ROMANIAN RHAPSODY

It’s raining hard.

I’m chilled to the bone.

The raincoat I’m using to substitute the touring jacket that was misplaced by an airline somewhere between Sydney and Bucharest along with everything else inside my kit bag is keeping my chest dry. But the rubbish bags I threaded around my legs blew away minutes after we hit the road this morning, leaving everything between my waist and knees soaking wet.

I’m on day three of what was meant to be the ride of a lifetime in Romania with Nazario, an old friend from Spain I hadn’t seen in years, but everything is going wrong. On top of the near-constant rain and frigid June weather, our lives are continually put on the line by Romanian drivers who don’t give a rat’s arse about the speed limit and are the most aggressive and dangerous overtakers I’ve ever seen. And the icing on the cake? The Transfagaranan, an epic mountain pass in the Carpathian Mountains described by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear as “the world’s best road” – the very reason we came to Romania in the first place – is closed for the winter and won’t open until July.

“I thought you’d given up,” Nazario tells me when I catch up to him at the next petrol station.

“Not a chance,”