Day 6, Vukovar to Sremski Karlovci, 107km, 7hrs 41min

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We woke up in our slightly overpriced Communist era hotel, to piece and quiet. This may well have been because we were to the only guests there. A fried egg for breakfast was followed by a wander around town, looking at life, and looking at the ruins left behind by the war.

We rode on, up and down, all morning passing through broken down poor villages.  I one of the prettier places we stopped by the river and opened up the melon we were given the day before.Ever tried opening up a melon with a small knife, and in the knowledge that you are going to have to re-construct the thing well enough to continue carrying it on the bike! Well, we kind of 'decapitated' the thing, and then took ate out the middle, re-attaching the top with tape once we had finished.

We crossed the border here into Serbia, it was a very low key affair in the countryside, a porter cabin by the side of the road, manned by two rather bored looking officials. They glanced at our passports and waved us on.

The route started to get hillier in Serbia, and the villages looked less bombed out than the Croatian ones, although they still seemed poor. We stopped in one village to watch a funeral procession going past, the coffin was being transported on a hand cart, and every few steps everyone stopped to sing a psalm or something like that.

We crossed the river on a small ferry from a sort of 'beach resort' on one side, where the local youth were out sunning themselves, and the young ferry man spent most of the journey trying to chat up some of the local girls.

Waiting for the Ferry

We rode on towards Novisad through industrial suburbs, the centre however is a amazing and very beautiful, and lively, the streets full of people and the bustle of a summer afternoon.

 Novisaid has a massive fort on the river, that we didn't have time to look around, but you can see it in this image.

 A 'main street' picture, showing the cafes and shops and people. This was quite a contrast to the suburbs we had just come through and we were happy to spend some time exploring the streets.

We continued on from Novisaid, hoping to find a camping spot, when we got to one marked on the map, we found there was no access to the beach, and so spent another hour or so tyring to find somewhere quiet and out of the way. We ended up in a stubble field, cooked and ate in the dark, but slept very well in this quiet spot.