”

As the afternoon shadows lengthened the great cliffs of the gorge started to rear up ahead of me. Just before the gorge starts in earnest there is one last farmhouse outside of which the owners are gathering hay. It is an idyllic scene as in the long golden evening light they heap more and more onto a great haystack. I once again stop for a chat about the journey ahead. The young man tells me that I will have to wade across the river in order to reach the Devil’s Lake and the next section of my walk, and that before that there is a section that he describes as “a bit of a killer”. I plunge into the woods and find the obstacle he was referring too. In fact it’s not too bad at all, just a bit narrow and rocky.

Shortly after completing this I dropped down into a beautiful small meadow beside the river. Apart from the river, it was completely surrounded by woodland and the opposite bank was also heavily wooded. I took a look at the path signs and once again found an arrow pointing into mid stream. I didn’t want to lie in bed worrying about this so I immediately tried the crossing with my rucksack on my back and established that, if I imitate my guide of earlier in the afternoon, and choose the section where the water is running most smoothly, it’s quite simple to cross.

I decided to set up camp on the meadow side of the river as it was much more sunny and welcoming. I wash myself and my clothes and hung my washing from various branches in the mode most likely to benefit from the evening sun. Then I prepared supper and pitched tent. There were an awful lot of biting insects around and at one stage I just had to run for it, seal myself into the tent with the insect net down and wait for the sun to sink a little further in the sky.

The next morning I was up reasonably early and set out across the river again. I followed the path up the side of the opposite bank and find myself beside a small lake set in the side of the hill and which seemed to fill a deep chasm in the hillside at this point. The surface is a few metres below where I was standing and the water looked black and menacingly still. It is know as the Devil’s Lake and I can see why it got this name. From there the path travelled upward through quite dense woodland and then finally dropped down again to the side of the river.

I was looking out for the spring marked on Vasile’s map but could find no sign. A little while after rejoining the river I spotted another pontoon. I knew that I have to cross the river again and assume that this is the appropriate point. On the other side there was a steep slope covered with scree. I scrabbled to the top in the hot sun, feeling the lack of water. I could find no sign of the path. I re-crossed the pontoon and almost immediately picked up the path marking again. I carried on a while longer. The path was getting narrower and rockier inching along above the surface of the river which is now moving quite fast and deep a few feet below me. Eventually, I reach a point where I would have had to swing out and then jump across a gap in order to continue. It was an awkward manoeuvre particularly with 13 kilograms or so on your back. The river surged by below me, deep and fast. If I had had a companion we could have managed passing the rucksacks between us over the gap but on my own……I sat and decided that regretfully, this was as far as I was going to get along this particular path. It was time to go back and find another way round.

It was disappointing but in any event it was a pretty walk. I took a slight wrong turn at one point and was rewarded by finding the spring which in fact did not intersect the main path as shown on Vasile’s map but rather another minor path running slightly lower. Finding water was extremely consoling. Reaching the top of the slope above the Devil’s Lake I was about to take the blue cross route east towards the road leading to Cărbunari when I heard a terrible animal roaring noise coming from that direction. Whatever it was I didn’t fancy meeting it and instead headed back towards last night’s meadow where I once again set up camp - rather earlier in the day than normal. At least this meant that I could get all the business out of the way and be safely installed in my tent by the time the midges really got going.

I had a very relaxed late afternoon and evening basking in the sunshine as I went about my usual duties. I was dozing in my tent and darkness was beginning to fall when I heard the sound of bells. Oh Lord, that could mean only one thing, a herd of cows. I take a peek and indeed a group of 6 cows was slowly processing around the edge of the meadow. I panicked. What could I do? I couldn’t risk spending the night in a field of cattle but on the other hand the way back out of the gorge was blocked by the steep tricky passage which I didn’t want to try in the dark. If I moved deeper into the gorge I would have to ford the river which again is a no no at this hour. I sat tight and waited to see whether my visitors would leave. In the event, they circled the meadow three times and then solemnly exited. I breathed a sigh of relief. It also struck me that there couldn’t be a big problem with bears in this part of the world if a herd of valuable animals was allowed to wander unescorted at that time of the evening.

Sunday morning dawned and it was another perfect summer day. I made my way back towards Şopotu Nou and met Vasile’s friend once again. I explained to him my difficulties navigating the point where I turned back and he seemed not to disagree with my decision. When I finally reached the dirt road a couple of kilometres away from the village I am passed by a young man driving a mini motorbike. He screeched to a halt and asked if I’d like a lift. The machine would have been virtually invisible under our joint weights with my rucksack added in for good measure and there wasn’t a helmet in sight. I tried to be tactful in refusing this particular offer and he roared away good-humouredly.

I made my way once again to the village shop and downed two cold beers followed by a good part of a large bottle of the lemon lime concoction which had been such a success a couple of days earlier. I restocked my food supplies and then sat writing up my diary. Sadly, I’d lost the stick given me earlier in the journey and felt bereft without one. I asked the boy in the shop if he had a stick he could sell me. “Wait a moment, I’ll ask Grandma” he said. A few minutes later he returned with one. “How much is it?” I asked. “Nothing” he smiles “It only came from the forest!”

Later, I packed up and wandered up the village towards the village hall to enquire about a bus to Oraviţa which would have been my ultimate destination had I made it through the Nera Gorge. I discovered that it leaves at midnight. As I walked back down I fell into conversation with an old man who called over Ioan, a much younger man. His friend he explained speaks Italian which, being a foreigner, I am bound to understand better than Romanian. Ioan showed me his traditional shoes which are called opinci. Normally they are a leather moccasin gathered around the top with a long thread that continues and winds around the lower leg over woollen stockings. These were to the same design but updated by dint of being entirely made out of old car tyres – including the laces which were very thin lengths of rubber. I was appreciative of just what an up to date form of footwear we had before us. Having impressed me with the modernity of village practices, my new friend went on to explore the question of why was I on my own. “Why don’t I marry a Romanian such as this fine young man?” he asked. I was touched to see Ioan blushing deeply at this point. Oh if only he had known I was old enough to be his mother!

I continued on down to the river and asked a local where I could pitch a tent. “Anywhere in the field by the river,” came the reply. I discovered that the first section of this field was shielded from prying eyes by a short hedge and I pitched behind this. For tea I prise open a can of beans and sausages and then wonder what to do with the rubbish. I ambled back towards the village and consulted 3 old people chatting on the bench outside a nearby house. “We’ll take care of that.” They said, and then one of the old ladies told me “You’ll be fine camping in that bit of the field. It’s my garden.” I tried to apologise and thank her all at the same time.


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