Tag Archives: Landscape

Bran Management

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Saturday 20 September 2025 – Today’s mission was to decamp north to start with the mainstream of the week’s objectives – doing a bit of hiking in the Carpathian Mountains. Like (and a fraction more extensive than) the Alps, this is a multinational range, spanning from a little corner of Serbia via most of Slovakia, squeezing a narrow passage through Ukraine and taking up the north-western half of Romania. The rest of our time here will be spent doing what we opted for in a moment of lunacy love best – walking up and down hills in search of great views and splendid photos.

First we had to get out of Bucharest, and Jane had cunningly organised a driver to take us to a town called Bran, which, our information gave us to believe, was a two-hour drive, some 160km away. Somewhat inaccurately, as it turned out: the distance was some 190km and the journey actually took over four hours – traffic congestion and road works meant that we averaged less than 50kph for the journey. Just as well we’d visited the loo before we set out, then.

The congestion started immediately in Bucharest – completely normal, according to our driver. Still, it gave us a chance to take a couple of photos of Bucharest landmarks: a slightly better crack at the Arc de Triomf;

and a photo of an archetypal communist era slab of masonry.

This was, laughably, called the House of the Free Press, built under Communist rule and named “Casa Scînteii” (House of the Spark) after the Party newspaper edited and printed there. That is presumably free press as in you didn’t have to pay to get a copy. At least, I hope you didn’t.

After we left the Bucharest urban sprawl, the landscape changed into a much more bucolic one. Although we were on a dual carriageway, the undying spark of Romanian entrepreneurialism was unfazed. Operators small and large were there with their offers for the passing traffic, which was often at a standstill, even away from the city.

We passed Interesting Churches, and other striking buildings

as well as other mystery objects.

The terrain became mountainous, which showed that our driver was headed in the right direction,

and then caught our first sight of Bran.

Bran is famous for its castle, which everyone knows was “Dracula’s Castle”, where the legend states that local Prince Vlad the Impaler was used by Bram Stoker as the basis for his story about the vampire Count Dracula.

Trouble is, that’s bollocks.

Bram Stoker never visited Romania, so he never set eyes on Bran Castle. Vlad the Impaler only visited Bran Castle once – he was imprisoned there for two weeks before being shipped off to be imprisoned elsewhere. However, the good marketing folks of the region never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and now Bran and its castle are the centre of a flourishing tourist industry which they have milked assiduously. We willingly submitted ourselves to the marketing machine, as I hoped to get some splendid images of the great lowering presence of the castle and its grim interior. OK, they’d be just the same as everyone else’s, but they would be my images. Oh, and Jane’s, of course.

We checked into our accommodation, Casa din Bran,

and admired the view from our room for a few minutes.

We had about half an hour to spare before we had to get to the castle for an English langage guided tour. We set off to see if we could find the entrance to the castle. A short walk through Bran, which is quite picturesque,

led us to the entrance. It’s not difficult to find, as a whole host of retail opportunities have sprouted up around it.

You can see the castle above all the marketing brouhaha,

and they even have a small model of the area on display.

With 20 minutes to spare, we were able to take coffee in a garden near where we had to wait for our guide.

It turned out that we were the only two for the 4pm English tour, so we had an hour or so in the company of Darius,

who gave us a very entertaining run down on the place. Historically, the current stone fortress replaced a wooden building in the late 1300s. It had a strong strategic position, on the border between Wallachia and Transylvania.

In 1438–1442, the castle was used in defense against the Ottoman Empire, and later became a customs post, exploiting its position on the mountain pass between Transylvania and Wallachia.

The focus on myth and legend means that the real story of the castle, which is really interesting, is all but lost on most of the world. For example, not a lot of people know that Maria, the queen of Romania between 1914 and 1927, was British – born Princess Marie, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She could have been queen of England, but didn’t marry the future George V because he was a cousin, instead becoming the wife of King Ferdinand I, who took over after the death of Carol I. Maria was multi-talented – artist, nurse, diplomat – and very popular with the Romanian people. The castle now is effectively a museum dedicated to displaying art and furniture collected by Queen Maria.

Another surprise for me was that the castle is actually (a) quite small and (b) was really lived-in;

it wasn’t in any way a ceremonial location – Maria lived there and loved it. In these respects, it reminds me of Lindisfarne Castle, in the north-east of England.  The rooms were properly heated with some wonderful heaters

and the place was properly decorated, as you can see from the beams in the picture above and the example of this door.

There is some exquisite furniture,

and the castle is laid out to take visitors along a route showing off the rooms and the furniture, supplemented by display boards with lots of information and, in our case, a guide. Being set high, it offers great views over the surrounding countryside

and, being a castle, offers some great internal scenes as well.

Of course, the marketing machine exploits the legend mercilessly, and why not? There’s a picture of the castle (I’m not sure whether this is the original or a print)

that could well be what Bram Stoker saw as he researched Transylvania’s legend and folklore from his base in Budapest and what gave him the idea for Count Dracula.  Vlad the Impaler’s dad was Vlad Dracul (Vlad the dragon in medieval Romanian) and Vlad himself was therefore Dracula, son of the dragon before he got the Impaler schtick. The fact that dracul means the devil in modern Romanian didn’t do his reputation any harm… So there are plenty of links between the story and the castle, although they’re much more tenuous than most people might think.

The Impaler thing is displayed, along with many other gruesome items, in the torture chamber, a multi-storey exhibit in one of the towers.

and the exit from the castle can be (if you pay extra) via a “Time Tunnel”, actually an elevator which descends into the bowels of the castle, so that you pass further ghoulish exhibits

as you exit from the castle into the gardens. There are various other horror-related things going on in the bazaar between the entrance and the castle itself.

The Dracula nonsense aside (and even that was a bit of fun), we had a really interesting 90 minutes in the castle, and left feeling that we had a much better grasp of the real history of the place.

After dinner back at the hotel (the bar even stocked Gunpowder gin, which shows it has class), we had merely to start to psych ourselves up for the morrow, when our real labours start with a hike over the mountains to a neighbouring village called Magura. This will involve more uphill work than downhill and I confess that I don’t feel quite ready for it, but come back tomorrow and you’ll find out if we made it OK.

 

Day 7 – New-towns

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Friday 5 September 2025 – We had anchored overnight in Kongsfjord, which meant that we had had a still and silent ship in which to sleep.  Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? And yet I didn’t sleep any more soundly than I had on the other nights, and it seemed that others felt the same. Perhaps we’re missing the lulling thrum of the ship’s engines? Anyway, we emerged, blinking once again, into a calm morning and (relatively) warm temperatures.

We were anchored over the water from an actual town! It’s called Ny Ålesund and is currently the location for research centres sponsored by a variety of countries.  More of it later, but it was obviously a popular tourist destination.

Atlas World Traveller was in town

There were two practical upshots of our being there. The first was that we had to turn off all Wifi and Bluetooth on our phones in order that their radio emissions didn’t interfere with delicate research instruments. However, and I confess I didn’t understand this*, the second was that cellular phone access was OK – and we were able to camp on to their 5G network! Lovely unmetered internet! That killed off conversation for a while as everyone pored over their phones.

Kuba tore everyone away from their e-mails and cat videos to take us to a landing at a site called Ny London – New London. This was the site of a very risky punt on the quarrying of marble by a British chap called Ernest Mansfield in the early 1900s.  It was the closest Svalbard came to a gold rush and led to the setting up of a mining operation very nearly of the scale of its coal industry. In order to stake a claim to the area, Mansfield had to set up a proper operation – buildings, railway, machinery. He decided that it was worth it for the vast amount of marble that could be quarried, and set up a camp for 70 quarry men to work there. The marble was assessed as being of fabulous quality, but, too late, it transpired that it suffered from a fatal flaw – frost damage after having been quarried meant that it crumbled easily and was simply not usable. So by 1920, Mansfield’s adventure was over and the site was simply abandoned. Being pre-WWII, it now has historical status and is left (almost entirely) untouched.  We could see the remaining cabins as we approached on the Zodiacs,

and the crane used to load and unload boats.

As usual with a landing, we had to wait patiently in the Zodiacs while Kuba went to scout the area

and then we could wander round the remnants of the settlement – Camp Mansfield.

The area shows every evidence of being simply abandoned. All sorts of stuff is just lying around,

and the machinery is just rusting away.

There is some evidence of a rail track to carry quarried materials to the machinery and the crane.

The whole place had very strong overtones of the Grytviken site at the other end of the world on South Georgia.

I said that the site had to remain untouched.  There is, apparently, one exception. There is a lottery and local people can enter to win permission to spend one night in the main cabin there. We looked into one of the windows and

it doesn’t look all that hospitable, frankly. But, you know, different strokes for different folks.

There were a couple of areas where it looked as if quarrying had taken place.

Having spent a little time looking around the site (and waiting for people to GET OUT OF MY SHOT!), Kuba spotted a couple of reindeer close by

so we gently crept towards them to get a closer look. Nearby was a magnificently-antlered male,

who was very chill, and simply kept ruminating whilst people stared and photographed.

Nearby again was a slightly less pleasant reminder of the toughness of life in this area of Svalbard.

It’s impossible to be certain, but Kuba thought that it was likely that this reindeer had starved to death – and this in an area where there was plenty of food.  Reindeer can eat moss and any other vegetation that they find, but it seems that in eating these they can pick up small stones.  The stones can accumulate in the animal’s stomach to the point where it eats and eats but can’t digest, and so dies of starvation.

As well as the male there were actually four other reindeer in the area, two females and two calves, and we very gently followed them as they fossicked around.

The site gave us some great views over Kongsfjord’s old and new towns.

One of the Italian couples in the group, Doina and Denis, were called “specialist leaders” – photo and video experts to whom we could turn to for advice on matters photographic should we wish.  They have a considerable online presence – they are “content providers” – and spent their time frantically photographing and videoing us, the surroundings and themselves in a never-ending (and sometimes even a little obstructive) quest for angles, images and footage. Denis asked if there were members of the group who would be prepared to do a short video interview about the time we’ve spent on and around Kinfish and Jane and I agreed to do one for him.  We spent a couple of minutes talking about how wonderful the whole week had been, with that memorable polar bear encounter among the wildlife, the lovely crew on the boat and the great organisation of the whole thing.

In one of the greatest possible ironies, when we rejoined the Zodiacs a few moments later and set off away from Ny London, it became clear that no-one knew where Kinfish actually was, and it was out of walkie-talkie range! So much for great organisation…

There had clearly been some miscommunication – Kuba had not expected the ship to move away. Anyway, since Ny London is on Blomstrand, which is actually an island despite being described as a halvøy, (peninsula) the two Zodiacs set off in opposite directions to see which way round was the best to find Kinfish. So, accidentally, we found ourselves doing what had been planned for the afternoon’s Zodiac cruise – looking into the caves and other rock formations around the island.

One was particularly impressive – a rock bridge formed the entrance to an “open” cave.

It has some beautiful quartz formations on the walls.

We were a bit chilly by the time we got back to Kinfish, which had parked itself on the southern side of the island – it took around 25 minutes to get back to it in the end.  But the fact that we’d inadvertently compressed two activities into one meant that we had more time in the afternoon.  This gave skipper Jesper the chance to tell us about the history of Kinfish, which started out as a search and rescue boat called the Ambassador Bay, named after the US Ambassador who made a present of the boat to Svalbard. (In a twist to the end of the story, it was later discovered that the funding for this came not from the Ambassador but from the CIA so that the boat could also do some spying.) It then went through various other roles, such as a surveying and mapping boat before being bought by Rolf’s son Robin and modified for the exploration cruising it now does. That final modification was overseen by Harald, the chief engineer, and carried out by 25 friends of the Dahlberg family, who didn’t charge for their time – a remarkable effort all round.

The team on board also did some quick footwork and agreed with The Powers That Be that we could dock at Ny Ålesund. This was great news to various people on various levels.  For a start, it meant that people could visit the shop there and indulge in some retail therapy. We could also visit the museum, which is open 24 hours a day with free entry; and we could wander the town without needing to be shepherded by people wearing guns – provided we stayed inside the town limits. And, of course, there was internet access, not that we cared, oh no, not a bit.

Accordingly, after yet another stupendous and stupefyingly filling lunch from Roger, we wandered into town. Kinfish is small and can dock at the quay. Other, larger ships, can’t do this

and, selfishly, we were pleased to note that guests from one of these ships (all kitted out in distinctive orange jackets) were being ferried back to their vessel

 

 

leaving the town itself much quieter for us.

The town itself is larger than I had been expecting,

and a lot more attractive; I’d been expecting something strictly functional, but there were several colourful cottages and houses, some of which, we understood later, had been shipped over from Ny London, having, we suspect, been spruced up a bit.

It looked like everyone had piled into the shop – six days without being able to buy anything is clearly very stressful – so, as we passed the museum building

we decided to pop in; and I’m very glad we did. It’s very nicely laid out, and gives a great sense of the place’s history, starting from its coal mining origins to today’s research stations.

There was much information about the various airship exploits that started from here

and some exhibits which show how little and how much progress has been made in medical care.

The dentist chair and the drills look medieval; but the rinsing-out bowl is pretty much the same in today’s dental surgeries.

We did go into the shop

which is, obvs, full of tourist souvenir materials, but done with a lot of charm. There are traditional sealskin gloves and modern, hi-tech cold weather gear, any number of sorts of junk food, airship-shaped Christmas tree baubles, mugs, jugs, calendars, postcards and a whole load more – and the store appeared to be doing good business from Kinfish guests.

We strolled around the rest of the town. It is basically run by an organisation called King’s Bay, originally the mining company, and it runs a service building where everyone can eat.

The buildings themselves are either purpose built research centres, like this Norwegian one,

or repurposed from original buildings, as China did here.

There’s a bust of Amundsen

which is apparently one of five identical busts dotted around various out-of-the-way places where this remarkable man had an impact.

The oldest building in the town dates back to 1909; it was built by the Green Harbour coal company,

and the blue building behind it is the world’s most northerly post office. The little train which was used to transport coal has been preserved, and very endearing it is, too.

There’s one “must-see” object there which lies beyond the town’s limits, so Kuba organised a guided tour of the place during the early evening taking Gunnar and guns with him so that we could go and take a look past the edge of town.

The object is the mast which was built as a mooring point for the Norge airship which completed the first successful (north) transpolar flight in 1926. The expedition was led by Roald Amundson; the airship was built in Italy and piloted by an Italian crew under Umberto Nobile; and it was paid for by the American Lincoln Ellsworth.

The mast even has its own trig point, a tiny, neat pyramid by the mast.

The evening light was fantastic

but, rather than linger and admire it, we headed back to Kinfish just in time for a 9pm departure to reach our final stopping point, in Ekmanfjorden. This destination was rather forced on us because one of the big ships we saw earlier had elected to visit where Kuba had originally planned to go.  This meant that tomorrow morning was to be an “Expedition Morning”; in other words, Kuba had no idea what, but would work something out. What transpired was astonishing and fantastic and I’ll tell you all about it – some other time. So stay tuned….

 

* On further research (thank you, ChatGPT), I understand that this apparent dissonance is because the 4G/5G is a licensed spectrum with predictable emissions, whereas WiFi and Bluetooth are inconsistent in intensity and location and can’t be separated from the other measurements their instruments make.

Day 5 – Not as originally planned

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Wednesday 3 September 2025 – Mother Nature played a few games with Kuba’s plans today. The idea had been to do a landing and walk to a glacier. This one, actually,

but keen eyes on the bridge had spotted a polar bear nearby.

Yes, there really is a polar bear in this picture, which gives a good idea of how keen are the eyes of the crew. Here’s a closer view.

This meant that we couldn’t land, mainly for the polar bear’s benefit, since it would have been shot if it had started to make a nuisance of itself.  So we cruised around in Zodiacs instead. On the shores of the fjord, which is called Wijderfjord (I’ll let you guess why) there was an abandoned trapper’s cabin from the days when that sort of thing was permitted.

There was plenty of bird life to be seen – the ubiquitous kittiwakes and other gulls, who found the various islets very convenient scouting posts for any possible picking on other species they could consider.

On the shore line, we saw a gang of purple sandpipers fossicking around and feasting on the region’s delicious seaweed.

There were arctic terns flitting about,

and every so often coming over to check us out.

The geology was fascinating: close-to, layers of different coloured rock made some lovely patterns;

and, far-off, we had some wonderful landscapes.

Specifically, there was a canyon for us to explore.

This river flows from Five Mile Lake; but we could only go a short distance up because there was quite a considerable current flowing out of it into the fjord. You can see what looks like rapids further up the stream in this picture.

Having cruised the canyon, we then made a landing, which I hadn’t expected,

and took a short, but somewhat exhilarating hike

up to a viewpoint,

where we got a different perspective over the canyon

and the wonderful scenery.

Kuba (left) and Gunnar are the guides that drive the Zodiacs and lead the excursions.

They are both armed and dangerous, mainly to any importunate polar bears.

On the hike, we saw some interestingly split rocks,

and some of the local vegetation.

Then we headed back to the ship.

Kuba explained that his original plan had been to do the canyon and associated landing in the afternoon, with a somewhat longer hike to Five Mile Lake.  But it wasn’t that far from where we couldn’t land earlier because of the polar bear; the bear could easily have covered the distance to the second site during the morning, so we couldn’t risk an afternoon hike there, hence the abbreviated morning walk.

Instead, for the afternoon, we moved around the corner into Woodfjorden and did a landing at Jakobsenbukta. Again, the scenery was awesome.

The shore was basically a glacier river delta, with lots of water (and driftwood).

The weather was incredibly mild, possibly as warm as 8°C, so most of us were wearing (relatively) light clothing and carrying very little.  The exception was Doina and Denis, who live and breathe (and make a living from) online content, so they were fully kitted up.

The site was not one that Kuba or Gunnar had ever visited before – they had taken a look at maps and decided that it looked promising for a short hike; having landed, they then discussed which direction we should go.

The direction they chose wasn’t a problem for most of us; we’d followed instructions to wear our rubber boots. Not everyone had, though, so there was a bit of a hold-up whilst people worked out how to cross a water-filled channel – not deeper than wellie boots, but deeper than hiking shoes!

The delta had areas of still, calm water, which made it a fantastic source of my favourite kind of image – reflections!

The view back to the ship was quite impressive, too.

Jane spotted a footprint,

which we assume came from a reindeer, as did a small pile of droppings we passed. We also passed some Campion moss

which has evolved a survival defence against being eaten by reindeer, which is one of the few animals which can digest normal moss. Thus, it being slow-growing, this clump could be quite old. (Campion, The Wonder Moss?) We were enjoined to take care and avoid walking on it and others like it.

Our walk took us towards the near ridge you can see below, with Kuba leading and Gunnar behind (so he was the rear Gunnar at this point).

However, Rolf’s footwear developed a technical problem

and so Kuba and Gunnar had another planning session and decided to split the party. Kuba led a few of the party, including Rolf, obvs, back to the landing site, where (I think he had to spill the beans on a surprise, here) they could help the ship’s crew, who were planning a bonfire.  Gunnar took charge of the rest of us and we walked on to the ridge. It’s important for the man with the gun to go first in order to be able to protect the rest of the group if need be, so Gunnar was now our forward Gunnar.

We got to the top of the ridge, which gave us a chance to take in the fantastic scenery. Kuba had explained that the triangular rock was caused (as can clearly be seen here) by two converging glacier flows.  Geologists call this shape a “horn”

and I guess the most familiar to Europeans is the Matterhorn. The other famous one is Artesonraju in Peru. You may never have heard of it (I hadn’t), but you’d recognise it as the mountain which inspired the Paramount logo. To the left of the horn above is a cirque – a circular ice field with a glacier emerging from it.  The light was great for landscape photography.

After some moments for people to take in the view

we headed back down the way we came.  Agnese, the other Italian lass, found a fossil

which Gunnar told us was strictly not to be taken away from the scene. Apparently there is a chance that baggage will be scanned to check for illicit stone or fossil removal, with fines as a penalty, so no-one took the risk. No, they didn’t. Really, officer.

We could smell the bonfire before we could see it, and then there it was,

brilliantly setup by the ship’s crew, who were doing the environment a favour by consuming some of that driftwood.

Someone had even had the idea of using driftwood to create a bridge over that awkward water-filled channel.

Everything was beautifully set up, with Anni manning the bar

 

so quite quickly we had a relaxed, party vibe going on the beach.

Russell the Viking, together with Chief Officer Morten and AB Rasmus

Gunnar and AB Malte doing competitive seesaw

Proof that two females are the equal of one male?

The evening sun gave us a marvellous backdrop.

Once back on the boat, we had yet another splendid dinner from Roger, our Swedish chef (but no muppet, he), who had cooked fish that had been caught from the boat the previous evening. And timing allowed another fishing session for those who wished to join in.

As backdrop for this, we had a rainbow

and a fabulous sunset

which I think made a fittingly splendid end to another splendid day. It may not have been as originally planned, but Kuba and the skipper between them hatched up a good plan B (and then C) so that everyone had a great day.

Kuba has a plan for the morrow, too, of course – he always has a plan. Let’s see whether circumstances allow it to proceed in its original form, eh?