Through passport control at St Pancras. No queues. Frisked me instead of the scanner because of the defibrillator which meant I could keep my belt on which was good because my trousers fell down last time.

We’ve had a cup of coffee and are waiting for our platform to be announced. There is something wonderful about the calm peacefulness of waiting.

In Austria on the train. I woke in the night many times. One time I looked out of the window at the dark night as we raced through and thought How wonderful this is. Later I woke again and the Danube was flowing past, close enough to touch.

I’m sitting on a train in Bucharest waiting for it to move. It is delayed for some reason with no particular indication of how long the delay might be. We are sitting quietly, waiting. This is the train to take us to Medicine where we have four hours before our connection that will take us to Tulcea.

We had a wonderful stay in Timișoara, and the sleeper train last night was special. We had our own two bunk room.

Ah, we’re moving. On our way!

Transition state, waiting until it’s time to get the bus in a rather industrial Tulcea, the Danube a few yards away beyond a building site. Two gulls with black tips to their wings wheel overhead in the clear and cloudless sky. I’m in the vast and empty railway station hardly worthy of the name: almost endless tarmac between three rows of rails. Oxford ragwort and bittercress growing in the cracks, three banks of dissolute blue benches. The gulls are very white. The dogs that were here earlier are gone. Louise is buying a hat or bread or bus tickets. A small white butterfly visits a ragwort flower. Solitary people walk into and out of sight carrying plastic bags or talking on the phone. The building site murmurs. Time to go.

We have arrived. At Bunica Maria. In Mahmudia. It is very special and quite ordinary. The specialness is ordinary, the ordinariness is special. I’ve seen a tree sparrow. I’ve never seen a tree sparrow before. All the sparrows here are tree sparrows. See what I mean? The waiting is over.

The picture does not really tell the story. Fish stew, fish soup. Garlic sauce. Local spirit, good company. The others weren’t at all scary, our hosts Andrei and Irene charming, not quite the right word, she is friendly, direct, amused, he is deeply knowledgeable, passionate, also direct. And together they produced a wonderful meal and made us feel very welcome.

I’m sitting outside. It’s still early, before seven. The ginger cat has joined me, reminds me of the cat of my childhood, my cat, Cosy Pit James I named him and he was always my cat.

It’s cooler this morning, no sun, probably a good thing. We’re in the boat for six hours today and we’ve been promised pelicans .

The second day began with nightingales and ended with a greenshank. In the middle there was a garland of glossy ibis. Or maybe it began with a flock of pelicans flying high and ended with a hoopoe. Or maybe it began with Dalmatian pelicans and ended with a golden jackal, no, that was the first day. All in all eighty-three species seen or heard. Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.

The other travellers we have met have had a wonderful openness, even if they have only travelled a short distance. I’m sitting outside the cabin where we’re staying. I’m rather cold, especially my fingers. We are in Transylvania, south of Cluj, and there are cocks crowing and chickens chuntering. A woodpecker is tapping. In the distance dogs are barking. The mountains I can see are clothed in soft green trees up to a certain height and then the rock rises vertically to the top where a thinner coating of trees rides along the horizon. I’m drinking coffee. There is always coffee. Louise emerges from the cabin to head to the loo and I wish her good luck. It’s quite cold, did I say that already, and the compost toilet is outside and rather primitive in a building site sort of way.

Now I can hear a greenfinch somewhere. On the day we arrived, two days ago, I was greeted by a common redstart, not at all a common bird, sitting on the fencepost twenty feet from where I sit and write. The male sat proud and preening his bronze feathers while the female hopped around on the ground looking for food in the newly ploughed strip of ground.

The land here is all strips and boxes. Next door on the redstart side the ploughed strip extends to the road behind divided from this camping ground by a few fence posts that once supported a fence and now only support common redstarts and other local birds. On the other side it is more complicated. There is a small and relatively new orchard, all the trunks of the trees painted white to a certain height, and well fenced with wire netting and topped at six feet with barbed wire. This extends about halfway up the camping ground, which like the ploughed strip, extends to the lane behind.

After the orchard there are two boxed vegetable plots fenced with wire netting and wooden strips, and beyond them a house and a new barn. There is a yard around the house where the chickens roam.

Between me and the mountains, nearby, there is a jumble of buildings, barns, wood stores, houses. There is a scattering of fruit trees, pear and cherry white with flower, others gearing up to bloom.

A dog barks. A cockerel crows. Time to make porridge.

The sun is bright. There was a ground frost last night. Mowing and shouting are taking place somewhere nearby. The mountains are a dark silhouette, the two smaller pyramid hills in front of them begin to take shape as the sun rises higher in the sky. A flock of crows drift across in the distance. Tree sparrows chirrup behind me, a cockerel crows. We walked up into the mountains yesterday and last night we slept well. Today is May Day.

Farewell După Gard. Thank you. It has been wonderful. Quite cold at night, but wonderful. I’m sitting at Campia Turzii station waiting for the train to Cluj. From there we will continue on to Budapest, so it’s farewell to Romania too. We have been happy here. I’m looking out across rooftops towards distant mountains. An orange goods train wanders through towing lengths of rail on individual jockey wheels. Away to my right there is a gang of men wearing an air force version of army camo, blue swirls instead of green. One walks past. His badge says Covid 19. I’m none the wiser. There’s chatter on the station. Quite a few people waiting for the train, ours or another. I have a sense of forgetting. I’ve left something behind at După Gard, some of my hopefulness. I am not diminished by this leaving, quite the reverse. I have brought much with me from there. The strange rail train returns, unchanged. Much is strange here.

In the Eurostar lounge at Brussels Midi. The journey almost over. I haven’t mentioned Budapest but I very much enjoyed our stay there. I took lots of pictures. I walked. We went on a rather bizarre cruise and we went to a jazz club. Now we’re here. We’ve been on a train since yesterday afternoon and I’m very tired. We’ll be home tonight, all being well. It all seems very remarkable and very wonderful and I’m very very tired.

I’m home and it’s four in the morning and I’m awake. I’m lying in bed. I’ve just found out all about the white paint they put on the trunks of young orchard trees in Romania. It needs to be latex paint. It’s good for three reasons. Not sure what they were. I was dreaming of the early stages of a post-apocalyptic world. We were all going to go to Scotland, if there was room. It might not be alright.

It’s strange and unsettling to be home. I’m not here yet. I’m not anywhere. I made very nice food yesterday. That was good. I’m not sure what else I’m meant to do. Maybe that’s enough.