Monday 28 April - Taganrog to Rostov on the Don, 96 km Excellent breakfast. Late start - 12 noon. Got a bus into town with Alfred Muller, who had a map, and walked round. Nothing much to see. A port, rather tatty park, long treelined streets like all the towns we see here. Found a big supermarket and got some goodies. Changed some dollars at a bank. There were a lot of shops selling quite smart imported clothes etc, but there were no proper shop windows, the shops looked like houses with just one or two things in ordinary-size windows. Presumably [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 20 April - Odessa Excellent breakfast, including kefir to drink and sweet cheese pancakes. Did a bit of work on my bike then went on a guided walking tour of Odessa - guide was a nice girl called Natalia. Saw some buildings and the very fine opera house. She said the town was onoy built 215 years ago. It has lots of very fine tree-llned boulevards and green parks. We went down to the port and saw the famous steps seen in the film Battleship Potemkin. Paul and I went to a shop to change some money and get his [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday 16 April - Slobozia to Braila, 115 km. Not a very interesting day. Long straight roads, huge endless fields, some ploughed and some with crops. Yellow fields of rape as far as the eye can see. At Braila a reception at the town hall, dinner at a restaurant 7 km away, and slept in a gym. Quite a good one, hot showers. Thursday 17 April - Braila to Albota de Jos (Moldavia), 122 km. Went through Galati, a very big prosperous town on the Danube, with huge docks with rows of cranes, and a shipyard. It is unfortunately downwind of [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 13 April - Rosiori de Vede to Bucharest, 145 km Slept OK in the gymnasium despite some people snoring and a rainstorm at one point during the night. At 6.15 am the lights went on and we packed everything away and loaded it into the lorries and cycled off for breakfast at the same place as last night’s dinner. Not a lot there for me - lots of charcuterie and a little cheese, and bread and honey: for some reason we don’t seem to get jam in Roumania. At least there was coffee, the essential, and I had a very [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday 15 April - Bucharest to Slobozia, 130 km Raining quite hard in the morning. A late start because we hqad some schoolchildren accompanying us some of the way. Police escort out of Bucharest, then we used main roads all the way. These are 2-lane roads hardly better than English “B” roads, with enough hard shoulder to cycle on. It was very windy and quite cold, and there were big lorries passing all the time spraying us with dirty water. Not at all nice! There were lots of people waving to us in the towns and villages, which was nice. Many [View Full Entry]

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Friday 11 April - Drobeta to Craiova, 115 km Quite a good day, still no rain. Talked quite a bit to our accompanying local cyclists, some of whom are using this few days as practice for a projected trip to Greece. Once we were out of town the countryside was attractive, agricultural with trees in blossom round all the farms. Stopped for lunch in a small town where I found a cash machine and a small supermarket and stocked up. Gave the sandwiches the organizers supplied for lunch to the local dogs (third day I have done this). Approaching Craiova was [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday 9 April - Pozarevac to Golubac, 87 km. Poor breakfast - but that was to be expected.l We had a police escort all day, not a bad thing as no-one could get lost! We visited the excavations at a Roman town, apparently the largest Roman town ibn the Balkans with 50,000 inhabitants. Near this was a huge plant generating steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. Fired by powdered coal from nearby open-cast mines, carried there on immense conveyor belts. Impressive but not pretty! Most of the countryside was pretty ugly in the morning, mines and gravel pits and factories [View Full Entry]

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Monday 7 April - Belgrade Panoramic view from the restaurant on the 18th floor, but not a lot to see. Got a bus into town, bought a map and some postcards, queued up at post office for stamps. Sat in the sun with a coffee to write them. I didn’t pay on the bus in either direction - the first was too full to move, and coming back the driver had no change. The people on the bus were very helpful and put me off opposite the hotel. Discovered there was a big supermarket right next to the hotel, and laid [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 27 March - Regensburg to Passau, 160km A very good day weather-wise, fine and a little warmer. Very long, and I got left behind a lot. Lunch at a café where I got myself 2 fried eggs to supplement the lamentable picnic. Today the Reds had a total of five punctures - most days there are two - our tyres are not very good. Still following the Danube, almost all day on the cycle path with just a few bits on roads. Some problems finding the Youth Hostel in Passau; had to walk up a very steep cobbled road to [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 23 March - Donauschingen to Sigmaringen, 100 km Very good breakfast at the clinic - of course, we are in Germany. Very cold and snowing, path down to the road was treacherous with ice. The roads and, for the most part, the cycle paths were well ploughed and salted. Stopped for lunch at a nice village. After lunch the path on the other side of the river was very muddy and snowy, not nice at all for several km. However, after this we took the road to Sigmaringen along the Danube. Spectacular scenery traveling through the river gorge with cliffs [View Full Entry]

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