In which Sid and Doris go through the Iron Gates and meet Steve and Tatiana, his boat.
This is one of the Big Danube Days. Not because we rode 65 kilometres or made 402 metres of climb, but because we went through the Iron Gates, the narrowest and maybe most dramatic scene on the Danube. Two days ago we were at the widest part. The Danube was barely navigable here before some intervention. The Romans built a canal around the area with rapids and boiling currents. In the 19th century locomotives pulled barges on the Romanian shore. In the 1960s Yugoslavs and Romanians built the Derdap dam and brought the water level up 35 metres. Even now the current is so strong that we watched a barge making about 1 knot until it broke free from a whirling current as it pushed upstream into the narrows.
Last night we found Steve in the restaurant. He is bringing his 26ft Westerly (named Tatiana) with mast on deck, from Germany where he taught English, down the Danube and around to Greece, where he wishes to sail. This is an epic trip and he is single handing it. He does have the advantage of going downstream, so will have at least 8kn of current, however he has to wait for ages for locks and border clearance, so it is swings and roundabouts or as we now say yachts and bicycles.
It is hard to take good photographs of this sort of thing, but the clear and muddy water currents can be seen here.
The next picture is one of the “classic views”, and the final one is Doris going “where the hell is that Trajan’ Tablet thing”, while at the same time demonstrating that we are finally making progress towards having Legs Like Bags of Walnuts.
At the top of the day’s big climb there are a few tourists but not enough to run a cafe for. Some Cloggies have brought their own Espresso machine and we suffer briefly from Espresso Machine (and Camper Van) Envy before tucking into our feast of warm water and half-melted cereal bars.
We press on to Tekija for omelette and juices. Just as we go to leave there is a shower but as before a bit of cowering and then riding in the lighter rain pays off.
Soon we can see the Derdap dam but not get very good pictures, anyway Mr Wikipedia will have some for you. We were hoping for a Visitor Information Centre (a visit to the Hoover Dam is still large in our memory) but no. Instead we can console you with this field full of carefully-numbered and completely unexplained turbine blades. It is difficult to see the scale of them in that photograph, each one is perhaps 4-5m long.
We pause to make a short diversion to the fort the Romans built to protect their Danube Bypass Canal. And a very nice fort it is, with lots of it left to see. We are the only people there.
The Bypass Canal is sadly long since buried under the waters of the dam, but it makes impressive reading – again Mr W is more helpful than the rather sketchy information board.
Doris is keen not to miss out for another day on ice cream so we find the Ice Cafe before the hotel. Doris is wearing the London Pride shirt. The girl selling us ice cream says in good English ‘That is the city I most want to go to. Why, why have you come to Kladovo?’ We explain that it is because we are on our way somewhere else. Her English is good enough to work in London. She should go, a new life is just a cheap flight away.
The river is different here. The dam is a bridge joining Serbia to Romania. When we look across to Drobeta Turnu Severin we do not see cruise boats. We look across to a container port and the Cargill silos.
We are staying in the Derdap Hotel, which from the outside looks like something left in Chernobyl, in fact it looked so scary that we nearly ran away without checking in. Inside the room is great and the staff are friendly. However, the hotel dining room is a hotel dining room. So, despite the rain and cold we are going to get dressed and go into town. And who knows who we might meet?