Saturday 24 September 2016
My father in law (my wife Aura's father - Aurel Ungur, now 96 years old) is writing another book, this time on the part he played in the concept and construction of the Tranfagarasan (the twisty winding road that the "Top Gear" team enjoyed when they came here 10 years or so ago).
When he was the Minister for Forestry and Agriculture in the late 50's, he came up with the idea to build a tourist road over the Carpathian mountains near the town of Fagaras. He put the idea to the boss at the time - Nicolae Ceausescu and he agreed, putting Aurel in charge of the Project.
The route chosen generally followed an existing mule track over the mountain, although for that to be widened to a made asphalt road, it was necessary to drive a tunnel through the mountain at the upper part.
The road celebrated its 40th birthday last year and it's been some years since Aurel (we call him Relu because my daughter couldn't say Aurel when she was small
) has visited it.
Also, I've been offering a Brit expat friend of mine (Geof) living in Bucharest a trip there for ages, so today became the day for another visit to the Transfagarasan. It's a bit of a treck, even from here, with a round-trip of some 400 odd km, on not so quick roads.
The photos I took are aimed at being a selection for use as illustrations in his book. It was a bright but cloudy day which meant there was quite a lot of mist up at the top (which is close to 2,100m), not the best thing for photos.
They are in the process of uploading into the "media" section, so if anyone is interested, have some patience for them to finish uploading.
There's some winch-bar videos too, (but they don't get at all interesting until Video #4) and they will be edited in here as they upload to Youtube. I kept leaving the camera running when we stopped, I need to get some software to crop the vids. I used to use Movie Maker but since having the new Windows 10 platform, I've lost the software. Any recommendations?
My videos #1 to #10 below leave a lot to be desired, but a friend of mine took this fast-forward video of the whole run in 2015 on a sunny day.....
The way we went was via Fagaras then the Transfagarasan North to South, then down to the hydro reservoir "Vidrarul" its impressive Dam at the South end of the lake (where, at the foot of it, the Top Geasr team pretended to wake up), then on to Cumpalung, Bran, Raznov and Predeal, then the DN1 national road back to Comarnic.
A good day out.
Editing finished...
Video #1
Video #2
Video #3
Video #4
Video #5
Video #6
Video #7
Video #8
Video #9
Video #10
My father in law (my wife Aura's father - Aurel Ungur, now 96 years old) is writing another book, this time on the part he played in the concept and construction of the Tranfagarasan (the twisty winding road that the "Top Gear" team enjoyed when they came here 10 years or so ago).
When he was the Minister for Forestry and Agriculture in the late 50's, he came up with the idea to build a tourist road over the Carpathian mountains near the town of Fagaras. He put the idea to the boss at the time - Nicolae Ceausescu and he agreed, putting Aurel in charge of the Project.
The route chosen generally followed an existing mule track over the mountain, although for that to be widened to a made asphalt road, it was necessary to drive a tunnel through the mountain at the upper part.
The road celebrated its 40th birthday last year and it's been some years since Aurel (we call him Relu because my daughter couldn't say Aurel when she was small
) has visited it.Also, I've been offering a Brit expat friend of mine (Geof) living in Bucharest a trip there for ages, so today became the day for another visit to the Transfagarasan. It's a bit of a treck, even from here, with a round-trip of some 400 odd km, on not so quick roads.
The photos I took are aimed at being a selection for use as illustrations in his book. It was a bright but cloudy day which meant there was quite a lot of mist up at the top (which is close to 2,100m), not the best thing for photos.
They are in the process of uploading into the "media" section, so if anyone is interested, have some patience for them to finish uploading.
There's some winch-bar videos too, (but they don't get at all interesting until Video #4) and they will be edited in here as they upload to Youtube. I kept leaving the camera running when we stopped, I need to get some software to crop the vids. I used to use Movie Maker but since having the new Windows 10 platform, I've lost the software. Any recommendations?
My videos #1 to #10 below leave a lot to be desired, but a friend of mine took this fast-forward video of the whole run in 2015 on a sunny day.....
The way we went was via Fagaras then the Transfagarasan North to South, then down to the hydro reservoir "Vidrarul" its impressive Dam at the South end of the lake (where, at the foot of it, the Top Geasr team pretended to wake up), then on to Cumpalung, Bran, Raznov and Predeal, then the DN1 national road back to Comarnic.
A good day out.
Editing finished...
Video #1
Video #2
Video #3
Video #4
Video #5
Video #6
Video #7
Video #8
Video #9
Video #10
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