Paris Pekin 9-10 April

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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 and scrap yards, but later the land was more agricultural and the villages pretty. The people here were welcoming and waved to us, whereas in the poorer areas they mostly just looked resentful.
Golubac is a small town on the banks of the Danube, quite pretty with a little harbour. We stayed in a very nice hostel, and arrived early enough to do some washing, go to the local minimarket and have a couple of beers at the local bar. We were offered a Slivovic on arrival, with traditional bread and salt to welcome us.
There was a reception in the evening with the Mayor in a reception room obviously used for weddings - all the chairs were done in white drapes with ribbons round. A young local group did some folk dances for us.
[h2[Thursday 10 April - Golubac to Drobeta, 127 km
A nice day; after some poor bits we came into lovely countryside with nice villages and lots of flowering trees. The latter part of the day followed the bank of the Danube, high rock walls on our side and tree-covered hills on the other bank. The road was quite mountainous, we went through 20 tunnels (some of them quite long and dark) and up and over one very high col - not a big problem as the gradient was quite gentle. There were lots of flowering trees, particularly on our side of the river, and loads of wild flowers.
At Milanovac a group of children in folk costume danced for us and came round asking for our autographs afterwards. We ate our lunch here, then continued to Tekija where we re-grouped to cross the border into Roumania at the Iron Gates. The Serbian border is one side of the Danube, the Roumanian the other side over an impressive dam and bridge.
The Roumanian border guards collected all our passports and took them away to check, then brought them back and called out the names to collect them. This took some time! We were met at the border by some Roumanian cyclists, who will accompany us for some days.
Roumania apparently has the highest fatal accident rate in Europe, and seein g the roads and the driving I can well believe this. The roads are lined with memorials to people who have died in accidents.
After the border we cycled along a very busy road with lots of potholes to our hotel. The cars here are even worse than in Serbia - the local make seems to be Dacia, and there are lots of rusty old things with bits falling off. A very few nice new cars such as Volkswagens. Lots of big old lorries going past us too fast and too close - a nightmare.
The hotel is OK but room allocation was a bit haphazard. I shared with Marie what appeared to be the bridal suite - two rooms, but one huge bed big enough for about 4 people!
I asked the restaurant about a non-standard meal (as the group meal was spaghetti Bolognese followed by chicken and chips) but they did not seem co-operative so I sat at a separate restaurant table and ordered the only non-meat items on the menu: Waldorf salad to start, then a local speciality: polenta with fresh cheese and sour cream. An odd meal. It cost 16 leu, which is somewhere about £5. We changed cloicks here and lost an hour.

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