Old Charley

Old Charley

Motorcycling Hazards in Eastern Europe

It sounded simple enough: emulate our screen heroes – Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman – by riding motorbikes to Eastern Europe in aid of a children’s charity. But we were nervous grandparents, not fit youngsters on sponsored bikes with a back-up crew.

Our ride from Norfolk, England to Bucharest and beyond, across twelve countries and sixteen border crossings, took us through storm, flood and tempest and almost proved a challenge too far…

We started in scorchingly hot conditions – it was the summer that thousands of Parisians died of heatstroke – and when the weather finally broke as we headed south through Romania it did so with a vengeance, producing a tempest of biblical proportions. Frankly, the roads and the driving were so bad here, they didn’t need the storm of the century to make them insanely dangerous. These were just some of the hazards:

1) Tyre grooves: On Romania’s tired, beaten-up old roads, the heavy lorries lean towards the verge due to the camber of the road and their overloaded chassis. The result is a tyre groove near the centreline of the road and a much deeper one near the road edge, where the combination of tyre-trench and displaced tarmac sometimes creates a ridge over half a metre high.

2) Potholes: These are often a metre or more across and up to half a metre deep. Fail to spot and dodge these in time and you can puncture tyres, break wheels, damage suspension and snap motorbike frames and luggage carriers, not to mention being pitched off your bike.

3) Slumps: These are not potholes but can be just as deadly. These are where the substructure of the road – maybe an underlying drain or culvert – has collapsed, leaving an almost invisible hollow where the road has dropped. Hit these at anything above jogging speed and the suspension fires you out of the saddle, shortening your spine in the process.

4) Horse poo: A novel hazard that you don’t see much on British roads, but with lots of horses and carts in Romania, there are frequent piles of steaming horse droppings, made even more interesting to ride over when heavy rain turns it into a slimy slurry.

5) Slick tar: Not only road repairs, but whole sections of road, especially in bends, are polished glass-smooth by vehicle tyres and lack of road maintenance. In the wet these are treacherously slippery.

6) Diesel: Romanian trucks have leaky tanks and faulty filler caps. But with their own oil wells in the south of the country, this is of no concern to the truckers who spread slippery diesel oil over the roads. In the dry this is dodgy, but in the wet the combination of oil lying over a film of water is deadly, especially in bends.

7) Road signs: Those that haven’t fallen over, been driven into or rusted away have usually been shot to pieces. For some reason, everyone with a gun seems to find road signs irresistible for target practice, the satisfying ‘clang’ of a wounded road sign must make up for the absence of hunted-out wildlife, perhaps?

Dogs: But you can’t spend too long looking out for road signs or you’ll hit a dog. Romania has packs of feral dogs running along the verge beside you, barking maniacally and threatening to throw themselves under your wheels any second.

9) Drivers: Despite all of the above, by far the greatest hazard on Romanian roads were the other road users.

For more details of this ridiculous journey – hairy, scary and often hilarious – why not read the book of our travels. It is titled ‘Beyond Bucharest: Motorcycle Adventure Travel’ by Bob Goddard and contains numerous maps plus colour and black & white photos.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, head over to http://www.timbuktu-publishing.co.uk/ to read a full FREE chapter and get my take on lederhosen, dwyle-flonking and the secrets to a successful restaurant!

A short video taster is available at the publisher’s website:  http://www.timbuktu-publishing.co.uk/   where you can also read reviews, see photos, learn about other books by this former motorcycle journalist and arrange to have a book sent to you post-free in the UK, or with subsidised airmail postage to worldwide destinations.

About the Author

Bob Goddard is a book author living in rural Norfolk, England, who firmly believes that travel should broaden the mind as well as the waistline.
His books include: ‘Beyond Bucharest: Motorcycle Adventure Travel’ and ‘Land Of The Long Wild Road: New Zealand Travel’ and can be found at the publisher’s website: www.timbuktu-publishing.co.uk

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