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Published: August 31st 2023
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As we suspected we had to resort to what we could for dinner last night. This consisted of 2 minute noodles to which we added tinned corn and peas. That was the first course. Secnod course was bread with sardines mashed on them. Oh how the culinary mighty have fallen!
We are in a real quandary as to how we are going to finish our trip. Our route is based on being able to get to a place that has accommodation and the ability for us to buy food each day. Unfortunately these places aren't spaced the way we need them to be for us to follow our preferred route through Serbia and Bulgaria to Turkey. We've considered riding to the end of the Danube (Constanta) and flying from there to Istanbul, but the riding distance is too far. Another option is to ride to Ruse in Bulgaria on the Danube and then catch a direct train from there to Istanbul. Our D-Day for a decision is the day after we leave Belgrade. None of the options is significantly better or worse than the others, all have positives and negatives.
Today we finally did it! We set 8:00am as our
leaving time and we were actually on our bikes riding at 8:00am. Miracles do happen. Our destination, Novi Sad, is approximately 72kms away. Overnight the heavens opened and rained most of the night. It's still quite moist on the ground and the air temperature could almost be considered cold-ish. Just perfect.
The early part of our ride was on side roads and bike paths. We did have to navigate thru some road works which meat wheeling our bikes through some slushy mud, something that will need cleaning tonight. We aso had 4 significant climbs in the morning, dipping down into small towns and then climbing back up, the Danube some where down below us.
We also moved out of Croatia for the last time and back into Serbia, so another double border check. This time, no issues with the customs officers and definitely no photos!
The day did start to warm up a bit but nothing too extreme. We stopped to talk on two occasions to touring cyclists asking where they had come from and any information they could share about the route we were taking. Both freely offered their opinions and were diametrically opposed. One suggested
Storm Havoc
It would have been one hell of a storm that caused this. our bikes wouldn't cut it and we should take a different route, the other saying our bikes were fine and we'd have no issues. Fat lot of good that did us.
We rocked up into Novi-Sad at about 1:30pm. Not bad for the distance we travelled. We have an apartment which is quite big with a fully equipped kitchen and a washing machine. We'll savour these luxeries while we can.
We have a monster day planned tomorrow. 100kms to Belgrade, the idea being to pick up a day that we can use as a contingency in getting to Istanbul. Let's hope we don't bite off more than we can chew.
Distance travelled today: 75kms
Distance travelled so far: 3,275kms
Note:
We had read about how bad the mozzies were on the Danube. Up until now we haven't had any issues. Then, last night, it's like they came with a mission to devour us. They are huge and have an almighty bite on them. When you try to swat them away they laugh at you. We had the same at our morning stop this morning. We need to put Rid on our shopping list.
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