Travels & Travellers. #1 Simon Keys. Via Transalvanica

Mike Grenville hosts a radio show called Travels and Travellers where he interviews people about their journeys. Simon Keyes is the first guest and talks about his 650-kilometer walk across Transylvania. The Via Transylvanica is a new route that opened in 2020, and Simon plans to complete the remaining 750 kilometers. He wanted to experience the joy of walking and retreat into nature after retirement. Simon shares his thoughts and experiences, including encounters with bears, wolves, and dogs. He describes walking as a choreographed exercise of controlled falling and explores the writings and music related to walking. The show includes readings and music to illustrate the journey. Hello and welcome to a new radio show on Froome FM called Travels and Travellers. This is me, Mike Grenville. We're going to be interviewing people who have been on, or sometimes maybe planning journeys, of all different kinds. Mostly going to be on the ground, or in the water, by bicycle, by walking, kayak, who knows what we're going to find. I certainly know there's quite a lot of people in Froome who have done some really interesting journeys and none less than the one that's going to start our show is one with Simon Keyes who just a year ago walked half of the Transylvania, the Via Transylvania, which is a new route across Romania. Simon, welcome to the show. Thanks Mike. So, in last April I arrived at a little railway station at the end of the tracks in northern Romania, right on the Ukrainian border, a place called Putna, intent on setting us on a journey of 1400 kilometres down to the Danube, the whole way across Romania. It was a journey that would take me through many different areas in Transylvania, the Romanian area, the Szekely Hungarian area, the Saxon area and with the omnipresence of the Roma, disparagingly called gypsies sometimes. So I left behind my wife Alison and my dog Paula and set off to explore what walking really meant to me. I think that was it. So, over the next hour I'd like to just tell the story of what happened. I'm very grateful to my dear friends coming to help me with this. Alison is going to be reading some passages and my friend Robin Ishwood will be doing the same. So, walking is both one level, very simple and also quite complex experience. At the simplest level, in normal walking, the stride of each foot spends approximately 60% of its time on the ground. The remaining 40% finds it swinging through the air to take up its position ahead of the supporting foot. During the period of ground contact, the foot does the work. Every time your heel lifts off the ground, it forces the toes to carry one half of your body weight. The toes respond when they take off, leaving the heel with a vertical load that actually exceeds the body weight by 25%. So, the simplest way of thinking about walking is it's your feet and your toes doing a choreographed exercise of controlled falling. So, that's the simple part, one foot in front of another. But I'd like to explore some of the things that happened to me and some of the things I thought on this trip. Just tell us a little bit more about the Via Transylvanica because it's a new route and you walked about 650? I walked 650 kilometres and I'm going back later next month to do the rest, I hope. Which is about a similar distance. Yes, so about 1,400 kilometres in total. It's a new route, only opened up in 2020. Obviously, during the pandemic, not many people did it. As of last year, only 17 people have done the whole thing. Right. So, I may be the 18th or maybe there'll be more doing it since then. But let's start with, I'm going to illustrate the talk with some music and with some pieces of writing from people who've written about walking or about Transylvania. So, let's just start with a classic Romanian dance called Ciuliandra by a group called Taroful Ciuliandra. And it's a typical dance that starts slow and gets a little bit faster as it goes along. A little bit like my walking. A little bit like my walking. So, a Romanian dance called Ciuliandra. I should say that this long walk was not meant to be heroic. I wasn't raising funds for anyone. Those who know me know I'm not particularly athletic. And there's nothing exceptional about doing this kind of walk. It's just, if you're prepared to put a few weeks aside, you can walk a reasonably long way. And many writers and musicians have explored walking in their writing and music. We're going to hear from some of them. But one of my primary approach to this, if you like, was I wanted this to be sort of celebratory. I was coming up to retirement. I wanted to retreat into deep nature. And I wanted to experience the joy of the open road. How many miles were you doing a day? Roughly 20 kilometres. The longest I did was 32 kilometres in one day. So, the joy of the open road. Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman. Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road. Chasing the world before me, the long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, strong and content, I travel the open road. The earth, that is sufficient. I do not want the constellations any nearer. I know they are very well where they are. I know they suffice for those who belong to them. And as someone who previously was working as a lecturer, I love that phrase about done with indoor complaints and libraries, querulous criticisms. I want to turn my back on that. There's a certain gentleman of Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who famously, his last book was called The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, but in one of his early famous books called The Confessions, book four of that, he writes about the joy of walking. Robin, please. Never did I exist so completely. Never live so thoroughly. Never was so much myself, if I dare use the expression, as in those journeys made on foot. Walking animates and enlivens my spirits. I can hardly think when in a state of inactivity, my body must be exercised to make my judgment active. The view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable prospects, of free air, good appetite, and the health I gain by walking, the freedom of inns and the distance from everything that can make me recollect the dependence on my situation, conspire to free my soul, and give boldness to my thoughts, throwing me in a manner into the immensity of beings where I combine, choose, and appropriate them to my fancy without constraint or fear. I dispose of all nature as I please. My heart, wandering from object to object, approximates and unites with those that please it, is surrounded by charming images, and becomes intoxicated with delicious sensations. Ten volumes a day would not suffice barely to enumerate my thoughts. How then shall I find time to write them? In stopping, I thought of nothing but a hearty dinner. On departing, of nothing but a charming walk. I felt that a new paradise awaited me at the door, and eagerly leapt forward to enjoy it. Chapter 2. Tramping. So as I eagerly leapt forward, I became a tramp. I wanted to let go of the usual comforts, forget about my appearance even more than usual, replace mental activity with physical experience. I was very keen to get dirty and cold and wet and experience those sensations that are frequently absent in the lecture hall. And this is put very well by a classic book, 1927, by Stephen Graham, called The Gentle Art of Tramping. Robin, please. It is a gentle art. Know how to tramp, and you know how to live. Manners maketh man, and tramping maketh manners. It is an art because it is a way of approach to nature, to your fellow man, to a nation, to a foreign nation, to beauty, to life itself. And it is an art because you do not get into the spirit of it directly. You leave your back door and make for the distant hill. There is much to learn. There are illusions to be overcome. There are prejudices and habits to be shaken off. Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful, and who you are, and what is your special quest in life, and whither you shall go. So I set off carrying a small tent. I planned to camp, but was actually warned against it because of the presence of bears and wolves. And in fact, there are signs in the woods saying, beware after sunset. So I did have to camp sometimes because I would arrive somewhere and there was nowhere to stay. But I never had any difficulty. I did see bear prints, footprints, which freaked out some of the people following me on WhatsApp. And I heard wolves one night in the distance, a really eerie, primitive sound. I had to carry with me a whistle. So walking through the forest I was constantly blowing a whistle to alert the bears because the instruction I was given was never surprise or interrupt a bear. That could be a good motto for my life, I think. One animal I did have difficulties with was dogs, actually. Some of the huge farm dogs in the open pastures, the big sheep dogs there. And a couple of times I was surrounded by them. And one occasion I really thought I was going to be attacked. I just had to slowly walk backwards, talking very gently to them while they snarled and tried to bite my legs. So dogs were the problem, not bears and wolves. But you didn't actually get bitten? No, no. And people I met carried bear spray or fireworks to throw at the dogs. But actually in the heat of the moment, extracting a firework from one's pack and finding something to light it with while the dog's going at you is a little bit much. You'd want something like a hand grenade, wouldn't you? Hand grenades next time. One of my favourite pieces of music describes this tramping experience very well. It's Vaughan Williams' setting of a Robert Louis Stevenson poem called The Vagabond. Let the laze go by me. Give the jolly hen a hug and the byway nightly. Bed in the bush with stars to see. Bread I give in the river. There's a life for a man like me. There's a life forever. Chapter three. Sauntering. One of the things I love about walking is there are so many words to describe it. You can amble, you can ambulate, you can roam, you can ramble, you can stroll, you can hike, you can peregrinate, you can perambulate, you can stride, you can trek. That's just some of them. One of my favourite words, however, is saunter, which broadly means to walk in a slow or leisurely manner, which describes how I walk. And the slow, leisurely manner enables you to experience the physical pleasures of walking, getting into your stride, finding a rhythm that seems renewable, endlessly renewable. The wind in your hair, the rain in your cheek, the aching muscles at the end of the day, followed by a hot shower, if you're not camping, and a good night's sleep. It doesn't have the sense of being in a hurry, does it? No, no, that's right. So, sauntering. And in fact, the American writer Toro has written about sauntering. Alison, please. So, this is from Toro's essay on walking, which was posthumously published in the June 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. Which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked charity under the pretense of going à la sainte terre, to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, there goes a saunterer, a saunterer, a holy lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from saunter, without land or a home, which therefore in the good sense will mean having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the saunterer in the good sense is no more vagrant than the meandering river which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which indeed is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the infidels. Uh-oh, Toro, the etymologists do not agree with you. The general feeling of the word saunter is nothing to do with the holy land and saunter and crusades and so forth. It is thought to come perhaps from a 17th century word, based on a mid-14th century French word, a distortion of savanturer, to take risks. But actually the most obvious derivation is that it derives from saunter, the word for footpath, a small path. And in fact, there is a French word, saunter, which means a small path or track often created by animals. So I'm afraid most people, including myself, think Toro has been very sentimental there. And it's fascinating to see how that word has stuck in the literature and how people attach value to ideas, which can sometimes be completely wrong. Indeed, yeah. So now some more music. A beautiful piece called Anicuta Nature Draga, which basically means my dear Annie, by Tarafolui George Ness. Anicuta Nature Draga Anicuta Nature Draga Anicuta Nature Draga Romanian sauntering music. I love it. Chapter 4. Wandering. So wandering means basically to walk aimlessly or without a purpose. And it's not strictly a good definition of what I was doing because I was following a route. But nevertheless, a lot of the route went through open countryside. I loved walking across the high alpine meadows in the mountains where there weren't particular paths. Sometimes in a dark forest, there were many different ways to go. So how did you find your route? I'm going to say a little bit about that later on. Okay. But I always felt free to divert and digress. So I visited quite a lot of interesting buildings on the way. But I love this idea of the freedom to explore as an important part of walking. And I think French writer Roman Paine has written a lovely bit about wandering in his novel The Love of Europe. The word travel comes from the Old French word travail, or travailler, which means to work, to labour, a suffering or painful effort, an arduous journey, a tormenting experience. Travel, thus, is a painful and laborious journey. Whereas to wander comes from the West Germanic wondran, which means simply to roam about. If there is no labour or torment in wandering, there is only roaming. Wandering is the activity of the child, the passion of the genius. It is the discovery of the self, the discovery of the outside world, and the learning of how the self is both at one with and separate from the outside world. These discoveries are as fundamental to the soul as learning to survive is fundamental to the body. These discoveries are essential to realizing what it means to be human. To wander is to be alive. So as I wandered, I moved from one area to another, starting in the North, in the Carpathian Mountains, which is a Romanian area with the most amazing Romanian Orthodox monasteries. They are very keen to tell you this has nothing to do with the Russian Orthodox Church. But as I moved on, after a couple of weeks, I found myself in a Hungarian-speaking area populated by a distinct ethnic group called the Szekely. So here is some Hungarian music from this area by Juhasz Zsoltán, and it's called Dzimasi Táncdadok, which I'm told means something like fruitful wandering, something like that. The word Dzimasi comes from fruit. Dzimasi Táncdadok You're listening to Froome FM and this is Mike Grenville with the show Travels and Travellers and we're hearing about Simon Key's journey along the Via Transylvanica. To me, wandering has another important meaning, though, when it comes to walking, which is related to the question, what do you think about when you're walking? And it doesn't take long before you recognize your thoughts cycle around in repeating patterns, go off at tangents, the same ideas keep coming back, and you're very conscious of the wandering mind, what the Indian mystic Ramakrishna called the mind is a tree of monkeys darting around from branch to branch, you know, almost random pattern. And you become very conscious of that when you're walking alone. It's what psychologists call thoughts arising in a stimulus independent fashion. And it seems to me there's quite a lot of psychological research on this that suggests that people who allow their minds to wander are not very good at paying attention to things, but very good about futures thinking, thinking about the future. It's what they call the wandering mind is a good state of mind for autobiographical planning. And I can't tell you how many times I planned a redecoration of the house. This is only thinking, of course, turning it into action is something different. But it's very interesting, I think, when you begin to see what's happening in your mind, it gives you the chance when you notice it to refocus your attention. And I would often find when the same thoughts are coming back, or I was aware that my attention has shifted from the outside world to my mind of focusing attention back to try and feel the temperature or the moisture of the air or look for particular aspects of the landscape. So in a way, walking is a kind of form of mindfulness. And you can develop that skill. And it's actually very life enhancing to do that, to realize we are not dominated entirely by our thoughts. I always feel rather sad when I see people cycling or long walking, and they've got earphones in, and they're just like missing so much. And it's just like, yeah, you're not allowing that, what you've just described to happen, as well as missing out on all the science little sounds and birds and whatever around you. It's just, yeah, we've just got this fixation that we must have music playing in our heads all the time. Indeed, indeed. And I think walking as an invitation to notice things is a really nice, nice idea. So chapter five, getting lost. So as you as you wander, and you're, you're in a mindful way, you get very much caught up in the pleasures of the moment. And whilst you're thinking about redecoration in the kitchen, you miss a signpost, and you get lost. And at one point, I was absolutely delighted in finding myself in the middle of a huge flock of sheep moving across a pasture. And it was, I was in the middle of them, and the shepherds were behind and, and I just really caught up in this experience of almost like being a sheep. It was such a beautiful moment. And after about half an hour, I realised there were no signs. And I was way off path. And it was beginning, the sun was beginning to set. And I was thinking about the warning, don't go into the woods around dusk. So anyway, I got out of that, I found my way back, had to walk quite a lot extra that day. But I did find my way back. You think it'd be quite safe with a sheep that the sheep would Well, indeed. I think a wolf or a bear would prefer a sheep to an Anglican. But anyway, there's somebody who writes beautifully about this, Rebecca Solnit, one of my favourite writers, and she's written a beautiful piece called The Field Guide to Getting Lost. Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away. Whereas getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession. You lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar, except there is one item less one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time, shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward, you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realisation, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course, to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness, and a set of clues to navigate the present by. The art is not one of forgetting, but of letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss. I experienced something of that. The writer Annabelle Streets, who has written a beautiful book called 52 Ways to Walk. It's a sort of week-by-week book about walking. She says When we are lost, we are exposed to new landscapes and landmarks, forcing our brain to sit up and take note, to engage with our surroundings afresh. The brain loves novelty. Confronted with something new or different, our brains immediately begin to build new neural pathways, improving our memory and our capacity for learning in the process. So there is a lot to be said for getting lost, not having your eyes on the GPS or the map. And to illustrate getting lost, here's a piece by a very well-known Hungarian musician, George Ligeti. And there's the extract here from his first piano concerto, which I hope may just give you some sense of disorientation. George Ligeti, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in 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Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. One of the most distinctive things about the Via Tranto of Vanica is every thousand paces there is a milestone and they are pillars of granite about a metre high, quite substantial looking things and they all have a distinctive logo, an orange logo on it. Each one is decorated differently and I was fascinated to find out how these were made and it led me back to the organisation behind creating the Via Tranto of Vanica. It's called Tasuriasa Social and this is a bunch of environmental activists and they created the Via Tranto of Vanica with a very strong environmental mission to it which is to reintroduce Romanians and outsiders to not only to the beauty of Transylvania but to the environmental challenges that it faces, deforestation, water, pollution, etc. and the damage done in communist times. So the way they went about it, however, was not simply drawing a line on a map or getting a committee together to design it. They visited all the villages in Transylvania roughly along a line here and said, what do you think about this idea of creating a long distance pathway here? What we want to do is to make people much more aware of the environmental issues related to Transylvania but you can benefit from this because you'll have tourists and such economic development as well. But what was really nice about it was that when it came to actually, and everyone agreed, although all the mayors in all the villages were all very keen on this, but when it came to actually implementing it, this was led by the communities themselves. And so each community sent someone to the headquarters of Tasulius and Social which is a beautiful sort of small holding in the middle of the route where there were stonemasons and people from the villages worked with stonemasons to create each of their own milestones. So each of these 1400 milestones is different. Some of them are abstract patterns, some are representative, some are symbolic, some are just plain bonkers. And so you're conscious every mile that somebody has put this there and somebody has thought about it. So this connects you with it. It connects you with what's going on here. And I really liked Tasulius and Social. I found out about other things they were doing with young people, with litter. It started with a group of truckers from Germany who brought Christmas presents for kids in orphanages. You remember the big thing about Romanian orphanages a few years ago. But what was really interesting is they went back to meet the children a few months later and said we hope you enjoy the presents. We're trying to do our bit to make Transylvania a better place. Is there anything you could do? And this stimulated a huge amount of voluntary work and a great environmental awareness amongst kids and young people in Transylvania. So this is thought through. It's connected up and it's something I really like being connected with. When I go back I look forward to feeling part of this mission again. What will you do differently? What was your first part informed to how you're going to do it differently? You've divided all these thoughts up into chapters as well. To be honest, someone of my age, 70, not particularly fit, I was anxious when I went last time as to whether I was up to it. Luckily not planning ahead too much proved to be an advantage because on day two there was about 3,000 feet of climbing, which I didn't know was coming. Had I known I think I would probably have turned back. But anyway, they always say in these long walks if you can manage to do the first four days you're fine. Luckily I had contact with other people who were walking and a bit of camera ID and it was so I got through the first four days. And then it became kind of effortless after a while. I heard somebody describe it as weight training. So you wait until the trip. So to answer your question, I think I won't be anxious about this time. The landscape will be a bit different and I will make an effort to try and master a few words of Romanian before I go because not speaking the language at all is very difficult to pick up with my hearing anyway. And you won't have the Hungarian zone now either? No, we're out of the Hungarian zone. So it will be very interesting to see. There's another set of mountains down. The first part was in the Carpathians and this is another mountain. And I spent time in Hungary in the past so I have a great affection for River Danube. And so it will be a lovely place to finish seeing the Danube again. Again, it's a place conveniently called Medias. I don't think it means middle but for me it is the middle. I mean the key is shoes, isn't it? Having comfortable shoes. Even more important than shoes or equally important is actually socks. Good socks. That makes a huge difference. If you have a hole in your sock, after a while you really notice it. And it's worth saying I didn't get any blisters at all. Wow. I had those Compeed plasters which are very good if you do but I didn't need to use them. But I stress this wasn't a huge physical exertion. I wasn't doing this to prove anything or to get fit or to stretch myself in some way. I just wanted to have the experience of doing it in my own way. And it was such a rich and enjoyable experience last time that I'm really looking forward to setting off from Froome station, going by train. I start in Froome and then go to Westbury and then Swindon. Get the Eurostar to Brussels, Brussels to Vienna, Vienna, Budapest and then there's a train that goes into Romania which I couldn't use last time because I had to start in a different place. But it will take me a couple of days to get there. Good. Well, enjoy the trip. We look forward to hearing the second part of this journey of the Via Transylvania. Thanks very much, Simon. And to your guests, Robin and Alison. Thanks very much. To finish, a celebratory piece of music by someone called Oana Bosco-Pintier, who I actually happened to hear en route. She was holding a big open-air concert in Bistritza, one of the towns that I went through. And there were hundreds of people sitting on chairs in the big town square here and just listening to this huge concert. She performed for more than three hours. I don't know how she did it. And invited lots of people from local groups to come and join her. What I particularly liked about it was the Romanian Orthodox priest came on at the beginning and blessed the concert. Anyway, to end, here is Oana Bosco-Pintier singing Tinereta, which means youth. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta. Tinereta.