Romanians? They can teach us a thing or two, says Prince Charles

Prince Charles fell in love with Romania on his very first visit

He now regularly returns to the country for holidays

He has two properties out there that are available for the public to rent

Prince Charles regularly visits Romania and owns two houses out there

A British double-decker bus, covered in images from the Carpathian Forest, has drawn up outside the British Ambassador's residence in Bucharest.



The top floor has been converted into a classroom, its seats occupied by Romanian schoolchildren. A familiar head appears up the stairs. 'What have I missed?' asks Prince Charles. 'Bears! Wolves! Red squirrels!' the children shout.



The Prince of Wales is here to support The European Nature Trust, which has turned the bus into a mobile classroom as part of its campaign to save the forests and wildlife of Romania.



It's a subject close to Charles's heart. He first came here in 1998 on an official visit - the only time he's visited on business.



He fell so much under the spell of the place that he bought a house in one of the wooden villages, then acquired another property which he's turned into a comfortable lodge.



He makes a private visit for a few days every year if he can, preferably in May when the wild flowers are out, and both houses can be rented when Charles isn't there.



The meadows of Romania are spectacular with a huge variety of species - as many as six times more to the square metre than can be found in Britain - as they've never been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides.



The air is fragrant with the scent of herbs such as wild thyme. 'Stop!' cried the Prince when he spotted a creamy-coloured flower while walking with friends recently. 'Here's the bastard toadflax. I've wanted to see the bastard toadflax for ages.'



He's been so inspired he's now planted a Transylvanian Meadow at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, using a wild flower seed mix mostly gathered from the hay meadows at one of his properties.



Charles first visited the country in 1998 on an official visit - the only time he's visited on business. He is seen here with the then Romanian President, Emil Constantinescu

You don't have to be in Transylvania for long to realise why the Prince is enraptured by it. The country looks as England might have done around the year 1800. There are no fences. Horses are a common sight on the roads pulling trailers and in the fields yoked to ploughs.



Very little money circulates, but almost everything needed to support life can be found growing, or is made, in the villages. Everybody is making jams, syrups and cordials out of every conceivable berry, fruit and nut.



'It's the last corner of Europe where you see true sustainability and complete resilience. There's so much we can learn from it before it's too late.'

Grapes, sweet from the summer sun, cluster from the vines that twine about the eaves of the farmhouses. Geese waddle out of the farmyards. Fruit swells in the orchards. Sheep are often guarded by gipsy shepherds, accompanied by ferocious dogs capable of repelling wolves.



It's a land overflowing with good things, where weaving and embroidery are still practised. You'll be hard pushed to find a mega supermarket.



This is the world as Prince Charles may very well feel God intended it to be. As he puts it, 'It's the timelessness which is so important.' The landscape is 'almost out of some of these stories you used to read as a child. People are yearning for that sense of identity and belonging and meaning.'



In Transylvania the Prince usually begins by visiting some of the environmental and rural development causes that he supports. He'll then spend a day or two relaxing in the quiet and beauty of the countryside. But that doesn't mean putting his feet up. Walking is key for him - but the walks are accompanied by a bevy of botanists who can help inform and develop his ideas.



In this hospitable country, villagers do what they can to make the Prince welcome. On his last visit a surprise was achieved by smuggling 120 children in traditional dress through the back door of a barn while the Prince was sipping an aperitif on the other side.



A Field of wildflowers belonging to Prince Charles, in Zalanpatak, near Baraolt, Szeklerland, Transylvania

When the barn doors were thrown open, the Prince was regaled with a concert. So far, the Duchess of Cornwall hasn't been tempted to Transylvania, but it has found favour with the Prince's sons. In 2012, Prince Harry stayed with Count Tibor Kalnoky, who manages Prince Charles's houses, having reportedly flown out on budget airline Wizz Air. It can cost as little as £40 to get to Romania from Luton airport.



The Transylvanian landscape looks something like Shropshire, with more woods and no hedges. Centuries-old trees stand in the meadows, giving shade to cattle in the fierce summer heats. The beechwoods are reminiscent of Sussex; only with hardly anybody about and no sign of human habitation for miles.



There are more brown bears in Romania's forests than anywhere else in Europe. They're shy animals - even more elusive, for Prince Charles, than the bastard toadflax, since he hasn't actually seen one, even though they have been known to play on the hillside behind his lodge at Zalánpatak.



There are more brown bears in Romania's forests than anywhere else in Europe

The forests are also home to wolves and lynx. Scientists believe these large carnivores are essential to the forest ecosystem. If left unchecked, deer would eat every young shoot as it appeared above ground. Wolves and lynx control their numbers, making it possible for the forest to regenerate.



At a time when Britain is letting in large numbers of migrant workers from Romania, Prince Charles is leading a small counter-migration: of well-heeled Northern Europeans who delight in species-rich meadows and rickety farmhouses (which, incidentally, can still be bought for a song).



'It's the last corner of Europe where you see true sustainability and complete resilience,' says the Prince. 'There's so much we can learn from it before it's too late.'



There is sometimes a note of frustration in the Prince's voice when he finds himself fighting a King Canute-like battle against an incoming tide of modernity, as when he speaks to the Travel Channel's Charlie Ottley in a series on Romania called Wild Carpathia being shown tomorrow and Monday.



'You'd think by now we might have learnt a few lessons from the things that have gone wrong,' he says.

The Prince's house in Viscri is called the Blue House and he bought it in 2006 for £12,000

Viscri, where Charles bought his first house in 2006 for around £12,000, still looks like the sort of place Thomas Hardy would have recognised.



There are no pavements, no street lighting. Ducks and geese waddle down to the stream. Beyond the reddish tiles of the rooftops are glimpses of unspoilt countryside, without a wind farm or superstore in sight. A pipe dribbles water into a horse trough.



ROMANIA BY NUMBERS

92,043 The number of square miles Romania covers, surpassing Britain's 88,745 74.45 The official life expectancy of the country's population of 21.8 million

97.7 The percentage of Romanians over tha age of 15 who can read and write

4,400 British businesses worth more than £2bn, operate in the country

45 Years of Communist rule ended with a revolution in 1989

The principal commercial activity consists of village women selling a variety of hand-knitted socks in striking patterns.



The Prince's house is called the Blue House, after the blue limewash on the facade, against which are set olive-green shutters. Inside, the courtyard, partly cobbled, is planted with vegetables. A vine grows beneath the eaves.



The furniture consists of old-fashioned painted chests and time-worn wooden benches. There are only three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. The locally embroidered towels and hand-woven throws may be ever-so-slightly reminiscent of an artfully rustic World Of Interiors photo shoot, but the house is unquestionably delightful. The whole village is.



At Zalánpatak, the Prince found a farmhouse at the end of a lane where he can walk directly into the meadows and up into woods. When I stayed, the morning began with the sound of cowbells, as cattle swayed out from their barns into the pasture.



We heard them again in the evening, as each animal found her way back to her own barn. The nights were velvet-black, their silence only broken by the barking of guard dogs. No ringing of telephones disturbed the tranquillity. Fields of wild crocuses bloomed beside the roads. In summer, hay is heaped into rum baba-shaped stacks.

The Prince's guest house in Zalánpatak (left) and its basic interior (right)



The main cabin, heated by log fires and traditional ceramic stoves, has only three rooms. All the furniture - carved wooden beds, 19th-century chairs, an old oil lamp (converted to electricity) suspended from the ceiling, even an ancient radio - has been restored by hand. It's cosy, rustic and tasteful.



As Prince Charles bounds from the bus to the car that will take him to the airport in Bucharest, he shows no sign of slowing down. Romania remains a place that he will visit in a private capacity for a few days a year, but its importance to him is more than that.



Wherever he goes, the memory of it goes with him: a place where so many of his most passionately held ideas about humanity's place in the world are played out in everyday life.

