Day 6: Vukovar to Belgrade

Another long day. Not as hard as yesterday but challenging in quite a number of places.

Despite its subterranean reputation on Trip Advisor, the Hotel Lav turned out to be fine. I slept like a log until 2am when I woke up with cramp in my feet. I managed to doze off until 4am when I woke up with cramp in my bum. How does that happen? I’ve never had cramp in my bum before. I took the opportunity to check the route for today and realised I had miscalculated. I had thought it was going to be a 150 km day but…it was going to be a 190 km day. Two of these back to back was going to be…very difficult. Worrying about this kept me awake even more than the cramp.

Eventually I just gave up, packed and repacked everything a couple of times, climbed into my somewhat moist shorts and went down to breakfast. The food was ok but there was a pot of coffee with the tell-tale signs of dusty instant coffee round the rim. It was empty but the waitress brought back a new pot suspiciously quickly. About the time it would take to ladle a couple of spoons of instant coffee in a coffee pot and fill it with boiling water. It was brown, caffeine-free, coffee flavoured liquid. Bah.

There’s a path along the Danube which runs straight past the Hotel Lav and past the famous Vukovar water tower. This was shelled repeatedly during the siege and the Croatians have kept it as a memorial. It’s now the symbol of the town around the world.

Lest we forget.

The nice path soon ran out and I was back on the D2 which I knew and loved from yesterday. It runs above the Danube on a plain so there isn’t much to see except for the endless fields of maize and sunflowers. To a first approximation, every bit of cultivation I’ve seen since Budapest has been either maize or sunflowers. Surely the world doesn’t need this much sunflower oil

Welcome back to the D2 sucker.

Although the D2 yesterday was as straight as a die and flat, the D2 beyond Vukovar had a little surprise. Well…four surprises. Every 5 km or so there was what I am reliably informed is called a coombe. The road would sweep down off the plain to the level of the Danube at dizzying gradients. Wheeeee.

Wheeeeeeeee….

The downside is that, naturally, the road had to fight its way back up to the plain and hence so did I. A couple of kilometres at 8% soon made it clear how much I had “left on the road” yesterday. It was miserable. The D2 was busy, the lorries and cars were very keen to get to the top of the coombe and not as keen to avoid the struggling cyclist hugging the verge. I had an onset of Cyclists Tourettes™.

Horse sphincters

Finally the coombes were done and I descended into the town of Ilok which looked rather sweet in the sun with the Danube behind. According to my Garmin, I was done with climbing for 60km. Hurrah.

Coombes are nice when you know you’re not going to climb out of them

As I cycled out of Ilok, I saw a bloke in a turban working on a building site and I realised that this was the first non-white person I had seen since Heathrow Airport. I wouldn’t see another non-white person until I was cycling through Belgrade. This part of the world is exceptionally homogeneous. It’s disturbing.

Serbia — being a bad boy and also not part of the EU — is not in Schengen so there was all the faff with passports at the border and then it was onto yet another bridge over the Danube.

The front wheel is in Serbia, the back wheel in Croatia.

I took the traditional photograph at the border although in retrospect I look a lot happier than I felt. Cyrillic made its first appearance and, in tomorrow’s blog I’ll talk a bit about the Serbs relationship with the cyrillic script. That’s for tomorrow.

Hot ‘n’ happy.

The border town is called Bačka Palanca (Бачка Паланка) It was time for some liquids, some proper caffeine and a little sit down. I stopped at the first place I saw which turned out to be a smoke-wreathed drinking den. I cycled on and realised that this was the only place open. I returned and fought my way through the early morning smokers and drinkers to order a couple of cokes and a coffee. It was only once I’d drunk them that it was made clear to me that they couldn’t or wouldn’t accept credit cards. I worked out that the cost in Serbian Dinar was equivalent to about 5 EUR. I had a 20 EUR note and just gave them that. There was much grumbling but these people live 3km away from a Eurozone country. They can go and change it there FFS.

Four times as expensive as it should have been.

The way out of Novi Sad was the greatest hits of the D2 from yesterday. Straight and super busy.

Look at the distance between the lorry on the right and the edge of the road. That’s how much space these people gave me.

Not being quite as tired as last night I didn’t end up a quivering cowering mess in the gutter but it was a close run thing. Serbian National Route #12 was a piece of work. At least it was flat I guess.

Out of nowhere, my route turned right and without warning I was on a lovely cycle path on top of the Danube dyke. My critical faculties are shot right now but I absolutely loved it. The wind was behind me, it was flat and no murderous 18 wheel lorries grazing my elbow. What’s not to like?

This was a huge relief.

As I closed in on Novi Sad, the path took me past a helicopter crashed into a building. Or something. The language of advertising is strange in other countries.

There’s a lot of “the guy on the right” in Serbian advertising. Six packs appear to sell stuff.

The cycle path was joined by a promenade along the top of the dyke. There were families, cyclists, little cafes and fit women in bikinis roller blading.

Two cokes, one double espresso, ice cream. Better than semi-naked rollerbladers.

Suitably rehydrated I continued along the beautiful Danube path sweeping past the rollerbladers without even a glance — maybe I should be worrying about the numbness in my "soft-tissues" a bit more...

There’s a number of Danube crossings in Novi Sad but for some reason the bike route took me past almost all of them to the furthest away one which you can see in the distance in this picture. You can also see the Serbian Navy which, to be honest, is going to have the shit kicked out of it if it ever comes up against a Type 26 destroyer.

Serbia will never rule the waves with these. Maybe it will rule the ripples?

After crossing the river, I trundled through Petrovaradin on the other side of the Danube and back onto the traditional busy road. I could see on my Garmin that I had a climb ahead and, sure enough, 10k after the river crossing the climb hit. And it hit hard.

An average of 8% for 4.5 km on a busy road. I had already cycled 90k today in the heat and this was excruciating. The temperature was 41 degrees and the gradient was relentless. I had to stop every 500m to cool down. I stood at the side of the road and took off almost all my clothes and poured water over my head. All the while busses, lorries and insane Serbian drivers were whizzing past at speed.

The bus passengers were about to enjoy the sight of a hot semi-naked man.
But not hot in a good way…

The hill went on and on. The temperature stayed in the 40 plus zone and I seriously wilted. After what seemed to be a not very enjoyable lifetime, the climb ended and here at the top of the hill was one of the most ornate and beautiful churches I have ever seen. The photograph doesn’t really capture how bright the golden cupolas were or the deep green of the roof. For some unknown reason this was plonked at a random crossroads. Maybe it’s dedicated to the patron saint of hot — but not in a good way— cyclists.

Extraordinary

I was more than half way there now and it was mostly flat all the way to Belgrade (Београда) so all I had to do was grind it out in the heat. The roads weren’t too busy relatively speaking and after the hill I was glad of some flat wind-assisted kilometres. Since I wasn’t in imminent danger of being squished like a bug I fired up some podcasts and turned my legs.

In a massive departure from the previous few days, it turns out that they don’t just grow maize and sunflowers in this part of Serbia. They obviously do grow an enormous amount of maize and sunflowers but they also grow apples. I was so excited I stopped and stole an apple to eat but it was a cooking apple. Thanks for that God.

A stolen apple. I hope the police don’t catch me.

There was another climb in the list of climbs in my Garmin which looked horrible (12% and up) but to my enormous relief it turned out that I had randomly routed myself down to the banks of the Danube and back again. No idea what I was thinking but I suspect the world looks a lot easier when you’re sitting in your office planning a route than it does when its 40 degrees and you’ve got 150 km in your legs already. Whatever was down in Stari Sankamen is lost to me and lost to the historiography of this blog.

The heat was quite extraordinary. I had to stop in this bus shelter for some shade and a rest. Unfortunately, the quality of bus shelters in Serbia is not up to the Danish and Swedish bus shelters and it’s also pretty clear that the bus shelters in Serbia provide extra services such as an ashtray and a urinal.

I was so hot I just sat amid the cigarette butts contemplating the piss-stained walls.

As I have said in previous posts, you can always rely on a garage. They’re standardised, they take credit cards and they’re almost always air conditioned. With 25 km to go I found a garage that had air conditioning which is a massive win, iced tea — my worrying addition to this excellent beverage is returning — and ice creams which are high sugar content in a frozen form. I sat on the one chair in the garage and contemplated the selection of motor oils I could buy if I were to be here with a car.

You can’t see the air conditioning but trust me, it’s there.

Eventually the dormitory towns and suburbs of Belgrade appeared and it all got very serious. Very busy with lots of parked cars each one waiting to “door” you as you cycled past. I can say without fear of contradiction that the Serbians are the worst drivers in Europe. Drivers would pull out of side junctions without looking, they would speed past me grazing my left shoulder and then immediately turn right in front of me. They would come up behind me on a narrow two way road and rev their engines. I lost count of the number of times somebody overtook me with inches to spare both for me and the people coming in the other direction only to stop at the next red light 50m up the road.

For 20 km it was not just hot and difficult but it also required total concentration. Imagine cycling into London but a version of London where there’s no speed limit, everybody on the road has just passed their driving test and has had their empathy surgically removed. Now was the time that I really needed a lovely cycle path. I would have given up on the semi-naked rollerbladers to just have a cycle path.

For no apparent reason, the route cut down to the left on some cobbled streets (a joy for the hands and the undercarriage) and, there was the Danube riverside path.

Unexpectedly nice. A lovely park.

People were out buying ice creams — there are about a million ice cream stalls — and chatting as they wandered along beside the river.

A big relief after the roads.

As the path swept round the bend in the river there was Belgrade but sadly Belgrade was up on a hill. Oh no.

Pretty but…annoyingly elevated.

If I’d thought the traffic on the way into Belgrade was bad, crossing the river and going through the centre of the city was insane. Taxi drivers are definitely the worst. I’m sure one of them clipped my back wheel as he attempted to save 5 seconds before stopping at a red light.

I agonisingly slowly ground my way up the hill and finally, there at the top, was the Hotel Opera Garni. It was another uncanny valley four star hotel but it had a bed and, wonders of wonders, a heated towel rail. It didn't have a bar or a restaurant and therefore after washing my kit I headed out for some food.

The manager had directed me to the “Bohemian Street”. It was a hilly street leading down to the river and it was lined with restaurants.

I chose one at random and pointed wildly at the menu and ended up with fried cheese (!) and some sort of lamb dish.

This wasn’t nice but it is calories. The rosé was good though.

Tomorrow is a rest day. I had done the best part of 550km in the last three days and it had been hot and difficult. I decided to take the day off and explore Belgrade. More impressions of Serbia tomorrow.

Stats:

• Distance 177km — More than 150 but less than 190 due to judicious shortcutting.
• Climbing 960m — This is a lot for a day like today. I need to avoid that sort of thing.
• Average HR 115bpm — This is much more in the long distance cycling zone.
• Body — Hands completely numb, feet super sore and the less said about the undercarriage the better.

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