When you could ride faster than a train
Today is our last day on the bikes. Even though there have been days when I wished my bike at the bottom of a ravine below whatever perilous mountain I had been hauling up at the time, it is with sadness that I pack up my meagre belongings for the last time, cram them into their separate, water-proof bags, and then stuff them into my water-proof panniers …
Dream on a bicycle, but always with your eyes wide open
Who’d have thought a bike tour of Eastern Europe in 2015 would trigger a rather embarrassing childhood memory? …
Trajan’s Bridge
Fired by Aleksandr’s enthusiasm we brave certain rain to ride a short way out of town to visit the remains of Trajan’s Bridge. The surroundings are not prodigious. The bridge remnants are just a couple of stumps looking out over the river toward Romanian town of Drobeta Turnu Severin. But the magic of the place is …
Goodbye to a gorgeous gorge
Neil is adamant that a cat came in the window last night and slept on his legs. I’m thinking he must have been dreaming of home where we have two lovely cats – Toby and Ellie.
We planned to make an early escape, and told Dragiča last night before we turned in. When Neil gets up she is waiting, asking if he wants coffee. He has coffee then comes back to tell me that she was waiting for us to leave. She wants to go somewhere. …
A three hour cruise
When we awake it is raining. Today’s weather is the antithesis of yesterday’s: chilly, raining, grey overcast skies. It’s not the ideal day for a boat trip, but that’s what we want to do. I think we’ve seen everything the town has to offer, and I certainly don’t want to stay around at Dragiča’s place all day.
Before we head out we carefully pack up all our laundry and Neil writes a note in his very best Serbian to let Dragiča know that this is what we would like washed. This is what we believe we had set up via the tourist information office yesterday. We hunt down breakfast, which ends up being a pastry at a bakery and go the visitor centre to see what our chances are of the boat trip. Our helpful fellow of yesterday is not there, and his colleague shrugs his shoulders in a Serbian fashion. “Not looking good,” he says. …
You’ve just got to love a castle on a hill on a river
I always had a thing about princesses and castles. Not the modern day, smartly-dressed, (un)consciously entitled variety, but the – yes I’ll admit it – stuff of fairytales. Early drawings at school were princesses in pointy cone-shaped headdresses with gauzy veils waving jauntily from the top, gowns with huge billowing sleeves and indecent bodices with a good expanse of bosom … all drawn of course with the innocence of a child. Even these days I thrill to a good princess story. I have devoured Phillippa Gregory’s Wars of the Roses and Tudor era novels and binge-watched the Tudor series on TV. So it is with great joy that I discover (being somewhat of a travel pantser1) that today we will not only come close to an ancient castle (all right, all right it is a fortress – but it looks like a castle to me), but will actually ride through the fortress gates as we head into the reputedly beautiful Iron Gate Gorge. I had read about the gorge prior to the trip, but reading about places does not often gel properly in my head until I actually arrive . So here we are, at Srebrno Jezero (Silver Lake), and poised to start on our way along the most beautiful part of the Danube. …
A 50km gallop and a silver lake
We don’t really have a plan for today other than to push on to … somewhere. Luckily Alessandro is on the ball. He tells us we are headed to Srebrno Jezera and that we have to take a ferry to get across the river. He looks up the ferry timetable and tells us we must take the 1pm ferry. They only run about every three hours. While we linger over our lovely home-made breakfast we are already missing the 10am ferry. He tells us to not follow the EV6 path along the dikes; that to take the road will be much quicker and much more pleasant. We are compliant and agree with all of his suggestions, but we barely have enough time to get to the 1pm ferry, so we must make haste!
So we set off at a gallop …
A hairy ride to a cyclist haven
It is not easy to get out of Belgrade. The only way out to where we want to go is across the Pančevački Most. This is a busy, very busy bridge with no cycle path and only a narrow pedestrian way that no sane human being would ever set foot on. It’s not that great for cyclists, let me just say. We choose the pedestrian way over riding one of the two lanes on the road, fall into single file, mentally cross fingers and launch ourselves onto the bridge. …
I don’t love Belgrade. There are things I like at lot. I love the fortress; it is everything I think of as a medieval castle and I think my childhood fairy-tale reading is blessed by misinformation. I love the ice-cream, the opportunity to eat food that isn’t fried cheese. The riverside is lovely, there are some beautiful old buildings if you hunt them out. But it just doesn’t really super-wow me.
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Lemonade is the best part of the day
There are days that are simply for commuting: for getting from A to B. In this case from Novi Sad to Belgrade. We have around 90km in front of us, and more heat, so we get up early, with eyes on reaching Belgrade before the day gets too hot. In an as-yet-unknown feat I have Neil up, ready and on the bike before 5am! We’re not just trying to beat the heat today: we have a massive and notorious hill to climb just out of Novi Sad and want to beat the reported heavy, bike-unfriendly traffic.
This hill is another I have been nervous about. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find a decent alternative route to get us to Belgrade. There isn’t one. We are stuck with the climb and the traffic. …