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Published: September 3rd 2023
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Our last day on the Danube and as has been the case for the last week, even though we've ridden by the Danube we rarely saw it. A bit sad really. To leave today, we had to ride our way across the very big city of Belgrade. It was mostly up the side of a very big hill. We had climbed a good way before descending to cross the bridge over the Danube and I pulled over nervously looking ahead. It looked like a freeway entrance to the bridge. I thought maybe I had routed as a car instead of a bike, but no, we were meant to ride on the bridge with all of that traffic. We nervously entered and then just rode as fast as we could across the bridge which was almost two kilometers long, very much running the guantlet. We all made it safely across but the comments we had heard about there being no good way in or out of Belgrade rang in our heads and we completely agree.
If any of you are planning on riding across Europe, I recommend catching a train in and out of Belgrade.
Once we left the city,
it was on to the levee which was in very poor condition. We persisted for a while and it degenerated even further and then improvised our way back to a road. We had only covered 10kms in the first hour so we were keen to make up some time.
At our morning break we came across an English couple who were riding to Constanta on the Black Sea (on a tandem). They said that the levee was a dirt track the whole way to Smederevo which is were we were headed. We decided we'd stay on the bitumen and looked for back roads to get us there. This is the first time we've ignored all of our planning but it mostly worked out for the best. Our lunch stop was in a very rundown town. The only saving grace was that it had a (very) little mini mart open where we could get a cold drink. From there is was 7kms to another bridge crossing. Not much better than the mornings effort, it was a busy stretch of road and we were on and off as quick as we could.
Smederevo is not a town we know anything
about. With a few hours to kill before dinner we decided to go out for a walk. There is a Medi-evil fortified city here remarkably well preserved. The interior of the city walls are now the towns main green space and it even has a 400m athletics track as well.
Tomorrow we say good by to the Danube and start heading south east deeper into Serbia towards Bulgaria. It's a bit of a strange feeling knowing we are not going to have one of the Rhine, Main or Danube a stones throw away. Our destination is Jagadina, 89kms makes it a big day so we'll look to get away early again.
Distance travelled today: 71kms
Distance travelled so far: 3,457kms
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