Hot, hot, hot with a roller coaster to get home to Ilok

When staying somewhere interesting I like to get up early and take a walk on my own. It’s my peaceful me time. This morning I leave Neil behind still sleeping and I walk the streets of New Town Osijek as the city wakes up and the people go about their business. It’s a comfortable place. I like it and I’m glad we made this detour through Croatia.

We get away early this morning as it is going to be yet another hot day. We’ve not seen many touring cyclists since just out of Budapest, but today we find a lone, laden English cyclist on the road as we head south toward Vulkovar. We ride along with him a while. He is travelling from London to Istanbul – that’s about 5000km via EV6! He is hard core, riding about 200km a day and camping. I’m not sure where he started today, but he is going as far as Belgrade. We won’t be in Belgrade for four days and that’s including spending two nights in Novi Sad on the way. He has a short timeline and has a hard date to meet up with his wife in Istanbul.

“You’re probably seeing a lot more on the way,” he says, in the understatement of the trip.

We ride along with him for a while, but he is slower than us. Slower than me! Eventually we drift off and leave him to his solitary travels. Everybody has their own reasons for travelling and their own ways. What he is doing is definitely unappealing to me.

We stop a while in Vulkovar to cool down with a drink and an ice cream. I don’t see our English cyclist buddy pass through town in the time we are there and it makes me wonder what time he is going to make camp tonight. I do not want to be him.

Vulkovar is another city pummelled by war, the site of an 87-day seige by the the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) between August and November 1991. We’re a bit travel-weary and hot and don’t take a lot of notice of our surroundings. It’s a bit of a stopover point and I feel a little guilty about not paying more notice and respect to the history of the town.

The last part of the day is a a roller coaster. We ride up, we coast down, we ride up, we coast down, we ride up, we coast down. We stop in Ilok town for a short time then make our final downhill to  riverside Hotel Dunav, our home for the night.

Hotel Dunav is a tonic for a weary cyclist. There are lovely gardens a peaceful place to sit and relax and watch the river flow by and, in true European fashion, a castle on the hill overlooking us. We relax and put our feet up and Neil catches up on some business before we take a seat at our idyllic, very romantic riverside restaurant for dinner. I fear our English friend may still be pedalling his way to Belgrade while we enjoy dinner with a view of Serbia on the other side of the river, and the Ilok-Baka Palanka bridge that will take us there tomorrow.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 83.7km
• Climb: 294m
• Average speed: 19.5km/h
• Average temperature: 33C
• Moving time: 4:17:27
• 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 at Hotel Dunav Ilok, overlooking the Duna in a peaceful, relaxing environment.

Along the way today: