Expedition Day 6 – The Leaders

Early start for us today, commenced with James’ dulcet tones bellowing “Good Morning!!”. After the initial shock of being wakened and breakfast consumed, we were out the door and into the red jallopy for a 5 hour round trip to catch up with 4 of the teams in Sibiu….

After a fairly uneventful drive on winding roads, through villages and past fields, arriving in a windy Sibiu, still warm though…

1st port of call… refreshments and a donut… would have been rude not too !!

During our snack break we heard from Team 3 that they had left Sibiu as we arrived.. They had other plans and were headed to Sighisoara. Not sure if we should be offended or not 🤔 😄

Team 2 arrived a little afterwards along with Romanian scouts that they had arranged to meet up with and of course Cosmo and Wilfred were there too…. Great to see all looking well and happy…

Team 2 and their new scouting pals headed off to do more exploring and we headed into have a wander around the stunning walled old town…

Eddie finally got to meet a dinosaur 😁

The clouds began to get a little on the dark side, so we decided to take cover and have a spot of lunch. The rain eased a little, so back to the car, gate crashing wedding photos on the way.

Now time to meet up with Team 4 and 5, we headed off to their apartment, with Ted Ted giving the directions, we ended up in a construction site, but we were actually in the right place. Flat for 4 but 8 are crashing for the night! And had done some clothes washing too… They are all in good spirits and were heading off to meet some Romanian Scouts that Team 2 had spent time with earlier…

Time to swap bags with Team 2 and gate crashing the wedding photos again (😄) not once but a further 3 times, so our time in Sibiu was over and time for the 2+ hour drive back to Rasnov. Passing stunning Transylvanian mountains, stork nests and of course a slow moving traffic jam…..

Arriving home, a liitle tired, dinner was served & then a little more planning completed for presentations on saturday… & relax….

Oh… baby dinosaur update…. he has hatched & is growing 😀

FOUR DAYS PAST BLOG!!!! ⏰

Due to unforeseen technical issues there’s been something of a radio silence but finally blog o’clock has rolled round again and you know what that means…

So we awoke on Wednesday morning in Brasov, the Art Hostel was our home for the night, and despite a severe shortage of actual art we had a good sleep. After Lewis decided to accidentally fling cereal at everyone (including our good friend David from Germany), and Craig used David’s coffee as milk on his cereal, we set off on our adventure through the wilds of Brasov.

Our first port of call was the Black Church but first we had a small intermission to watch Alex skilfully and unintentionally remove a window from its hinges with his bag. Great job Alex.

Finally, we reached the black church and my god it was everything we hoped it would be. It had 4 walls, a big wooden door and a surprisingly high admission fee… but that was about all it offered. It was upon our exit from this positively riveting church experience that the rain started.

Now, to 5 scouts from Scotland, rain is no problem. We scoffed at the people running for cover and continued with our day… for about 30 seconds – at which point hail stones the size of golf balls started falling from the heavens. We were able to seek refuge in the first school in Romania and our guide, Big Ioan (who we’re pretty sure is a werewolf) sheltered us from the storm.

After we got a KFC – or in Xander’s case 2 KFCs – to refuel, it was time to head off to the street that claims to be Europe’s narrowest street… it’s not – but it was still pretty narrow. And in a ‘beautiful‘ place like that we had to take a leaf out of Team Taaka’s book and attempt to recreate the masterpiece that was the citadel vlog.

Then James came to check up on us with his posse of leaders and offered to buy us dinner with only one rule, no ribs as they’re too expensive… So we all got burgers, except Craig, who got ribs. #thuglife #YOLO #CRAIGDONTPLAYBYNOBODYSRULES

That was Wednesday finished with, our last night sleeping with German David over, but stay tuned we’ve still got Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday to post today. So look forward to the quality of these blogs decreasing drastically, can’t wait!

Day 4 – Making it Big Time in the City

With our lodging at the Leaders house coming to a close, we prepared to head out and make way to Brasov.

To do this, we decided that we would try the railway in order to get used to it for later on during the exped.

To say the least, it was an adventure. We didn’t expect to be climbing over the rails but what must be done will be done. From that point it was a nice journey to Bartolomeu station, Brasov.

Now, we were not prepared for what happened next. We arrived at the hostel only to find ourselves surrounded by evil clown dolls, like something out a horror movie! It was a cosy and upbeat atmosphere however and we settled in before heading out into the old town of Brasov for a meal.

After exploring the squares and a meal had been devoured, we headed back to the hostel for a late night of chilling and meeting our roommates. Till next time, adios from Team Troon.

@scoutsscotland
@southwestscotlandscouts
@southwestscotlandexplorers
@southwestscotlandnetwork
@naascouts
@kandcscouts
@beargrylls

The Adventure Continues…

After an early morning and an “interesting” bus ride, we finally mad it to Turda the halfway point of our expedition. On arrival we were again greeted with swelteringly hot temperatures, making the 30 minute walk to get to our accommodation somewhat less than pleasant.

Though spirits were high as we would soon be heading off to visit Salina Turda, a place we had been planning on visiting since our first training camp. On our way to Salina Turda we decided to explore what the city had to offer.

After hyping up Salina Turda in our minds for so long we feared it would not be as good as we had originally thought, but boy did it deliver. It easily surpassed our expectations and became one of our favourite moments from the whole trip, even Cosmo and Wilfred had a great time.

Tomorrow it’s another early morning for us, catching the bus to Sibiu where we will be meeting a Romanian scout group, and hopefully getting to explore the city a bit as well.

Expedition Day 5 – The Leaders

Operation garden chairs was the plan for the day. Having only been able to source blow up foot stools yesterday, we smurfed the web to locate a larger hyper market in Brasov & headed off in the little red jallopy….

On arrival we found a huge new shopping mall, including cinema…! Toy Story 4 for us later in the evening !

In the hyper market we found the perfect chairs, with James testing them out for comfiness just to be sure….

Eddie has been desperate all week to visit Dino Park in Rasnov but alas this has yet to happen. So as a consolation we got him a grow your own dinosaur….. and gave it to him at lunch…. Needless to say he is very excited to see his egg hatch….

The dinosaur will become the leaderships new team mascot in 48 hours once the gestation period has passed!🤗🤗🤗

With an afternoon of enjoying the sunshine and looking forward to a wee cinema trip in the evening, it was not long until our plans were on the back burner, with phone calls from different teams about missed trains and hostels cancelling booked accommodation, ‘Super James’, stopped napping and swooped into action.

It wasnt long before we were heading back to Brasov, to meet with teams 4 & 5. We first had a stop in town for a Lemonada and Chocolate Souffle while we waited for the teams. The peace did not last long though, with the Tam Tam Festival intown, successfully drowning out James.

With both teams happy we sent them off on their way in search of food.

We had just over an hour to wait to meet up with team 1 who were inbound on a (slightly later than planned) train from Medias. Once settled in their hostel (not originally planned one as they had cancelled the teams booking earlier in the day) we met them for a chat & to catch up on their plans for next few days..

Most strikingly was Stephen sporting a sparkly bumbag… 😂

Team 1 headed off for food as we headed back to Rasnov in the wee red jallopy for a meeting with Alina @ the hotel to finalise plans for team presentations next Saturday.

Tomorrow is a busy day for the leadership team as we head off on a 5 hour round trip to Sibui to meat teams 2, 3, 4 & 5.

G’night.

Day 3 – Team Troon

Day 3 for Team Troon started off at Vampire Campsite with breakfast of delicious pastries. Fast forward to mid day and we were all packed up and ready to leave the vampires of Bran behind.

Around 2pm we arrived at the bus stop, with full kit in tow, raring to go, only to have to wait for 45 minutes. When the bus finally made an appearance we hopped on and set off for Rasnov, our destination for the night.

After the walk into Rasnov, we arrived at the leaders house where we would be lodging. Saying our farewells, we went to Rasnov Citadel via the cable car.

We still don’t know who had the sign first, Rasnov or Hollywood?


After the citadel, a meal and some chill time was the activities for the rest of the evening for Team Troon. Till next time, adios.

Day 4: Sibiu

We were sad to leave our little wooden lodge so soon but we had to move on. We had to run the 45 minutes to Daneş where we barely made our train. Once we arrived in medias again we had a wait on our hand where we got breakfast. The train to Sibiu Went by quickly and we eventually arrived and started the walk to our hostel. It was once again a lovely place. We left the hotel to see the sights. We went to:

The Bridge of Lies

The Sibiu Council Towers (A view from the Top)

We also watch a local volleyball tournament

While walking around soaking up the night time atmosphere we also witnessed things that gave us in insight into the Romanian Citizens feelings:

So far the missions we have completed are:

  1. Use public transportation
  2. Sleep in an unusual
  3. Shop at a local supermarket
  4. Visit a museum
  5. Buy a tacky gift for James