Muppetry on a Grand Scale

Martin Jeffes of Kolarovo, Bulgaria (& Sakar Hills Camping, Biser)

This article first appeared in Volume 1, Issue 4, March 2010 of Martin's occasional internet illustrated newsletter, 'The Grapevine'. The newsletter is circulated to family and friends and comments on local life and colour, particularly among British expatriates and visitors to the campsite owned and managed by Martin and his son, Matt: Camping Sakar Hills.

On Monday 14th December, a message was flashed to the orbiting space-station communication centre of International Rescue, which is in a geo-stationary orbit somewhere above the M25. Unfortunately, due to the current economic crisis, the station was, at the time, unmanned, and the message was beamed down to their terrestrial base, which is in an office next door to Grapevine's newsroom. At the time the entire Tracy family were out fruit-picking, window-cleaning and busking, to earn a few bob, and so, hearing the phone ringing, Matt answered the call.

On the line was the somewhat worried daughter of local entrepreneur Dodo. Now Dodo imports cars and caravans, both usually past the first flush of youth, into Bulgaria. He and his trusted accomplice, Bobo, will fly to the UK, buy a couple of, usually, 4x4 vehicles and caravans, and drive them back to Bulgaria. This time, it seems Dodo was on his own in a vehicle, towing a caravan, when he broke down somewhere in Hungary. A call went out to his LSW (long-suffering wife) to bring another vehicle from Hylabovo all the way to Hungary to rescue him. Probably much against her better judgement, she set off, accompanied by Dodo's right-hand man, Bobo, and her young son, Sam.

She rendezvoused with Dodo successfully and they all began the laborious process of trying to bring both the broken-down vehicle and the caravan back, towing each in turn a given distance. All went according to plan for a while, but then the towing vehicle also broke down, halfway between LSW, who was in Szeged in Hungary, and Bobo in Romania. LSW was left with the original vehicle that had broken down, and was parked near a shopping centre by the M5 motorway on the edge of Szeged, while Bobo and LSW's son, Sam, were in the caravan about twenty-five miles east of Dodo. Unfortunately, LSW had left her mobile phone in the vehicle she had driven up in, which was not the vehicle she now found herself in, so she had no way of communicating with Dodo, or anyone else. And so she stayed for two days, sleeping in the car at night, loitering around the warm shops during the day.

Bobo and Sam, meanwhile, were settling down in the caravan, which had no heating, but, it being just before Christmas, Dodo had filled the caravan with a large consignment of packets of mince pies and chocolate advent calendars, plus a quantity of old clothes destined for the orphanage in Bulgaria. Picture then, if you will, how it would have looked to any Romanian passers-by who happened to look in through the caravan windows and see the pair dressed in many layers of old woolly clothing, eating mince pies and chocolate advent calendars, day after day.

Dodo had rung Dereck, a neighbour of his, on Sunday night, outlining their collective plight, and, as Dereck thought, telling him that Bobo and Sam were in the border town of Silistra, on the Romanian side of the river Danube. Dereck set out that night to pick them up.

Unfortunately he had forgotten his passport, a fact that was brought to his attention when he reached the border, hours later. Back he went to his home, collected his passport and returned to Silistra to cross into Romania. Imagine his surprise when he found out from Dodo that he hadn't said Silistra, but Silistie, which was about two hundred and fifty miles away.

By now it was mid-day Monday, and off he set in appalling weather to rescue Bobo and Sam.

We left Kolarovo at 1pm on that Monday, having stuffed the Land Rover full of spare fuel, tow-ropes, spades, Julie's homemade pies, water, etc. We had decided to go and find Dodo first, near this place called Silistie, but in the night we had a call from Dereck, who said he was on his way towards Dodo, so we changed our plan and set course for Szeged.

We ran into snow as soon as we entered Romania, and it got progressively worse. At times during the night we were forced to follow snow-ploughs to keep going. Soon after entering Romania we had got ourselves comprehensively lost and ended up having to do a twenty- mile off-road journey along a very muddy track across farmland, which was shown on our map as a road.

This is not altogether unusual for Romania. Here we parted company with one of our mud-flaps but gained a lot of mud, snow and ice in exchange.

We got to Szeged at 7 am on Tuesday, made LSW comfortable in the back of the Land Rover, wrapped in blankets to thaw her out, hooked her car on the back in tow and headed for home. As we neared the town of Arad we learned that Dereck had picked up Dodo and was on his way back to the caravan, was a couple of hours ahead of us, and was going to take it in tow. It didn't seem sensible for them to hang around for us, especially as the conditions were still very bad, so we said we would make our own way back but would follow their route in case they had any problems.

Their route back was from Arad across to Sibiu, and then down to Pitestie, where they could access the motorway to Bucharest, and thence down to Giurgiu. Now, that route is not good on a nice summer's day, with a lot of traffic, and is somewhat worse in a blizzard. Suffice to say, we crawled along for mile after mile and the prospect of an early return to the warmth of my hearth faded further and further as the day wore on. As we approached Bucharest we were a little surprised to learn from Dereck that they were now behind us, having stopped to sort out a problem with the lights on the caravan. We wished them well and pressed on.

The snow petered out as we neared the Danube, which raised our spirits a bit, and we finally crossed into Bulgaria at about midnight at Ruse, only to find that it was raining there and that the rain was freezing onto anything it made contact with. In no time at all the whole exterior of the car was coated with a thick layer of ice. Luckily most of the road had been salted, so we were able to make fair progress, except for one time when we took a wrong turn and, having realized our mistake, attempted to turn round on a filling-station forecourt, which had not been salted, resulting in the towed car trying to overtake the towing vehicle.

When we got within about 50 miles of home at about 4 am, we ran into thick fog, which prevailed for the rest of the journey. We arrived back at Kolarovo at 5 am, having covered 1300 miles in 39 hours, nearly all of it in dreadful weather, half of it with a vehicle in tow, tired, cold and hungry, but with a promise from LSW that she would not attempt to undertake any future rescue missions, if asked.