Romania, under water

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After a good night with our host, very nice, we get up early tuesday april 9th because we have a boat to take today to cross the Danube ! We don’t know exactly the time schedule and ride 40km quite fast to reach the harbour at noon !

The road is nice, sunny, and Serbia would not be what it is without stray dogs ! Below is a video to show it ! Two dogs will follow us during 1 or 2 kilometers, we are not so sure about their intention, if they are nice or agressive ! As we don’t know what to do, we continue and think that we can get rid of them if we accelerate but they are must faster than us ! Which makes the story funny :

Thanks to the GoPro, which allow us to make a video of it ! It will not be the only episode of dogs stories ! Finally with time and experience, we notice that it is better to stop, and go down the bycicle rather than trying to run away !!

Rest of the day will be more peacefull :

Sheeps seem less interested by our calves than dogs, ouf !

We arrived at Stara Palanka, to take the boat, the next one is in 2 hours. We find a nice place to use our free time with a nice lunch and a great view on Danube river and Romania just across :

Signs for Eurovélo 6 in Serbia are very well organised, even if all roads are not really adatped for bikes :

A serbian meal speciality, very good (but sorry we forgot the name of it) :

Finally boat arrives (on time) with a big truck on it (only one truck can fit) and it is funny to see how they will make it go down : with piece of wood, shovels to level the floor. We ask ourself how this could work ! But it works and quite well, so we embark !

On board we find again a couple from Netherland, Tom and Sabine, we already met them the day before as we follow the same route for the moment :

They plan to go the New Zeland, going first through Pakistan and India, Wahou ! Their blog is Ten million turns.

After this crossing of the Danube, we change shore and this marks our entry into the more mountainous part of the river with the national park of Djerdap. The next days are a little more sporty but also more wild and with pretty views.

We see a lot of animals along the river, many herons and various kinds of birds but also coypu:

In the evening we find ourselves in the campsite of « anxiety », that is to say a campsite not open, without hot water, dirty, where we are the only customers in the middle of a forest of empty caravans and that seem abandoned there for 20 years …

To console, we had a nice view of the Danube :

The next day, Wednesday, we attack the serious things with the Danube gorge, the fortress of Golubac and also a score of tunnels to cross! Fortunately the traffic is not dense and they are rather short …

the fortress of Golubac :

Keeping your sunglasses in a tunnel is not recommended ^^

The landscape becomes really nice with the cliffs that surround the river :

There are some informative signs (not necessarily well placed on the road) that explain why we call this corner: The Iron Gates

At the end of the day, we have the surprise to climb – downhill – climb … nothing like to finish a good cycling day !

You will notice, perhaps, the presence of a dog on the photo above, which will follow us for at least 10 minutes!

Passages over 10% are common and with the heat, it hurts.

The evening, we have no accommodation and decided to try wild camping. We will come across a super spot on the roadside :

In fact the land belongs to people but no problem to settle and the gentleman will even give us the indication to find a tap and have drinking water. The Serbs are super nice and camping in their garden does not seem to worry them at all.

On the other side of the road, we can see the sun set on the Danube:

On Thursday morning, the meal of the day was frugal, we find our new friend: the Burek

Such a thing for breakfast and we are not hungry for a good part of the day!

We are Thursday 11th and it is already our last day in Serbia, tonight we will sleep in Romania. In the meantime, we enjoy the landscapes:

When it goes up, we often have a nice view when we arrive at the top :

This figure carved in the rock is quite impressive (located in front of us, so Romania side).

Then around noon, we take a huge storm on the corner of the face with the lightning that will pass right next to us! We are completely soaked and this is only the beginning … Indeed, from there, it will rain almost continuously for several days 🙁

We will cross the border under a very gloomy weather:

Border between Serbia and Romania which is marked by a hydro-electric dam on the river and which allows us to cross magnificent facilities:

Bine ati venit in Romania :

Romain was happy to come back to Romania and for Emilie it was the first time. Crossing the border is under shower … cold. The road is horrible, a heavy truck every 10 seconds, it rains, again and again.

Fortunately we have only 10 km to reach Drobeta-Turnu Severin where we have a accommodation via Warmshowers.

Emilie found a dry place, it is enough to make her happy !

After such difficult afternoon, we are delighted to meet Ionut, our Warmshower host, he will provide us a warm place for the evening.. along with a lot of bikes !

Ionut is the owner of the bike shop and host a lot of cyclo. He will offer us local wine, a lot of interesting discussions about bikes, he is very nice and talkative. We had a great night here.

The next morning, with Nikki his colleague, Ionut will do a quick check-up of the bikes. The opportunity to see that our brakes are in poor condition and that the direction of Emilie was poorly tightened.

We leave from there full of energy to face the elements: wind, rain, trucks, … the road is still very complicated:

The photos are missing to illustrate these conditions but it happens to have dogs that attack us on the right side and the cars that we double on the left 😉

To leave this highway to trucks (it is a main passage for the Bulgaria and Turkey), we planned to cut inland via small roads.

Two typical images of the landscape we see from Serbia: dogs and rubbish that are often too much present on the roadsides. Ecology level, there is still work! We venture on small roads in small villages:

Until we got ourself in a muddy path … After a brief hesitation, we say that it must be only temporary and we throw in. Error! It is a very nice gentleman who came specially to meet us in 4×4 to explain us that the road is unusable, it is necessary to turn back, return on the high road and that is all.

The gentleman trying to explain to Romain not to continue:

Bad news for us. We are in the middle of nowhere …

In the meantime we redid the decor of the bikes:

The reason tells us to turn back, we continue then our road to the south hoping to find a place to sleep.

In the area, no hotel, no accommodation, nothing is referenced on the Internet anyway . The rain is redoubling, we are soaked and the cows are passing :

While the horses are waiting :

We are at the end of the afternoon, the first hotel is 50km, we say we will try wild camping but given the weather and « the atmosphere », we are not really convinced.

In short, it’s a mess, especially since we do not have much to eat. And it is often in these moments that the miracle happens. In a small village, Patulele, we stop in a small shop to buy something to eat :

Then discussing and explaining our case to the two managers and a customer (via Google Translate), we ask if we can pitch the tent in their garden. In the beginning it is not possible, we do not understand everything that happens but after a while it’s a surprise. We are invited home! And no tent in the rain or other, we are invited in the children’s room!

A real miracle regarding how the situation was embarked. We are also invited for dinner, and breakfast the next morning, … We can only say a huge thank you to Iona and Iorel for their great hospitality! The Tuica (Romanian brandy) and the local wine were excellent too.

Iona help Emilie remove the mud on the pants (because yes we got all dirty when we arrived …).

Saturday morning, our clothes were almost all dry, but they won’t stay long as the weather is still rainy :

We had no choice but to return to the main road and the lunch break is a real pleasure …

But we have a hotel for the evening! Hotel located in Calafat, on the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Arrived there, we find all the trucks that have doubled us since yesterday:

It’s pretty impressive, the line is several kilometers long. They wait several hours before they can cross the border with Bulgaria because, according to our information, each truck would be checked to see if there are migrants or drugs.

The hotel is uninteresting (well, unless you like to watch trucks) but we can clean our bikes:

And considering our last adventures, it was not luxury.

The plan for the next few days is to find calmer roads, sun and leave Romania quickly to go to Bulgaria.

We do not want to cross the border here to find all our trucks friends on the other side so we take the option to continue along the Romanian Danube side to take a boat 100km away.

Sunday morning, April 14 we have a hundred km to go in the day to reach Bechet, another border town where we can cross. The day will with not big interest except to see life in the Romanian villages where misery is quite big. We have warm hello wherever we go, which is always very appreciable, Romanian people are very welcoming.