So, during the first two months or so of the assignment, I had contrived to sail a yacht across the Baltic, I had motorcycled from Munich to Turin, had walked for half a week from Cadiz to Gibraltar, had ridden a horse through the Black Forest and taken a train from Victoria Station in London to the Hotel Victoria in Brig, Switzerland. All that remained, come September, was to drive a car the whole way across -- to drive from the westernmost point of northern Europe to the continent's most easterly extension.

I rather roughly defined this as being a trip from the cliffs that overlooked Ushant in France to the point where the continent dividing line of the River Volga has its estuary, at Astrakan, in what was still then Soviet Russia. It would be a passage of 4,000 miles or so, slicing neatly across the Iron Curtain from the Loire to the Caspian: in all ways, an admirable expedition.

Mentioned a while back, since then Google Street View has made several visits to Câmpulung Moldovenesc, which does not now look quite so grubby as Winchester describes, with a number of BMW and Audi cars visible.