Last night's dog cacophony did indeed continue overnight, but it was nothing that simple earplugs couldn't eradicate completely.
Emma went for a run early doors in order to miss the worst of the building heat, while I did a few man-jobs and watched birds. We both did well for species with a repeat of all of yesterday's notables; plus, we both improved the list by one. I saw a couple of lesser whitethroats and Emma caught a really good view of a water vole.
Today's tourist-target was Tipova Monastery. It's another of Moldova's (very few) promoted attractions. Part of its USP is that it's set on high ground at the mouth of a valley that sports caves and waterfalls, and also overlooks the river Nistru that divides Moldova from Transnistria.
The monastery itself was, without wanting to seem disrespectful, pretty average by monastery standards - but the landscapes and views out over Transnistria were indeed pretty spectacular (pic).
Transnistria itself is a bit of an odd one. It's basically a quasi-Russian territory where - though it's still almost universally internationally recognised as a part of Moldova - its administration runs it as if it's an independent territory. British citizens are currently advised against all travel there and that's OK with us, we don't want to go.
By chance, we met a young Moldovan couple at the site of the monastery who were interested in the truck (these were the first natives we'd interacted with that had any grasp of English at all). After a quick truck-tour they passed on a lot of useful information about Moldova generally, including the current relationship with Transnistria. Regarding that, as is often the case, people on the ground are just getting on with things but there is a growing sense that Russia is ramping up the stakes.
World peace sorted, we shipped out and made something of a turn. Without particularly planning it, we realised we were heading generally northwest, and thereby once again roughly UK-wards.
Of course there's quite a lot of stuff still to be done. The first bit of that stuff was to find a stopover spot and, tonight, that turned out to be less than straightforward. We initially got settled and comfy a little way from the current coordinates but after about half an hour were joined by three tractors, an old Russian truck and five blokes. By pure chance they'd come to spray a root veg crop in an adjoining field.
The noise, disruption and potential for biocides on our cheese sandwiches didn't appeal so - at the metaphorical 11th hour - I had a local potter around on the bike to see if we could improve our position.
Bottom line, we couldn't. Well not by much, anyway. We were essentially hemmed in by various players including: toxic smoke palling from a landfill site where rubbish was being burned commercially (and for added entertainment the pops and bangs from aerosols etc indicated little in the way of pre-screening), stray dogs scavenging, dozens of camping fishermen, and some impassable tracks festooned with overhanging walnut trees (more on these, later).
And so, the best we managed was to back away from the crop-spraying operation by a few hundred metres and hunker on a bit of land between a track and a field.
As it happens, it's OK. We've casually seen a handful of bird species, including a juvenile quail that looked to be in its first couple of weeks of an uncertain life, and - as darkness fell - plenty of big bats, a couple of foxes, and a deer (all thanks to the thermal imager).
Post composed at 22:30 on Friday 8th August from our intended overnighting spot N 47.90946°, E 27.70444° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:47.90946%2C27.70444