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In Edwardian novels and early travel books, telegrams were the communication system that heralded journeys and adventure. You know the kind of thing: delivered by a boy on a bicycle and with stuck on print strips reading something like; ‘Entrain Connemarawards soonest. Stop. Bring jodhpurs fly rod axe. Stop. Expect trouble. Stop.’

E-mails seem to work the same way in the 21st century. Unexpectedly winging their way in from remote corners of the globe. Staccato with facts and instructions. Well, a few e-mails anyway – the rest advertise dental plans and guarantee free loans, or are sharp reminders from editors that I’m missing deadlines. The e-mail from Transylvania that arrived late in December was one of the journeys and adventure kind.

‘I’m not too sure if taking horses off for days on end would be good idea in mountains in winter,’ it read,’ I’ve seen wolves in my garden in the snow. However riding during the day is practicable. Look forward to seeing you. Best wishes, Julian Ross.’ By train from Germany I could be in remotest Romania by New Year and with Julian a few days later. Two of us began packing for the cold. A follow-up e-mail asked me to bring a pack of harness makers’ needles and a litre of leather oil. I added in some Jameson’s and half a Stilton. And we set off for winter riding in Transylvania.

Julian lives in the village of Lunca, in the Eastern Carpathians. He settled there two years ago, with his Romanian wife, Angelica, having first explored every corner of the country on foot and bicycle and then by horse. Horses work well in Romania. In most rural areas they’re the primary tractor power for agriculture and logging, and on small roads a pair of horses pulling the characteristic ‘carutza’ loaded with hay, logs or people is as common as a car or truck. Every village has horses and carts tied to fences or outside bars, just as Ireland once had horses pulling churn loaded flat cars outside every creamery.

Romanians don’t do much riding, though. Horses are for work not leisure on the whole, and it’s a whole lot more efficient for them to pull things with more things piled on the thing they’re pulling, than having riders careering all over the place on an otherwise empty horse. So, the people of Lunca probably think that Julian’s a tad eccentric not only because he rides his horses, but because he’s got so many of them. But then again in Romania horse tourism is a new concept, and Julian was blazing a trail in running horse trips there. I’d heard about him through a friend who’d been out to ride with him. “Fantastic landscape, real mountains, and his horses are just the kind of sensible sure-footed animals you need to get up and down them,” he’d enthused.

The train to Lunca lurched across Romania. Looking out of the window I could see the fortified church steeples of the German Saxons who 800 years before had made a little Germany here as a bulwark against marauding eastern nomadic tribes; the cities of the Magyars whose lands had been passed back and forth between the Hungarian and Romanian states over the centuries; the timeless movement of the flocks of sheep across the plains tended, still, by black astrakhan hatted and sheepskin cloaked shepherds. At every village level crossing horse carts traffic-jammed against the barriers waiting for us to pass.

At the station, high in the beech and pine forests of the Carpathians, Julian was waiting for us to arrive. A pair of Lipizzaner crosses hitched to a bright yellow ‘caleche’ was our transport. “I hope you don’t mind…I‘ve got a car but try not to use it, and around here horses are more practical anyway.” he apologised unnecessarily. Mind? No. For me international travel in an ideal world would be all sailing boats, trains and carriages. We lashed our bags onto the back of the vehicle and climbed in. A yell of “HI! HI! Get along,” as Julian put the horses into gear and we trotted off through the village.

Wooden houses lined the streets. Some were simple log cabins, but most were ornate affairs scaled with pine shingles and hung about with carved eaves and balconies and verandas. There were barns, and windlass wells, and kennels and stables; all in wood. “I would have picked you up by sleigh,” Julian continued, “but we’ve had a weird winter…all the snow melted a few days ago…really unusual, because normally we’ve got feet of it and for months, and now it’s just on the highest ground.” I pointed out that all the snow they’d lost had fallen in Ireland only a few days before. “Well, whatever, it’s good for us really as hard feed is expensive this year, so the warmer the better.”

We clattered into the yard formed by his small, snug house and two big wooden barns and unharnessed the horses. It was almost dark. Angelica had plates of rich stew and potatoes waiting, “Just a little something after the journey, as it’s a while till supper.” There was a shot of ‘tzuica’ – pear and plum spirits, double distilled and aged in casks in a yard opposite the Romanian orthodox church – and then we went back outside to bring in the horses. Julian has 14 and a handful of foals at foot. They encompassed most of Romania’s breeds. A couple of Semigrues – light, agile draught horses, good doers, that could shift logs or laden carts with ease. A trio of Lipizzaner crosses that along with a ‘sport horse’ at livery hinted at past connections with the Lipica studs, and the Nonius and Furiosa breeds of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Hutzels, Romania’s own horses.

Bred from 1400 or earlier, the Hutzel horses mirrors the Hutzel people, who as Uniates preached independence of thought and self-reliance. The Hutzel stud is still as remote as ever, a thousand metres up in the mountains at Lucina. The horses that Julian had were good examples of their breed – even in their shaggy winter coats, you could see their virtues and suitability for the country. Small in stature, heavy bodied, strong legged, intelligent heads, with a good dollop of pony wickedness advertising their ability to survive.

The jostling herd splashed across a stream and trotted into the barns. The Hutzels were kept together, tied to managers in one barn. The other horses were stalled separately on the other side. Two black Hutzel stallions were kept in an adjoining yard. As we moved amongst the horses in the low light, clipping chains to halters, skepping out the alley, doling out maize and rye, Julian explained the Hutzels' characteristics. “They’re meant to be descended from the Tarpan – the last of Europe’s wild horses. Certainly, in summer, they have strong eel stripes and some of them have fully striped legs. They don’t need much in the way of feed and they’ll go all day.”

There was a clatter out in the yard and the two black stallions arrived, pulling the typical four-wheeled, coffin-hulled, farm cart. A lantern swung off one corner. Julian’s horseman, Cornel Melente, had been up to the sawmills to collect baulks of timber to renew a patch of stable floor. The horses backed the long, heavy ‘carutza’ back into the carriage shed, next to an equally long sleigh. We slipped the stallions’ harness off. To save expensive leather there was little other than breast collar and chain traces, and neck breeching. The latter were heavy neck straps chained to the front of the long pole. “Not very efficient at all, but all the carts have strong screw brakes, and for really steep hills chocks for the wheels. Going up hill, there’s a handy thing as well.” Julian felt under the back of the card and hinged down a spiked metal pole. “If the wagon starts to run backwards this digs into the ground and stops the whole lot dead.” He gestured up into the dark hills above us. “It’s really steep up there and a cart can be coming straight down a hill with a tonne of hay on board, so these guys have got everything worked out.”

The next morning I was able to see just how steep the hills were. It was foggy and damp, but we saddled up the two stallions with Australian stock saddles, whose high cantles and front of leg ‘poleys’ gave good support on mountain ascents and descents. Down through the village, past the sawmills, across a log bridge and up into the forest. The horses we passed had long red tassels hanging from the side of their browbands and swinging by their cheeks. “Against the evil eye. The same if you buy a horse here, there’ll be a red thread plaited into the mane, and it’s left there until it falls out.” We passed the village priest, sitting up on bench in a cart, with incense filled orb and bucket of holy water. In the brief period between the New Year and Epiphany he had all the houses to bless; he’d already been to Julian and Angelica’s early that morning, sprinkling water and chanting over the new foals as a bonus.

Our horses skittered across a half frozen brook, cracking ice and splashing. It was true about their independence of spirit – like many practical horses around the world you could steer them in the direction you wanted to go with no problem, but they resented being directed step by step. Rather they had clear ideas about the safest and most comfortable route over the rocks and ice and around the roots and stumps of trees once we climbed into the forest. Ice studs, chunks of tungsten welded onto the shoes at toe and heel to keep the foot flat, dug into the frozen ground. Tracks wound up through the trees until we popped out high above the village valley, and could look to the horizon. “Over there,” Julian gestured, “is the Borgo pass, which is where Bram Stoker, a fine Irishman, set Dracula’s castle in his book. In fact there wasn’t a castle there, and he never visited Romania, but his research was amazingly detailed – he got all the local colour right. In the book, distances from Bistritza where Jonathon Harker is first warned about strange goings on are measured in horse time; two days in Van Helsing’s carriage is equal to one night’s journey in Count Dracula’s caleche. Wolves are everywhere in the book’s landscape. “That’s as true in real life; if there was snow they’d be driven down from the mountains and there would be a good chance of seeing them.”

Back in the village, with the horses untacked and stabled, we made our way to the heart of Lunca’s being, the forge. A father and son duo were tucked into a firelit, bellow wheezing cavern, ringing out tunes on anvil and hammer. Carts had collected in the muddy, chicken scratched yard outside the forge. Axles were rewelded, a couple of heavy chain-hooks beaten out, axes sharpened on a grinding wheel. Bottles of ‘tzuica’ were passed around with a single shot glass. I took swigs in turn, uttering “La multzan,” as cheers. Two farmers came to a quick agreement, and the back legs of one’s mare were hobbled with the traces from her breast collar, and she was put to the other’s stallion. A team of lumberjacks, axes dangling, bottle passing from one to the other, cheered. The hammering in the forge intensified. The sun set through the fog and the yard darkened. It was a timeless scene, but I couldn’t help wondering how much longer it would last. In five years…ten years…twenty years…would Romania have joined the EU, been washed down with grants and projects, have swapped horses for tractors, forges for garages, and a rough independence for credit and debt? We pushed our way through the horses and carts and headed back to the house and stables.

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