Day 8: Belgrade to Vinci

All in all this was a pretty fun day mainly because it was quite a bit shorter than the previous ones. The route said 150 km which is definitely doable but some cunning shortcut work reduced it to just under 130. Despite being a good day, it had its moments — as they all do — as the day unfolded.

The Hotel Opera Garni supplied the same underwhelming breakfast buffet that I had suffered yesterday. Top marks for the endless coffee machine but when you’re reduced to having a couple of iced doughnuts and some jam sandwiches you know you’re missing out on that luxury four star experience somewhere. At least I got away early. I was hoping to beat some of the heat and some of the Belgrade traffic. In both cases I failed miserably. It was already warm and the Serbian commuters were out early doing their crazy driving stuff.

The first order of business was to try and work out how to get out of Belgrade. Rather stupidly I’d started my Garmin route 4km away from the hotel and I was reduced to navigating by the sun. Then one of the Eurovelo signs appeared and I thought that my problems were over.

The EV6 joins the EV11 for a bit.

I knew I would be going to Pančevo on the Pančevo bridge so this seemed to be the sign to follow. Very annoyingly the signs disappear just when you need them and you’re back to vainly hoping that you’re going in the right direction while dodging insane young men in shitty 20 year old Renaults talking on their phones. There was a nice path through a park which seemed to be signed correctly but I was so busy trying to work out on my Garmin when I’d be turning next that I cycled down a set of stairs. I realise that this is in some deep way my own fault but who puts a set of bloody stairs on a cycle path? Superhuman reactions and near pro-level bike handling skills saved me from a humiliating fall and injury. Or maybe it was luck. Who can say eh?

I’m actually quite cool if there’s no cycling infrastructure. If you’re on the D2 being buffeted by 18 wheeler lorries you know where you stand. It’s the inconsistent infrastructure that annoys me. “Here’s a nice cycle path but every 100m it crosses a road and you’re going to have to bump down a 15cm kerb on one side and back up a 15cm kerb on the other side. You’re welcome”.

Additionally all that nice cycle path tarmac is an open invitation to people to park on it further impeding progress.

Oí mate, you’re parked on my EV6!

I averaged just under 8 kmh trying to get out of Belgrade. Finally I found the EV6 sign pointing over the Pančevo bridge but there was a strange…”motorway” feel to the road. Which is because it actually was a bloody motorway. Really, is this the best way out of Belgrade Eurovelo folks? At least three dual carriageways filtered onto the main motorway road before the bridge started. At each I was reduced to standing at the junction and waving at bus drivers hoping they would stop, block the road and I could push the bike across. There was absolutely no way I was going to cycle in this traffic.

Thoughtfully the bridge designers had put a bike path at the side of the bridge. They hadn’t put any way of getting to the bike path in the plans though. They hadn’t allocated any money to the cycle path’s construction or maintenance either.

Is this really the best you can do Belgrade? Well, at least it can’t get worse.

Oh but it did get worse. The “bike path” stopped and this was what confronted me.

The choice is death…or the shittest bike path in Europe.

I chose the shittest bike path in Europe. I had promised family and friends I would be careful.

Boy the shittest bike path in Europe was shit. I have noticed both in Hungary and Serbia, there seems to be no social pressure to avoid throwing crap out of your car. The verges of the roads are a veritable archeological dig of cans, bottles, condoms, fag packets, mystery bloody bundles and, bafflingly, single shoes. This path was no different although a number of people seemed to have had fun throwing glass beer bottles at the worryingly damaged crash barriers. There were also a huge number of bottles of…”trucker tizer”. Lorry drivers who need a wee and don’t want to stop will pee in plastic bottles and then chuck them by the side of the road. Not all of them make it to the verge undamaged…

I stopped and took a quick photograph of the Danube in the middle of the bridge.

Nice picture but the smell was atrocious thanks to Trucker Tizer.

The bridge ended eventually and I slithered down a sandy embankment to find, in a sudden and jarring dislocation, that I was back in the countryside and I was back riding on gravelly dykes. I know I’ve been dissing this sort of cycling but after getting out of Belgrade alive, I was so pleased to see it.

Two shaven-headed thugs straight out of far-right-English-racist central casting ignored their dogs as they snarled and snapped around me for about 500m. I have a dog and I know what “Hey, new friend, want to play” barks sound like and “I want to rip your calf muscles right off your leg” barks sound like. These dogs were doing the second bark and their owners didn’t give a toss. I red-lined it away from the dogs and felt it was a fitting sendoff from Belgrade.

Like welcoming an old friend.

As I have explained in posts passim you get very attuned to the state of the gravel and sand that you’re riding on. This was not good gravel. It was sandy and loose but I was happy to not be squished or covered in lorry driver’s piss or mauled by a dog so I didn’t really mind.

Soon every thing became surprisingly rural. There were goats grazing on the dyke.

Unexpected. The goats were aggressive but not compared to the dogs.

The goatherd was sitting on a seat fannying around on his phone while the bull goat sat next to him like a dog. It was sweet.

Just like a dog. How cute.

I made it to Pančevo which, unlike its bridge namesake, was lovely and had some great cycling infrastructure which turned into some reasonable roads that wound their way through the countryside. I’d decided I’d gauge the road and traffic conditions and make a decision Omoljica about whether or not I’d take the now traditional 30 km dyke top path or take the 20k road. The roads were pretty quiet and the advantage of being able to average 25 kmh rather than 15 kmh swung it. Oh…the fact that my “undercarriage” wouldn’t be getting another couple of hours of pounding by gravelly potholes was a bit of a factor too.

Given that I’d knocked 5 km off the route in the morning and another ~10 km by taking the road, the distance today was down to 133 km. A piece of cake. It would have been were it not for the temperature. From the moment I had left the “Bridge of Death” it was in the high 30s and topped out at 42 at one point.

Those of you who have cycled with me know that I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to hydrating when cycling. I did the whole London 100 on one bottle of water for example. In these temperatures there’s no room for that sort of rank foolishness. I’m drinking more than a litre an hour and not a lot of it is coming out the traditional way.

Drinking this much requires you to stop frequently to replenish your water bottles. The golden rule is “as soon as your first water bottle is empty start looking for somewhere to stop”. I’d made mistakes before with this so as soon as a little shop appeared in Kovin I bought another litre of water and some bilious yellow juice stuff. The lady running the shop was very friendly until she noticed that I had parked my bike on top of her rose bushes. She was not happy.

A litre of water, a litre of fizzy yellow and a pissed off shop keeper.

I knew that my next checkpoint was at 1pm because I needed to get a 🎵ferry across the Danube🎵 and it only runs three times a day. 40 km, 2.5 hours to do it. What could possibly go wrong?

This could go wrong

40km in 2.5 hours on roads is fine. On gravel, it’s really pushing it. Especially this sort of gravel. There was nothing for it though. I could hang out in the one-horse-town Stara Palanka for four hours waiting for the next ferry or I could put the hammer down.

It was time to time-trial it on sand through the Serbian hinterland.

I thought I’d add a little insert here on the “Serbian” Vinča culture. There’s a fantastic Rest is History podcast on this which I thoroughly recommend for a bit more detail than I can stick in a cycling blog. It’s only 30 minutes and you will be surprised. I was.

In summary, about 7,000 years ago an “old European” culture appeared centred on this area of Serbia. It was very sophisticated for the time and produced some amazing pottery and votive statuary some of which I had seen in the Belgrade National Museum. They also appear to be the first people to smelt metal and there’s a copper battle axe which I also saw in the museum dated to 5,000 BC. That’s a long time before metal smelting was used anywhere else.

What makes it especially interesting is that some of the pottery has symbols suggestive of writing maybe 3,000 years before the appearance of writing in Sumeria. So, is it writing? Well…once again, there’s a strong correlation between one’s view of the symbols — and the impact that the Vinča had on the future course of civilisation — and how Serbian you are. The academic consensus is “no, it's not writing”…but not in Serbia.

The Vinča lasted nearly 2,000 years which is a lot longer than, say, the Roman or Chinese civilisations. Then pretty quickly — for an archeological definition of “quickly” — they were gone. There is a school of thought that they were a peaceful, agrarian and matriarchal society which was then overrun by the bad, aggressive, warlike and patriarchal tribes from the north. This school of thought was in vogue in the 1970s — when things like that were cool — but recent archeology seems to suggest that the Vinča were just as brutally vicious as pretty much everybody else in history and they declined due to soil impoverishment and climate change — which is in vogue right now. Anyway, listen to the RIH podcast. It’s really fascinating. I was hoping to go to one of the dig sites but…gotta keep cycling.

i>I should also thank my friend Andy Sobek for putting me on to The Rest Is History while I was cycling to Sweden. I am totally addicted now and have listened to almost the entire back catalogue over the winter.

Back to the cycling. We left our hero putting the hammer down on a 40 km section of grass and gravel attempting to keep his average speed above 20 kmh. I had full water bottles — well, when I started I had full water bottles — and I was starting to get my eye in when it came to this shitty gravel. What could possibly go wrong?

This could go wrong

This road looks lovely but in fact it is horrific. Smooth on the top but underneath full of potholes. My hands, feet and…”undercarriage” took a terrible beating on this 10km section. Any deviation from going straight ahead was punished with a front wheel skid that threatened to throw me in the sand.

It was now getting incredibly tight for time. As soon as the amazingly horrible sand ended, I calculated I had time for a quick splash and dash — drinking 6 litres of water eventually causes some of it to come out the traditional way. It was my bad luck and the bad luck of a huge bunch of German walkers that they appeared on the dyke at the same time as I was answering the call of nature. I have no idea what these people are doing? Who goes walking along a boring dyke for 40km in the baking sun? It’s boring enough when you’re covering ground at cycling pace. At walking pace? Kill me now.

“Look Greta, a sweaty man with his tackle out”

The final km to Stara Palanka were desperate. I thought I was having “bean problems” as the bean dropped down and started rubbing on the back wheel.

Those of you who haven’t read the Cambridge Warsaw trip will be a bit mystified at this point. The black bean shaped thing sticking out behind my saddle is the thing I carry all my stuff in. On the Cambridge Warsaw trip, I had poorly constructed Topeak bean and much of the trip was about how crap no that bean was. I now have a new one which performed perfectly on the way to Sweden.

I stopped and wasted precious minutes trying to adjust the bean. Nothing worked: it still rubbed the back wheel. There was nothing to it. I took out my trouser belt and tied it round me and tied one of the bean straps to the belt. It worked. More crazy fast cycling.

The actual scenery was beautiful and there was a huge international fishing competition going on along the canal — like the Olympics but for tubby boring men — but I didn’t have time to stop to take a photograph. I was literally down to minutes.

I barrelled into the car park of the only building in Stara Palanka while doing a stylish rear wheel skid with a bare 2 minutes to spare. It might have been a bit more stylish if I had remembered about tying the bean strap to me. As I tried to get off the bike my style points evaporated in a hot sticky mess of stumbling and bike dragging.

There in front of me was the sign with the departure times for the ferry. I know you’re all thinking that it was 12:30 not 13:00 but…the ferry was delayed until 13:30. I’d made it.

Two cokes, one water and one little tiny beer. I deserve it.

There were maybe 5 or 6 cars waiting, a handful of motorbikes and three cycling groups. I got into conversation with a delightful French family. Yes yes yes, I know that I make a thing about never speaking to other cyclists but they were lovely. Husband, wife, girl ~14, boy ~12 and girl ~8. They were cycling the entire Eurovelo 6 in 500k sections every summer. They had started at the Atlantic years ago when the kids were tiny and took them in a trailer. Now their kids are grown up and they all cycle together. Eventually they’ll have done the whole of the EV6. It was really lovely to see. The mum explained where I could get a ticket on the ferry. The dad and I discussed bikes. Maybe I should rethink this not speaking to other people?

As my niece Teky said “it’s like something out of Top Gear”

The Stara Palanka to Ram ferry didn’t feel awfully safe. It’s just a barge with a tiny tug boat attached to it. No dock to speak of, just the river bank.

Compared to endless sandy paths on dykes, it was a bit of a visual feast. I took approximately a million photographs but I’ve culled them down to a few. You can thank me later.

I’m a little concerned about the captain not being in the wheelhouse.

Lots of cyclists.

Note the spade which is used when this bit (the “stern”) hits the bank and the cars need to get off

The fortress at Ram. It’s Ottoman. Or maybe Hapsburg. Who knows? Not me.

Having crossed the Danube again I now only had 30 km to go to tonight’s finish in Vinci and so I could afford to stop for yet another couple of cokes in the cafe on the other side. The lovely French family were there too and we chatted some more. I wish I still spoke French.

On the boat I had worked out what the problem with the bean was. Three days of off road riding, especially the last three hours, had battered my seat post down into the frame. It’s important to remember that the thing doing the battering here is my…”undercarriage”. I performed some quick repairs which I’ll have to check tomorrow but, modulo having bruises from my waist to my knees, it’s good to know that the bean isn’t buggered.

There’s a very steep hill out of Ram and, given that the lovely French family were at the bottom getting ready, I felt I should set off and make it look easy. I had a lot less luggage, a much lighter bike and it would be humiliating if an eight year old passed me on the way up. I rather misjudged how steep and how long the hill was. I was in the 160bpm heart rate red zone after about 30 seconds. It was a brutal and humiliating climb but middle-aged man stubbornness got me to the top without having a heart attack. Just.

However, when I got to the top, everything looked so so much better. Beautiful roads, little cute churchettes lining the road, downhill gradients. If it hadn’t been 40 degrees it would have been perfect.

This is more like it

I swooped down the hills on the perfect tarmac to the banks of the Danube

This is what I expected from this trip. Lovely road, views of the Danube.

I felt great and almost too soon Vinci appeared.

I’m staying at the Kod Dzimija which is by far the best hotel in Vinci. It’s also 32 EUR a night but before enumerating what 32 EUR a night gets you, I should point out that one of the best things it gets you is a giant beer on a terrace overlooking the Danube where the other guests are frolicking around in the water playing water volleyball with their friends and their dogs.

The Kod is owned and operated by a chain smoking family who seem super friendly despite the constant aroma of cigs and sense of chaos. It’s very strange. On one side of the main road is what looks like a bog standard family house where the rooms are, on the other is a terraced restaurant and beneath the terraced restaurant is the Danube which has some rusty old goal posts and volleyball nets in it.

The room is…basic. Once the proprietoress had rectified the lack of soap in the room it seemed good enough. Unsurprisingly 32 EUR doesn’t get you a heated towel rail. Once again it’ll be a damp morning but in these temperatures my kit will be dry before I get to the Vinci town limits.

No, the radiator doesn’t work either.

I thought it would be rude to go to the other restaurant in town so I went with the Kod.

I fought my way through the fog of the other diner’s smoking and found a a table overlooking the river. I’ve learned now that extensive and detailed menus in restaurants are a kind of performance-art thing. There’s no point asking for things because most of them aren’t availble. “What’s the speciality of the house” I asked. What I got was this.

Oh Christ, what’s this?

Some Google Translate work indicates that this was called “Maidens Delight”. It’s a very thin chicken escalope rolled up and stuffed with cheese. It spurts melted cheese suggestively out of one end when you cut into it. I was told by one member of the chain-smoking family that it’s a Serbian favourite. Quite.

Anyway, it was food and I needed food. Breakfast not served until 9 tomorrow at the Kod (!!) so I’ll get something down the road. Not sure if I’ll survive without coffee though.

Tonight is my last night in Serbia. I’m crossing the border (woo hoo) into Romania tomorrow and before I get there I’m cycling through the Iron Gates. More about them in tomorrow’s blog but suffice to say that the section tomorrow is supposed to be the most scenic section of the entire EuroVelo 6 route. It includes 22 tunnels. Glad I brought my lights.

Reading back the last couple of posts, I thought I would make two things clear.

• Concentrating on the things that have a sense of tension and jeopardy is natural in this sort of travel writing. People don’t want to read about somebody having a nice time. They want to read about horrible roads, insane heat and getting your tackle out at unfortunate moments. To be clear, I am loving this trip. So much fun.
• Although I found Belgrade oppressive and dour, I should point out that every single Serbian I have spoken to in the last three days has been unfailingly cheery, helpful and pleasant. This is a country with a lot of very difficult collective history but individually I have to say that I liked everybody. Except the guys with the dogs. I really hated them.

The Stats:

• Distance: 129km. This is doable
• Avg Speed 20.1km. I feel pretty good about that given the amount of off-road stuff.
• Climbing 384m. Nothing.
• Hands: Almost totally numb now. Not easy to type
• Feet: Unusually very very sore. Wearing the wrong shoes I think.
• Undercarriage: The constant impact of off-road cycling is not working out well.
• Legs: Feeling strong still. This won’t last.

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