Is it a bad thing if the best thing to happen all day happens at breakfast time? The D10 is a modern hotel, actually in Zemum on the outskirts of Belgrade. Our breakfast and breakfast-hostess were great and we were encouraged to take extra for our punishing day ahead. We were not expecting punishment so were fortunate to have cheese, bacon and cucumber muffins to lighten the day.
And finally they tried to give us a fridge magnet (see pic), the concept of a #virtualsouvenir was difficult to translate so we cycled away to despairing cries of “but it is very light and you can stick it on your fridge!”
In the end 68 kilometres, max 37’C, with a certain amount of field bashing. But first a city tour.
Doris wanted to see the St Petka chapel and its ‘famed mosaics’ up in Belgrade’s Kalmegaden Fortress (when you are writing a guidebook you can only go with what there is). Literally that was the high point of the day. Actually not being able to see the mosaics due to a Christening in the Chapel made for a lot of flogging about in Belgrade for not much fun. We saw the fortress. Sid can vouch for its fortressiness. It was very fortressy.
Today saw two episodes of Bonkersness. One was getting out of Belgrade over the four lane Pancevacki bridge. It is a mile long and you know you are in trouble when a rather dinged-up road sign warns traffic to beware of bikes. It is so decrepit that it makes New York infrastructure look rather first world. The only person who really cut us up was towing a Subaru competition car. So much for Solidarnoc.
Pulling onto a farm road we lost the trail and found this mobile beehive, the first of many, presumably taken to the field that needs pollination. Cute. We’d like to see how the bees’ waggle dances cope with a different location every day.
Reversing out of the yard we found our route crossed a two plank bridge over a ditch into a field, as the local retired couple might have been calling out to us, but our Serbian is still a bit weak. Or maybe they were saying “you are the fourth set of bikers today to miss that bridge, ha ha. How happy we are that we planted that large tree in front of the small signpost.”
The second bonkers episode is another dike path with barely discernible ruts in the knee high grass, and another chance to regret the £130 saved on tick-bourne encephalitis vaccinations. (“Are you certain you won’t be travelling at running speed through meadows of knee-high grass?” “No way, if that happens then something has gone seriously wrong with our journey, we only have road bikes.”)
Sid fell off with no great harm done.
And then we caught up with a German family party on mountain bikes with Dad towing a trailer, of course. Frauen compared mosquito bites. Doris’s are many and spectacular, she was perhaps just shaded for first place in quantity but won a prize for contour.
The map had simply shown a surfaced road. So as Churchill said all we can do is ‘keep buggering on’. But Sid detests these non-paths and a mere 11 kilometres of grassy grief later spotted a wily work around onto Tarmac. Heh, heh, heh. So much for purity.
Actually, purity did get a look in when we found this monastery in the middle of a Gazprom cracking plant. As usual we light candles. A bit late, I’ve already fallen off.
The rest of the day is just pedaling on through Serbian villages. The name may be different but they are the same. The plain between them is the same. How they must look forward to Monday and something to do. We stopped at several cafes in one town. The coffee available was Nescafé 3 in 1. The range of drinks was miserable. So that’s how poor they are. Retail ethanol is about £1.30 for half a bottle.
Tonight we are in Kovin. As we rode in it looked like a bigger version of the hopeless dull villages. Our hotel already has a room full of bikes when we get here so there is some tourist economy, maybe eight bed nights today. There seems to be somewhere for dinner though our salty snack intake itself would probably prevent night starvation, and we have seen the bakery for breakfast.
But when we went out for dinner, going into the centre because we needed an ATM, we suddenly found the town en fete. Rows of stalls, pie mongers, mobile bars, candy floss, costume jewellery, Scarborough fare. Most fun for us were local traditional bands (bagpipes, accordions, fiddle, guitar and drums) and dancers. Not putting on a tourist show but dancing for fun and showing off in full costume, as you can see from the size of the crowd. We ate meat in a bun and enjoyed the evening much more than we imagined. When we got here the weed was too bored to tumble. By nine o’clock the town was alive with the sound of music.
Today’s ride was quite high effort for the distance, so we are hoping that the next few days down to the Iron Gates will repay the work. Just cycling in a very hot hamster wheel to get from Nul Part sur Greve to Nowheresville, Serbia does not really feel worth the bottom pain and we can’t expect a fair every night. If you can see the river or something interesting it feels worthwhile. 100 meters away it is just an exercise in dogged stamina. The route tomorrow has climb, which tends to speak of views so on we go towards Golubac.