On the Piatra Craiului Mountains

Distance: 11 miles
Ascent: 700m
Weather: most cloudy, rain late on
Chamois, nutcrackers, fungi, friendly cats, small brown frog.

 

From the villa we walked through the village and along by some houses, to a rough track that led down to the gorge. We hiked back up the canyon, turning off up one of the steep tracks just past Nicole Kidman's cave. There were chamois on the opposite hillside, way off in the distance. I managed to get a very ropey picture of them, but they were quite clear through the binoculars.

The path went into the trees and steadily upwards. It was very quiet and peaceful in the forest,  and there was sign of pine martens and lots of fungi.

 

A wide meadow opened up, where there were lots of little common button mushrooms, later on we saw masses of mushrooms and toadstools. We had lunch on some tree stumps, watching the clouds come in, then walked on up through woods and meadows to the Curmatura Cabin mountain hut where we had soup (choice of bean or veg) and a sit inside, it was warm and cosy inside, just the sort of place you'd want to cosy up on a snowy winter walk - but apparently the loos left quite a bit to be desired.

 

We came down by the forest road, being deforested in parts and much churned up,  back into the gorge. As we'd spurned the offer of getting the minibus down to fetch us, we had to walk back up the hill in the (by now) quite heavy rain.