Who dares wins in Dracula country

Seeking a last-minute getaway, Rhiannon Edwards hit upon Transylvania – and two flights, several Airbnbs and one car hire later, she was on the road

I’d love to say our holiday was thought through down to every last detail. It certainly wasn’t. It was an exercise in pure spontaneity. My partner and I only decided on the destination – Romania – three weeks before we set off last August and ahead of leaving, snatched moments to throw together a very loose plan for a road trip through Transylvania.

“There’s wolves and Gothic castles and we might even wear Van Helsing hats,” we exclaimed to anyone who questioned our choice, while showing them pictures of gorgeous countryside that a Google search quickly rendered. “Plus, Prince Charles has a house there – so it must be pretty good.”

The idea was to fly into Cluj Napoca (known as Cluj) in the north and explore the region, driving south towards Bucharest, from where we would fly home. We booked a room for our first night, and figured we’d find our other accommodation along the way, relying on Airbnb and the internet – with the backup that we could always sleep in the car.

Day one Cluj

Cluj is one of Romania’s biggest cities and used to be Transylvania’s capital, but it didn’t look like much as we drove in from the airport – more 1960 concrete blocks than 1260 medieval Clockwise from main: Sighisoara streets; the boating lake at Salina Turda; cafe life in Cluj-Napoca; on the road in Transylvania stonework. Our apartment, inside one of the compounds of communist-era blocks, was massive inside, with a balcony that looked over the city and decor that hadn’t changed since the Eighties (or maybe earlier), but at £25 a night we weren’t complaining.

We spent the evening in the Old Town, a mix of medieval and fussy Baroque facades. The real scene stealer here is St Michael’s Church. Dark, Gothic and imposing, it is the obvious centre of Cluj, and the cafés in the surrounding Unirii Square are a good place to get a beer.

We soon found ourselves telling each other macabre made-up stories, as we stared into the darkened windows of the church and thought about our next stop: Transylvania.

Day Two Cund

After a bit of late-night internet research, we decided that to get to the heart of the matter in Transylvania we needed to stay somewhere really remote. So we booked the next two

Wizz Air (wizzair. com) Gatwick to Cluj Napoca and Bucharest to Luton: £220 Car hire: £107 (VW Golf) Fuel: £35 Accommodation (Airbnb.com): £117 Cluj Napoca £12.50 Cund Farmhouse £60 (£30 per night) Brasov £25 Bucharest £19.50

Grand total: £479 (all prices per person based on two travelling) who finished their shift with cigarettes in the garden while we drank the house negronis late into the night. The five-course set menu paired with Romanian wines cost us £45 – expensive for Romania, excellent value almost anywhere else in Europe.

Day Three Sighisoara

We’d seen the remote side of Transylvania, so what next? We took another punt on Google, which told us that a 40-minute day trip from Cund was Sighisoara, a Unesco-listed citadel originally built into a rock face built by the Transylvanian Saxons in around 1280. We wandered through its cobbled streets, and briefly considered kitting ourselves out in various leather and linen outfits that were on offer from the shops.

At one edge of the citadel we reached the Biserica din Deal, an understated church with a hillside Lutheran graveyard which, perched 1,407ft up from sea level, enjoys a pretty good view over the Greater Tarnava Valley. It was a place to pause before investigating the painted houses and trinket shops below – like a seaside town, without the sea.

Day Five Bucharest

After breakfast in Brasov outside a side street café, we were ready to see the Carpathians up close. This was the most scenic drive of the trip. Ascending the mountains in a series of hairpin bends through fir forests, we gawped at the views over Brasov and the route we’d left behind. As we came to flatter, comparatively boring land, we knew we were nearing the capital, and our apartment in one of Ceausescu’s featureless apartment blocks. Grotty, gritty Bucharest was a far cry from the prettiness of Brasov, or the peace of rural Cund, but we found some respite in Titan park, our local for one night only. That evening in the neon light of a late-night bar we found ourselves pining for the green hills and flower meadows we’d left behind. Should we abandon our return flight and head back to Transylvania? That would have been taking spontaneity a step too far.