Once in a while, I think you will agree, I come up with some pretty handy ideas for you lot. Oh yes I do. Todays is an absolute cracker though I say so myself.
When you find yourself some dark evening this winter mulling over your holiday plans for next year please make a bee-line to The Slow Cyclist website if only to get their contact details.
Waste no time trawling through their admittedly very interesting blog, looking at the pretty photos or reading other customer’s testimonials. Just trust me. Get a group of you together and book a cycling holiday in Transylvania. You don’t need lycra or shaved legs. You won’t get eaten by a bear or bitten by a bat. The cycling is not especially challenging though you will enjoy yourself all the more for getting into a bit of shape and sitting light in the saddle. Sophie, if this is not a bit disloyal of me, was awarded a prize for being the most improved cyclist, but also the slowest. You’ll come back refreshed and fitter having spent hours in the clear air traversing the most wonderful unspoilt countryside with astounding wide sweeping views reminiscent of Africa. You’ll stay in charming hostels eating simple, but perfectly delicious food and drinking adequate Romanian wine. You will sleep well. You’ll learn loads of stuff. The Slow Cyclist team make it incredibly easy for you with their slick organisation and relaxed good humour. You will have a ball.
In the spirit of providing you a balanced picture if for whatever reason you decide to do a cursory bit of your own investigation, you may find reference to the fact that Prince Charles owns a guest house in Transylvania, in a village called Zalanpatak. You might well be tempted to go there…as we did. I even packed a smart pair of trousers and a natty shirt for our evenings there just in case I bumped into his nibs. It’s a lovely enough spot, but it provided me with the one disappointing moment of the week and a possible brush-up with the authorities.
Whilst most of our group travelled there by bus, three of us cycled 45 miles into a head wind on mountain bikes including a 2 mile hill at 6% just before the end which finished us off. We arrived gasping for a cup of Earl Grey and a biscuit. They had Earl Grey right enough, but as for biscuits there were none. Not even a Duchy Original. It was probably the sugar deficiency, but this crisis assumed immense proportions. There was nothing for it other than to get tucked into many beers whilst playing a few hands of a bridge sitting by a fire in a shed overlooking the central courtyard. Dinner followed. This, in the context of all the other good stuff I have raved about, was nothing very special if I’m honest. Yellow pea soup which we suspected came out of a can and a Romanian version of scotch eggs. I didn’t eat very much as the red slipped easily enough down.
Anyway, at some point that evening I wandered up the stairs to a gallery overlooking the small dining room and there I spotted hanging on the wall an oil painting, a portrait of HRH Prince Charles. We had been told that he comes each spring with a party of friends to walk in the hills and to paint the spectacular display of wild flowers in the meadows above the house. So I eyed the painting critically, imagining one of his friends had asked him to sit for this on a rainy day perhaps, or possibly even it was a self-portrait. I don’t have a particularly good eye for these things but I thought it a very passable likeness and even took a photo of it to show those downstairs.
It was only then we noticed, that although there were liberal stains of brown paint used to capture shadows above his eyebrowns, there was an incongruous dark spot on the Prince’s forehead. I went back upstairs and took the painting off the wall to have a closer look. It may have been our location, more likely the fact I’d been drinking on a disappointingly empty stomach over many hours, but there was something of the cavalier in me that evening. I’m ashamed to say I had a wee pick at the patch on his forehead. This didn’t seem to work so I licked my forefinger and tentatively rubbed at the blemish. To my joy, with the application of a good deal more saliva and an increasingly vigorous motion, miraculous was the result…..
In the cold light of day, rather than a slip from the artist’s palette, I’m inclined to think it was bat poo that had splattered his Highness’s portrait and so I may get away with this bit of impromptu restoration, but given the lack of biscuits and the possibility I might have defaced the Royal image, an act of high treason, I think I’ll steer clear of Zalanpatak for a while.
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