PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF ALICE MORRISON
All I knew about Romania was that it’s the home of the original sexy vampire, Count Dracula. I had booked a self-guided trip combining hiking and biking – and I was doing it solo. Travel company Whereabouts supplied the route, maps, transport and made hotel bookings – and took my luggage from place to place. All I had to do was find my way and enjoy my days. The first part was not a given. I have an appalling sense of direction, non-existent in fact – which, believe me, is a massive handicap when you have chosen adventurer as a profession – so I needed those maps to be good.
A quick stop in Bucharest, and a lemonade at a supercool hidden garden bar, then offto the mountains by train, where I spent the very last part of the journey in the guards’ carriage, hanging my feet out of the back of the open doors with the smoking boys and learning my first couple of words of Romanian (buna dimineata – good morning), which sounds like Italian.