I said goodbye to Ion and his family the next morning and left Constana to the south. I had planned to take the road closest to the Black Sea, but this turned out to be a busy dual carriageway with no shoulder and so I moved onto a less busy road further inland towards Bulgaria. It was another warm day, with temperatures around twelve degrees and I was cycling in just two layers. The going was flat, everything was good.

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I thought that the day was going to pass without anything interesting to report to you, but towards the end of the day something most peculiar did occur. It happened as I was cycling through the last town in Romania and, as with most of my stories these days, it involved some dogs. I saw two dogs on the grass at the side of the road and they appeared to be in an unusual position, standing very close to each other but facing opposite directions. Looking more closely I saw that they were actually connected to each other. By which I mean that their butts were basically stuck together. A little brown dog and a slightly bigger black dog they were. I had gone past them and I thought maybe they were having sex but then I stopped. I've seen enough of the world to know that that was not how dogs had sex. Either they had got a hold of the karma sutra while rummaging through the trash or something else was going on. Temptation got the better of me and I turned around to go back and take another look. Unfortunately as I did this the black dog became terribly afraid of me and ran away and, I swear I'm not making this up, the little brown dog went with it running its little legs backwards. It was one of the strangest things I have ever seen.

It was now dusk and there were seven kilometres between this town and the Bulgarian border and I wanted to camp before I got there but it was all open farmand, the absolute worst landscape for wild camping. I do know a guy who cycled across Europe and asked a farmer to camp in his field whilst he was in Romania. The farmer agreed but then stole the guy's bike during the night. This is absoutely a true story. He can't have been a very smart farmer either because when the police came they found the bike in his hallway. The result of all this being the police giving the farmer a good beating and the cyclist ending his trip early and returning home. I preferred not to give any farmer such temptations and headed onwards where I could see that there were lots of trees around the border area itself.

There appeared to be nobody about at the border which wasn't a big surprise because both Romania and Bulgaria are in the EU and I've never been stopped moving between EU countries before. There was a big sign saying 'Romania' on one of the buildings and I wanted to get a country-sign picture because I'd missed it on the way in. I leaned the bike against the wall and set about making a 24. Because it was dark I thought I would make it from white tape and stick it to my chest so it would be visible in the picture. It was going to be a great image, I was very pleased. Then I got a bit of a fright as a man approached me from around the side of the building. It was a Romanian border official of some kind and he looked at me disapprovingly and (I assume) asked me just what in the hell I was doing. I would have felt a lot more comfortable answering his questions had I not had a big white '2' taped to the front of my coat.

"Photo?" I said, taking a pretend photo of the Romania sign with my hands to show what I wanted to do.

"NO!" he said firmly. I peeled off the 2 with a look of disgust. He asked me where I was going and I told him to Bulgaria. What I actually wanted to do was go back to Romania and find a sign to take a picture with but he was waiting to watch me leave. "You're ruining my whole trip, I hope you know that."

I thought I could maybe go and camp in Bulgaria and sneak back and get a picture in the morning, but as I went on a bit I saw that at the Bulgarian side of the border they were actually stopping and checking the vehicles and it wasn't going to be quite as easy to hop back and forth across this border as it is between other EU countries. I was called forward and the two border guards set about playing good cop, good cop. The first spoke English and questioned me while the second checked my passport. He asked me "Where are you from? By bicycle? Wow, thats amazing! Where are you going? By bicycle? Incredible! Good for you!"

Then the second handed me my passport back and with a warm smile said "Welcome to Bulgaria!" The nicest border officials I've ever come across, and thats a sure fact. I rode about 200 metres and peeled off to camp in the woods.

ROMANIA SUMMARY:

Time: One week

Distance: 348 kilometres

Best bits: Staying with some very nice people, drafting behind horse carts, making friends with dogs

Worst bits: Not getting a country-sign photo

Top tip: Don't leave your country-sign photo to the last minute