Day 34 Kovin to Golubac

In which Sid and Doris wait three hours to cross the Danube on the trip’s most entertaining ferry.

Today’s weather forecast is much cooler, offering rain in the afternoon. Breakfast in the Kovin bakery is the usual festival of near comprehension. The bread goods are fine, featuring much white cheese. In common with other countries nearby two sorts of cheese are available: white or yellow. The coffee is Nescafé Agila which is a very mere brew. Still we only need to fuel 87 kilometres or so.

We have sworn off unsurfaced dike top “shortcuts” and zoom down fine tarmac roads with little traffic. We spend some part of the morning in the company of a Serbian Army convoy buzzing past us, very kindly. There is a lead Land Rover, then a police car. There are HumVees, six wheeled armoured personnel carriers, more Land Rover Defenders and some four-wheeled ATVs with a rider and a gunner (no pictures, sorry). We get a friendly wave from one of the APC commanders. There is then a fair amount of traffic banked up behind them as no one thought it a good idea to overtake the soldiers.

Sid has not said much about the Serbian car park. Mostly the cars look as if they were brought in second hand from more prosperous markets. There are some real smokers. We have seen a few Renault 4s, maybe just part of the old car market. Plenty of Ladas still going, with Nivas popular in the country. There are many Zastava Yugos, based on Fiat 128s last built in Italy in the early 1980s. (They made a very pretty 128 Coupe.) Zastava only stopped production in 2017. These cars mostly look a lot older. We saw a Zastava this morning that seemed more like a Fiat 600. The most aged cars and motorbikes are used near home, like Lotus Elans in the UK. It is more convenient if you can walk home from the breakdown.

There are also TAM trucks and vans. TAM was just getting going near Belgrade in the late 1930s but events beyond their control caused them to cease production in 1941. TAM was restarted in 1947 and later moved North to Maribor where German forces had set up production of aircraft parts. (Maribor had been Austrian Marburg but translated to Slovenia after WW1.) The last TAMs were built in 2011 though again they look a lot older.

By 10.40 we have covered 45 kilometres of happy cycling; not hot, not thirsty, not traffic blasted.  After many days of cycling through identical villages we are getting Village Deja Vu – single-storey houses set well back from a wide straight road with a church and a couple of cafes somewhere near the middle.

We arrive at the Stara Palanka ferry with most of three hours to spare (having just missed the 10.30 ferry, gnash). We had both assumed a more frequent service and sit peacefully on a terrace by the river with juices, lunch and blog maintenance.

Our day with the military continues with the presence of a river patrol boat with guns fore and aft. They do not do any actual patrolling. There are two support trucks on the bank. The Collective recognise Busy when they see it.

The ferry is beyond epic. It is a barge with a plank deck at gunwale height, with a tow-alongside tug attached by wire ropes. The landing is a scraped-earth slipway. The ferry comes toward us with a pile of sand and gravel already on the ramp. The barge charges the bank and is then held firm with a looped hawser, bollard and winch. Once one side is tight a second hawser is looped over a bollard and pulled tight with a manual big-wheel winch. The ramp is then dropped.  (The wire ropes are clamped into loops and are as old as Methusaleh.) The crew then take up shovels to move the earth brought with them on the ramp to even up the ramp-to-bank angles so cars can get off without grounding out, and mostly they don’t, partly because car passengers walk ashore. The ferry coming to get us is so full, mainly of Romanian registered cars, that one Audi appears to have come across on the loading ramp that is now at the back.

We pass the crossing marvelling at the equipment and equipe, one of whom is a jockey-like 15, but plays the part well with an insouciant cig.  Also a highly over-inflated logo for the ferry. Our journey has a few pedestrians, one local family crossing. Clearly health care in the region is improving. Sid has never seen a toothless crone with so many teeth, and many of them her own.

On our crossing there are only four cars all loaded down the middle and toward the back which will make for a better angle of attack as we ferry glide into Ram on the Southern bank. (How apt.) No one died so it must have been OK. If it had happened on our way to Cape Town Dave and I would still be telling the story.

Parts of the route from Ram to Golubac were new and billiard table smooth. Other roads still involved full use of the width unless there was oncoming traffic. Like it or lump it? The rain never came and probably the day never got over 30 degrees C. There are hills again which give the bum a rest.  In fact we were so excited to see the hills that we even took a photo of them.  So often photos disappoint because they do not capture the detail that is seen with the naked eye, but this photo shows the size and scale of the hills perfectly.  The largest was maybe 10m high:

And a charming local custom of pre-organising the joint grave site when only one of you is dead.  Only one side is currently getting flowers, natch.  Sid and Doris cycle thoughtfully onwards.

Coming into town we recce and find that Golubac, while having great views to Romania across the widest part of the Danube and sight of the castle has little else. Our home for the night does not answer the door but a phone call gets a caretaker neighbour to let us in. While Sid is spanner checking the bikes a wizened American dude appears from apartment seven and talks about his work for the Right at Italian elections. He helpfully explains that Obama is a Moslem and seems to believe this is a Bad Thing (see Sellars and Yeatman). Sid does not ask the dude about events on the grassy knoll, fearing this will delay dinner.

Then dinner, pleasantly served, is one of the world’s worst ever mixed grills so a local dog goes to its bed well fed. And then we ask if they do breakfast?  Truly the triumph of hope over experience.

We leave you with our view across the Danube, and those wily Romanians stealing all the energy from the wind before it can reach the Serbian side.