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? I was at least a teenager, riding my bike to the bus stop to go to school in Rochester, so we’re talking somewhere between 13 and let’s say 15. Old enough to know better you might assume. I remember I was wearing brand new tights with my school uniform; important because of what happened to them! My route to the bus stop took me down our dirt track, across a paddock next to a disused railway line and finally onto a sealed road for a very short distance to where I would prop my bike against a fence and wait for the bus.

On this day, I came out onto the sealed road and wondered, as an enquiring mind would do, what it would be like to ride a bike if you were blind. (Yes, I know we say vision impaired today, but back in 1970-something, we said blind. It’s my memory, and I choose to use the terminology of the time.) So I shut my eyes and kept pedalling. I was sure I was riding straight along the left hand side of the road (for non-Australian readers, that is the correct side of the road to be riding on). Have you ever thought you had perfect balance standing on one leg, then shut your eyes and fallen over? It’s a bit like riding a bike with your eyes closed. Unknowingly, I veered across the road and crashed, rather badly, into a ditch on the other side of the road. I ripped my brand new tights, lost a good amount of skin and felt really, really stupid. Of course, back in the 1970-somethings you didn’t wear a helmet on a bike – bike helmets may well have not been invented and most definitely, had they been invented, would have been way out of the budget of my family. (A note – it may be that bike helmets were invented in 1975 or thereabouts so very close to the time of this incident.)

(It was very hard to explain to my mother that night how I had ripped the life out of the brand new tights. My poor, long-suffering mother darned them with amazing skill and I had to wear darned tights for the rest of the winter. We were not the kind of family who could afford new tights for a recalcitrant daughter who should have known better.)

So it is wise advice they share on the Eurovelo sign today: “dream on a bicycle, but always with your eyes wide open.”

I certainly need all my senses about me as I depart from Serbia. Whichever way I look at it, it seems we are being shown out the back door of Serbia. The road from Negotin to the Bulgarian border is rough, pot-holed, unfriendly and unlike any other road we have seen so far in Serbia.

Maybe they don’t want us to leave? It is definitely a precursor to our very brief time in Bulgaria.

We cross into Bulgaria at Bregovo. The crossing is uneventful; our surroundings become grey, utilitarian and very, very “eastern europe”. There is no mention by the Serbian border guards about the damn white slips. We don’t have one for every stay, but have gathered enough to be convincing. Bad advice? Bad border guards? I don’t know, but I’ll just let that one go.

There’s not a lot to see or to mention about our trip today; we set our sights on Vidin and we ride.

We’re due for a treat and check ourselves into the lovely and comparatively lavish Hotel Anna Kristina in Vidin which boasts a riverside location, a swimming pool and a “summer garden” which seems the best place to relax with a post-ride beer.

We’re in for a pleasant surprise here. Many weeks ago when we stumbled exhausted into Esztergom after a torrid week riding through the rather vindictive “low Tatras” we came across an English couple who were riding a tandem and aimed to get all the way to the Black Sea. As fortune would have it, they have turned up on the same day at the same hotel as us. We enjoy dinner and trade stories with Andy and Lynn who have braved the Romanian leg of the trip after Hungary. Where we felt cosseted and defended by almost every Serbian we met, they practically slept with their arms around their gear to defend it from light-fingered locals. They’ve made exactly the same time as us since leaving Esztergom and given we’ve cycled a relatively lonely route as far as touring cyclists is concerned it is great to spend time with this lovely English couple and trade stories. They’re unsure of what they will do after today; we have plans to cross to Romania and from there to Bucuresti where we’ll have a few days before flying home.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 63.3km
• Climb: 381m
• Average speed: 18.3km/h
• Average temperature: 19C
• Moving time: 3:27:37
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken in the gardens of the lovely Hotel Anna Kristina. It feels a bit like an ending today, even though we do have a short ride tomorrow.

Along the way today: