MONDAY 11 OCTOBER - Part 7 Mileage 31093 - 327 miles yesterday - 1701 miles overall Alarm set 0700 hours. A good nights sleep, a good hotel. Down to breakfast, buffet style. Bacon and eggs, cornflakes and croissants. Good coffee. Paid the bill at reception - Room 272.74 Restaurant 162.00 Bar 25.00 Parking 20.00 Total 479.74 RON On the road 0820 hours, 6°C on the car. Romania is much more upmarket than Bulgaria. Houses in much better condition and quite a lot of new builds. Very few closed businesses. Much better signposting. Better road surfaces. Language much easier to read, not Cyrillic. Fewer horse drawn carts, but still lots of stray dogs. Lots of car and lorry wash places. We followed the signs and made our way to the Romanian/Hungarian border. The Romanian border was no ... read more

SATURDAY 9 OCTOBER - Part 5 Mileage 30446 - 387 miles yesterday - 1054 overall Alarm set for 0645 hours. Pat had cereal and I had boiled eggs and for breakfast and it was buffet style. I checked out of the hotel and they had missed the drinks at the bar last night, so I had a further 10 YTL to pay. 7°C on the car. We left the hotel at 0758 hours. We found our way to the Turkey/Bulgaria border in no time and went through fairly quickly, showing our Passports. At the Bulgarian side we again showed our passports and they took a quick look into the car, but no big deal. We had to purchase a Vignette (Road Tax) which cost €10 for 7 days. You display this in your car window to ... read more

THURSDAY 7 OCTOBER Alarm set for 0700 hours. 24°C on the car. Up showered, packed and on the road, for real now. Terra firma all the way (apart from the ferry across the English Channel). Pat set off and we stopped for petrol, at 0757 hrs, 100.O1 YTL, which was just over half a tank. They record your registration number against the transaction. Petrol is 3.66 YTL per litre, so it’s expensive. YTL to the pound is about 2.27. Not much traffic about and initially we were following the coast road eastwards, heading for the motorway, to go north. We swapped drivers about 0920. We stopped at a motorway cafe and had a local breakfast, 2 Nescafe’s, water, olives, boiled eggs, jam, flatbreads, cheeses, good simple fare. Cost 25 YTL. The petrol station had a prayer ... read more

Setting the scene - October 2010 A quick update first, we have now been living in Pegeia (pronounced Peyia)since December, 2009. We had a heatwave over this summer and enjoyed several of our friends and family visiting for holidays from more Northerly climes. When we left the UK and took four months to drive over to Cyprus, the car was only one year old and did not require it's first (UK) MOT until 18 October, 2010. At which time, as we did not wish to register it in Cyprus, it would no longer have valid insurance. As the summer of 2010 rushed past Pat and I had a discussion and decided that our only sensible option was to drive the car back to England, sell it, fly back and purchase a car locally. This would then ... read more

The 24th September, 2009 was one year on, from when our journey started. What a wonderful year, with many and varied experiences. They say travel broadens the mind. I agreed with the sentiment before and even more so, now. We had decided to celebrate the day, by having a day out and visiting the monastery at Kykkos. Having looked at the map, we decided to go via Polis, not the most obvious route, but some of the roads in the mountains, we were not sure about. We set off just after nine, and headed North to Polis. The drive was uneventful and we headed East from Polis in the direction of Pafos forest. Our objectives, were to see Cedar valley, visit Kykkos monastery and find Archbishop Makarios’ tomb. The area is mountainous and the road is ... read more