Day 18, Russe to a camp spot by the Danube, near Tutrakan. 84.6km, 5hrs 35 min, 15.1 kph

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What a good sleep! We worked out that once again, we weren't really in a big hurry to get underway. So after breakfast we went into town to get some much needed supplies. We had spotted a Billa supermarket the evening before, so headed for that. There we found almost everything we needed, including one more bottle of midge spray! (the third this trip). Once packed we cycled out of town through a lovely pedestrian area, and then through a huge park. Although we kept our eyes peeled, a source of the right length M5 screws for my bike stand remained elusive.

In the centre of Russe

We then continued on the road out of Russe, which was big, busy, and in a bad way. The traffic calmed down once we had passed the turn off for Romania. By now we were getting to know our post Communist industrial decay, and the outskirts of Russe offer plenty of decaying pipework, abandoned factories and potholes.

Pipes etc

Once out of town things improved, and much of the rest of the morning was used up taking advantage of a now reasonable road, the '21' and a following wind.

making distance on the '21'

We made the town of Tutrakan by mid afternoon and stopped for a drink, and to stock up on water. Here we saw a river patrol boat on a plinth, and heard the local wind band rehearsing in one of the buildings we rode past. We also saw our first Bulgarian cycle path signs! We rode out of town up a wiggly steep road, back onto the 21 for a bit, past the biggest pot hole we had ever seen, and then off onto a smaller road that Sonja had read about in her research of the route. This road turned into a track, and then wound its way down to the waters edge. Here we found a nice pebbly beach, with a few fishermen and kids playing in the water.

the biggest  'pothole' we saw...

We camped here, and reaslised that this was actually only our second night camping next to the river, the first being our first night in Croatia, what seems like an age ago.

Sonja swimming

Sonja noted in the diary that we swam,  and were amazed with the strong current, so we were rather floating in the water trying not to get washed down stream, but that it was good to wash off all the sweat and grime from the day.

fishermen working on their nets

  

Day 17 A field, past a fort, and a rock church, to Russe. 61km, 4hrs 20 min, 13.7 kph

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We decided that we deserved a 'day off' today, so planned a short route with lots of sightseeing - and aiming to find ourselves a hotel in Russe, which is a big town on the shores of the Danube.

The castle ruins at Cherven

We started off by visiting the medieval city and citadel at Cherven, which is down in a gorge with steep sides, and in the gorge is a castle on a hill. There were lots of ruins of buildings / chapels etc.

Door to the rock church

We then caried on north, and went to see the 'rock church' at Ivanovo. This also was down in the bottom of the same gorge, just further on. Although a footpath was marked between the two we decided not to try it.
These places were both interesting and worth the walk around.

We rode into Russe, which from the outskirts looks like a typical eastern block industrial town. On the way in we saw signs to a 'best western' hotel, and started to head that way. We then rode on through lively looking suburbs and into the middle of a lovely city. The town square has amazing building (as well as a few concrete monstrosities) The place felt really lively and quite unlike some of the parts of Bulgaria we had seen so far.

In Russe

In the evening we ate in the town square and had a salad and a 'mixed meat' plate which arrived sizzling in it's own cast iron pan.We didn't know if this came with potatoes or not, and so we ordered fries to go with it. It did come with potatoes, and we ate the whole lot anyway! We headed for the hotel after a gentle walk around the square. I was distracted for a while trying to take a photo of the lovely buildings in the dark, but I couldn't work out how to persuade my camera to do what I wanted it to, so we gave up and headed for bed.

Lots of life in Russe

Day 16, A field, to another field. 109km, 7hrs 13min, 15.1 kph

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(the map is being a bit odd - after Svistov we carried on east, not sure why the route shows that crazy detour)

We had a cooler night than usual after the huge storm, and a gentle start to the day. Waffles with rosehip jam - not bad for a Sunday breakfast.  We rode on, enjoying the downhill start to the day, which got even better as a strong following wind blew up for a few hours.

Bulgarian Vineyard

A Bulgarian vineyard - not quite as tidy as we find in France!
The vineyards here are quite unkempt, this one even had the odd tree growing amongst the vines.

We stopped to buy bread at the first place we could, as this was a Sunday, and we had no idea about shop opening hours.  A bit later we came to Svistov, a nasty steep climb into the town was rewarded by finding the market in full swing.  We wandered around bought a 'sausage in a bread' thing which we ate as our mid morning snack, only to look our watches and see that it was midday, no wonder we were hungry! We stocked up on fruit and veg and I poked my head into the fish mongers to see pallets of catfish and carp and a few silver things that I didn't recognise at all.

The market place

Fishes

We sat down in a cafe for an ice tea (seems to be the drink of the trip this year!) and chatted a bit with the sausage seller, who spoke excellent english, learned partly from the US Peace Corps. who must have been out there. The day was hot by now, but we continued to make  good progress till the countryside started to change, Long hills with brutal straight roads were heavy going. Up - down - up - down, the first hill was reported to be 3700m at 8% the second just shy of 2000m at 8%. Then on to the last town of the day at Dve Mogili, and yet annother hill. By now we were both getting tired, and were very happy to start looking for a camp site for the night. We found a nice spot on the way down the road to the caves of Orlova Chuka. We enjoyed  a supper of Pasta and Sauce (it even gets capitals these days!) livened up with some fresh stuff from the mornings market stop. We had more thunderstorms that night, but nothing compared with the night before.

nearly there!

at the top of a long hill...

I had still not fixed my bike stand, although the earlier stops in the day did find the right M5 screws, they were too long. I was dearly hoping to find something, as a good stand is such a boon on a touring bike.  We were also starting to get low on Mozzie repellent - having used two bottles so far on the trip, they have been a pest pretty much every night on this trip,  more so the closer to the river we are.

Donkey cart!

The pot holes also never cease to amaze us, the roads are full of them and the cars are quite happy to drive along on the wrong side of the road which as I think I already mentioned once, can be quite alarming!

Day 15 Bajkal to a field past Nikopol. 72 km, 5.0 hrs, 14.37 kph

We had a lazy start to the day (we are getting good at these!) with breakfast on the terrace of our little bungalow - occasionally serenaded by builders drilling in the next house along. I found packing a bit harder today as my stand had given up the ghost after the previous days attempted repairs.

10 km down the road we came across the most amazing Roman ruins at a place called Oescus, near the village of Gigen. This place was quite jaw dropping-ly amazing.  We were charged a the equivalent of a few quid to get in (having let ourselves in through the unlocked gate) and be allowed to take photos

.

The guy looking after the place Bisser (not sure of the spelling!) was super nice, and after looking around the ruins, he showed us round the small museum. It seems to be mostly headstones of various tombs.
He also insisted we take some fruit from the fruit trees that were growing there, and gave us a small book of postcards of the place. He gave us some drink from his fridge and invited us to sit down at the table, he joined us, sitting on a Roman statue... brilliant!

 Our lovely host Bisser, on aformentioned statue in the Museum building. (much of the museum is outside)

As we rode on the day got seriously hot, and although we had filled up with water at the museum, we were already starting to run low. It then took us till half past one to find a place that was open. After long flat hot exposed miles across some sort of plain, the first village we came to had a shop, but it was shut. The next village - success! We bought water, a sausage flavoured with cumin and a bag of chocolate wafer things, and sat in the shade outside the shop to have lunch.  After a few minutes the shopkeeper came out with a table and chairs for us. So lovely of her, and made us feel very civilised.  A bloke from the village came and sat down next to us, drinking what looked like wine from a bottle.

 Lunch in the shade!

We then rode on towards Nikopol, and on the way heard a scraping from my back wheel. This was traced to a missing screw that holds the rear pannier rack on! Fortunately I had thrown a handful of bolts and screws into our tool kit before leaving, and had one the right size. We fixed the rack and tightened up all the other screws we could find on both bikes. We realise we should have done this the day before after Sonja's rack showed signs of coming loose. We thought that starting some sort of 'daily check' would be a good idea - but although we discussed it, I don't think we actually put it into practice...

In Nikopol we went to look at an old church, and then rolled back into the middle of town to a cafe, where we had a hideous synthetic cake and a glass of nice cold ice tea - we were just glad to be in the shade! We stocked up on food, in shops that had all their goods behind the counter, and you had to ask for what you wanted. Fine if you speak Bulgarian! Sonja came very close to loading us up with Vodka while trying to buy jam!

 The medieval church in Nikopol

We rode uphill out of town and found a camp spot in a great field hidden from the road by some scrub ground. We felt very pleased with our spot and sat down to a lovely supper (with pasta and rice!). I was sitting looking one way and Sonja the other, just after supper Sonja said, right it's time to pack everything into the tent and get the bikes covered for the night. I wondered what the hurry was, and when I turned round, I saw that there was a huge thunderstorm behind me!

The Thunder storm approaches

Half an hour later, and we were in the middle of the most violent and scary thunderstorm I have ever witnessed, lying down in the tent, trying not to touch anything, and wondering all the things you wonder in this sort of situation. Does touching the tent actually matter if we get stuck by lightning, did you see and big trees on the way up here? is the buzzing we can here of electrical or insect origin...all the while we lay next to each other holding hands. Lightning did strike very close by, I guess in the far corner of the field: there was an instant explosion that went with the lightning flash, but there wasn't anything we could feel where we were. This went on for about twenty minutes till we were sure enough the thing had moved on and we felt brave enough to stick our heads out of the tent and watch the storm recede into the distance.  The tent was excellent throughout the whole storm and gave us no cause for concern at all.  

Day 14 Field with a view to Bajkal 108km, 6 hrs 54 min, 15.6 kph

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We had breakfast at our cliff top campsite - with the company of a few mosquitoes that had made it through the night. Our diary say simply 'Sonja was right, the honey has cinnamon in it'. This is the small jar of honey we had bought in Belgrade, but didn't understand what was special about it, after a bit of deciphering Sonja said that she thought it was cinnamon, and she was right.

We pushed our bikes across the field to  the road and started off. We had a lovely gentle downhill to Kosloduj, where we went shopping. This is a rich town, two supermarkets and more up market cars than we were used to seeing. We were soon to ride past the reason for this - it's just next door to a nuclear power plant.

My bike had it's first and only mechanical problem here, I snapped the stand off because of two broken bolts. We were instantly helped by two guys who had been working on finishing surfacing the supermarket car park were we were stopped at the time. They rushed off to find bolts the right size. One of them had worked in Spain and had a few words of English too. Although the bolts they sourced were actually not up to the job as we were to find out later that day, we were touched by their instant generosity.

We rode on, nearly taking the road into the power station, but were quickly pointed in the right direction by a passing truck driver. His truck had a very 'bond villain' looking sign on the side of his truck, so we took his advice! As nuclear power stations go in eastern block countries, this one looked in pretty good condition, which was encouraging!

We then continued down a narrow road, overgrown on both sides with big bushes, groups of lorries would overtake us going very quickly which was a bit scary. I then got stung on my head by something. We soon found out that the lorries were all heading to a ferry port to get across the river to Romania - we were heading the same way. The town itself was not much fun, but we did stop and get some more food, and lots of nice cold water.  Something we haven't mentioned in the diary as it seemed so obvious to us at the time is that every day was now very hot. Really really hot - so we were getting through water like nobodies business, and as we were carrying it in bottles it tended to get pretty warm during the day, so finding a supply of cold water was always quite a treat!

it seems this was a hotel - the shop next door wasn't bad though!

We started out of town going the wrong way, but asked for directions and were soon back on course. We rode on over some very steep roads, with awful surfaces and into what eventually turned into a headwind to slow our progress.

a 'moderately bad' bit of road -  we had become pothole connoisseurs by this time.

We rode through one small village with a fighter jet on the village green, which was quite a surprise, and then rode the last few kilometres to a village by the river called Bajkal.  The village itself looked pretty poor, but down by the river was a nice restaurant with bungalows to rent. Over the road was some massive mansion type thing with what looked like an amphibious landing craft in the garden, must belong to some General or other.

The view from our bungalow with the wall and garden of the mansion thing visible, check out the guard post at the gate!

We ate a lovely meal, and the evening cooled off nicely. There was more lightening, but no rain.

The roads here are in a really poor state, with frequent holes and sections basically made up of sand. We found you couldn't go too fast down hill as you really had to keep an eye out and one of these big holes could easily break a wheel. Cars often go onto the other side of the road to avoid driving into them, which can be a bit alarming, but does give you advanced warning of a dodgy bit of road up ahead if the car coming towards you is swerving all over the place!

Day 13 Vidin to a field with a view near Gorni Cibar 95,5km, 6hrs 26, 14.8 kph

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We woke to the sound of thunder, and heavy rain.  We were not that keen to leap out of bed and get our inevitable soaking. After a shower, rather than risk the motel breakfast, we made our own in our room. We boiled water for tea on the Trangia, and ate jam sandwiches. It was all slightly surreal, as we also had BBC news on the TV, and the sound of very heavy rain lashing down outside.  A bit later, during a lul in the rain we decided we had better get going, only moments later, the rain started again in earnest. We rode into the town centre of Vidin, and tried to change get some Romanian money, but no luck, the bank suggested we try 'on the market'. We didn't stay and look around for very long, maybe it was the rain, the tired looking town or the late start. Fortunately the rain started to ease off as we rolled through the outskirts of town. We stopped to chat for a while with a guy from Melbourn who was heading the other way on a bike. He was riding alone, en route to Budapest for a job interview! He was looking for new tyres, and hoped to find a shop in town. I hope he made it on time for his interview!

Leaving Vidin, lovely sights!


We did a little detour off the marked route, hoping to find a shop, instead we found a cobbled street, and discovered a little village that doesn't have a shop. The day then started to warm up, and as we stopped to remove some layers, we met a group of three cyclists from Scotland. We rode on in company for a while, and ate lunch together in a nice roadside cafe. Salads and less fatty food than the days before, lovely! The Scots were faster than us, and were heading to Sophia, so after lunch we bid each other 'bonne route' and went our separate ways.

 Here's where we had lunch

The speedy Scots


The villages here are very compact, with very little housing in between the settlements. This meant for long stretches with noting but road and trees, or fields. The roads here are pretty bad, with 'tank trap' sized potholes that often took clever riding to avoid. Road works come and go, adn seem to involve removing the road surface entirely and leaving piles of rocks and sand in stead. The long stretches of cobbles made for heavy going at times.

 Some very 'good' cobbles - I feel for the guys who race the northern classics on roads worse than this with skinny tyres after riding a very comfy touring bike on this road surface!

We stopped to fill up on supplies in Lom. This isn't a very pretty town, kind of destitute ex soviet looking. They did have what we needed though, which was great.

Packing our fresh supplies

 The view back on the way out of town, after picking up some fresh food

We rode on, up and down hills, with lovely views of the Danube from the top off the river cliffs, and eventually found an excellent camp site, on the top of one of these cliffs. We had a panoramic view of the river from about 100m above. Finding a good camp spot is a bit of an art, and by now we were starting to get quite good. This one was over a huge field, so quite a long way from the road, and we managed to find a spot where the tent and bikes would be hard to spot from the road.

A view from our camp site.

As I wrote the evenings diary entry, a shepherd walked past with his flock, and too no notice of us at all. We had a very good supper of pasta n sauce, with tuna and feta, with fresh carrots. The mosquito's though were pretty bad,  so we retreated back inside the tent as night fell. We were quite pleased with ourselves after a reasonably tough day of ups and downs after the late wet start to the day. 

As night fell, the mozzies came out -  we retreated inside!

Day 12 Field to Vidin (Bulgaria) 118km, 7.2 hrs, 16 kph

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We had a very bad nights sleep, as mentioned in the previous post, even the thunder storm was not enough to cool the air, but the camping spot was great so that made up for the lack of sleep. We had a lovely start to the day, flat, then slightly down hill. We did pass a few open air rubbish dumps though, which reminded me a lot of sights I had seen on the edges of towns in India. We then rode along the river side, on tracks that were occasionally quite rough, but we did pass some lovely river side houses with excellent looking fishing spots. There were many cars around here with Austrian, German or French number plates on. We heard from a German speaking local that these cars and nice properties are either owned by retired people who have worked abroad much of their lives, or the younger generation who moved away during the war and are now funding parents and grandparents from abroad. 
 

 We rode along more rough tracks, which made us very glad of our sturdy bikes before stopping for a brief and weedy swim near the Derdap II dam. We rode on and stopped in Negotin for some shopping, and had lunch in a park in the city centre, surrounded by yapping dogs. We failed to find a post office and rode on towards the border with Bulgaria.  At the border the nice police lady said that she would post our cards for us - excellent. 
 

Bulgaria!

Our first impression was that it was a much poorer country than Serbia. However the roads weren't bad and there was very little traffic. We rode though vineyards that were quite different to the manicured ones we are used to seeing in France. Here they look more like 'grape bushes' all wild and unkempt.

Along our route of the day we saw a couple of tortoises, and a few ex tortoises, lots of bee-eaters, which look lovely, but are really hard to take nice photos of. We also saw a few dead snakes, run over on the road, but no live ones. There are plenty of dogs around, but most of them seemed sleepy and tended to ignore us completely. Although we were carrying pepper spray, we never felt the need to use it.  

Serbia does seem to have lots of roadside shrines to dead people, presumably left at the site of some road accident. If that is the case, then there is a shocking amount of 'road kill' here there. There was much less of that sort of thing in Bulgaria. We did see a lot of donkeys and carts around though. The roadworks in Bulgaria are amazing too - just huge holes in the ground, piles of sand and nothing to stop you driving or riding into the holes. I guess you get used to looking out for them. 

 Just before we got to the small town of Kapitanovci we rode our 1000'th km of the journey. This feels like an important milestone on our journey.  We celebrated by eating a whole bar of fruit and nut chocolate... (no wonder we don't loose any weight on these holidays of ours!) We then rode on to Vidin, where we found a cheap motel that was happy to have us, and we were happy to find. We ate very badly there - microwave meals out of the freezer, but did feel much better for a shower. 


 
 

Day 11 Sculpture park to a field just before Milotinovak 82.2km, 5hrs 16 min, 15.6 kph

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We had a great breakfast, with thick bits of bacon, fried egg, bread, honey and cheese. The whole lot (supper, bed and breakfast with one of the best views we have had yet) cost us the equivalent of 36 Euro. We rode on through what felt a little bit like Norwegian fjords, steep sided valley and riding the road near the water. On our way we met our first little tortoise. We met up with some other cyclists, another Anglo German couple who were touring the area. It became apparent that the tunnels were causing her issues as she was claustrophobic. We tried our best to get through the tunnels, Sonja and I have very good dynamo lights on our bikes and were much better lit, so with one of us in front, and the other behind we rushed through the tunnels as quickly as we could. It can't be much fun to suffer like that, the poor lady was in quite a state by the time we emerged from each tunnel into daylight. We did about three tunnels like that before our little convoy went its separate ways. We were very impressed with their 'go getting' attitude, they were there on what were little more than city bikes, one with a rucksack sitting in basket at the front, and they were touring along the Danube and then up to Transylvania. We had the pleasure of meeting them again in the airport in Bucharest on our way home, were we compared notes again. It turns out that the roads did eventually get the better of their bikes, and after one too many punctures they continued their tour of Transylvania in a hire car.

As we approached the narrowest part of the Danube, the road started to climb a bit. We stopped to look at a rock carving of the face of Decabalus, a Dacian king. Next stop after lunch was the first of the huge dams across the river, by the first one we stopped to look around the Roman ruins. Quite amazing, and very open compared with similar sites further west in Europe. There seemed to be a dig in progress there with a few open pits under tarpaulins and sheets of plastic.

We had another thwarted roadside fruit buying attempt during the afternoon - we tried to buy four peaches, but the fruit seller wouldn't take any money for them, and insisted that we take a melon along with us too. Fortunately the melon was quite small and easily carried this time! As this was going on the road was completely overrun with what must have been 100 or so Harley's zooming past. All very jolly, and noisy. We saw them about half an hour later, having been pulled over by the police, so I guess they were not amused for some reason or other.

 

We cycled on a bit and stopped for an ice cream in a town with a small beach resort, and we could have been anywhere on the med, if it wasn't for the shipyard on the other side of the river with what looked like a gas tanker careened and being worked on. 

We carried on and found a suitable spot to camp, near a wood, hidden from the road. It was a super hot night and we didnt' get much sleep, our rest wasn't helped by a thunder storm in the early hours of the morning.