Your thoughts please!!!

Done this a a few times now, we did a more unsealed roads trip using the Venice to Igoumenitsa ferry, then back through northern Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia. All jolly good, no incidents, even when riding through an ongoing mine clearing operation. Didn’t bother camping as accommodation can be found cheaply almost everywhere, whereas camp sites were a bit thin on the ground. Try to get green cards in advance for Bosnia and Albania, sometimes you can’t buy it and sometimes that means they won’t let you in.

As others have said, stay clear of the coast as far as possible, expensive and built up.

The other trips have been roads/gravel tracks, through France, Luxembourg, Germany, Slovakia, Czech, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, back through the Balkan’s again. No problems except maniac drivers, try to keep to smaller roads where the locals can’t get their X5M’s into treble figure speeds.

The north eastern part of Bosnia round Visegrad and Srebenica along the Drina river is lovely, though a bit harrowing due the events their in the war, and also the weird rocks at Belgradochik are work looking at if your nearby, plus of course the Transfagaran is worth doing (don’t miss it as there’s a new modern road nearby) and of course Transylvania. Sibiu is jus like any big mid European town, but there are some gems in the areas, try Sighisoara, medieval hill town where Dracula’s dad lived.

Also nice to ride up the Dalmatian coast on the way back, cross over to the peninsular near Jasnice, ride up through Pag Island and get the ferry back to the mainland at Prizna after a couple of days on the beach.


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i rode through Romania a few years ago. Fabulous people and countryside but the driving standards scared the crap out of me!
 
i rode through Romania a few years ago. Fabulous people and countryside but the driving standards scared the crap out of me!

Overall the standards are poor but I found that HGV drivers generally moved over for bikes which was quite handy.

One thing that did scare me was road works with traffic light controls because stopping at a red light seemed to be advisory at the best so whenever I was at the front of a queue I proceeded with extreme caution to put it mildly.
 
Romania

Romania is moving on fast - still well worth visiting. Beautiful country with a lot to see and very affordable by UK income standards. Would not recommend camping - wild camping puts you at risk from bears and anyway local home stay / rural type guesthouses are very cheap.
Drivers still crazy - but slowly getting more bike aware. Just ride defensively like you would in the UK. Roadworks - a number of cars will always go through on red, the lights usually have a long cycle, and many roadworks are up for a lot longer than you would expect, so locals will often dive past at the last moment.
There is now a new motorway from the southern Hungarian border (Arad) all the way ( apart from 20KM) to Sibiu so that can get you into Transylvania faster. And most of the main roads are in pretty good shape. But do avoid driving at night - lots of unexpected things on the roads.
As well as good main roads - still lots of 'bad' roads that are excellent fun on a GS for that overland experience as well as mountain cabana accessible by forest road.

I am always available for advice about Romania - and if around and the guestroom free - up for hosting for a night or two in Brasov for the more amiable tosser. And we have the only factory trained independent BMW Motorrad tech just set up in my village.

La multi ani

Gavin
 
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