Now in Sighisoara a medievil town in Northern Transilvania. Glasses of wine at 68p, pints of beer at £1.70 and excellent pizzas for under £3, a thunderstorm and a dmap bed cos someone left the back door of the roof tent open!

Getting the Mongolian visa in Budapest was the easy bit, getting the cash to pay for it was another issue as we had to pay in Euros (and Hungary still has their own currency - Florints) and the only way to get Euros is to draw Florints out from a cash point and then convert to Euros.

After a day in Budapest we moved straight into Romania and turned left 'off the beaten track' along the Ukranian border. Well off the beaten track as it happened as the pot holes had the occasional bit of road round them, which most of the traffic weaved from side to side to try and stay on. We on the other hand took the pot holes and went past them all. Problem is no-one sticks to the 50 KPH limmit in town so all those we overtook in the pot holes come wizzing past at 100 KPH in town - only for us to trundle past them once more when we hit the pot holes again.

After 2 days in a nice camp site run by a dutch couple we could not resist taking a 40 mile detour along a forest track (which I filmed and will hopefully download onto youtube) then moved on into torrential rain, stopped for lunch at the top of a pass that was closed by snow only 2 weeks ago and stayed in a Motel that night - for just over £11.00! The towels were a bit threadbare but the bed had an embroidered quilt and massive feather pillows.

We then moved on to Savata, a Spa town with numerous salt 'lakes' and spent a few hours at the Danubias Hotels Spa, having massages etc., personally I would rather be on my bike but Chris enjoyed it. We also visited the local salt mine but that was less than impressive (if you want to go to a salt mine go to the one near Krokow, it is almost worth the trip to Poland).

The camp site was run by an Hungarian couple who have been there 15 years and is possibly the nicest site we have ever stayed in, we ended up staying 4 nights but partially because I manged to blow the winch up. I only wanted to reel it out a few meteres and back in again cos it was a bit slack and it went up in smoke!

Next morning our host was on the case and an auto electrician arrived later in the day, 4 times he visited in all, dismantled and took away the winch, brought it back and then took away the solonoid, came back to advise that it was 'kaput' but he could get another and then returned to fit it. This only worked the winch one way but we just have to change leads if we need to run it the other way -and all for £35.00! .

Thus far we have paid no more than €1.30 per litre for fuel and we are now averaging almost 20 MPG and except for 2 torrential thunderstorms and a few short showers the weather has been amazing. We are off to drive down Jeremy Clarksons 'best road in the world' tomorrow (which also happens to pass Romanias highest mountain) and then to Dracula country proper.

My mint tea is now cool enough to drink so its bed time (damp bed time!!!)