Category: travel blog

Back on the road again after my two week break exploring 5 star luxury in Hungary with Sally who has written a great deal about it here.  The Residence Wellness Hotels we stayed in were both very comfortable with good facilities and fast WiFi . My only gripe is that both hotel  pool areas had slippery floor tiles whereas the hundred’s of years old thermal Kiraly pools had perfect non slip surfaces & water fountains to drink from!

I retrieved mv bike from it’s fourth floor refuge kindly given by the owners of  Vila Terazije whilst I was in Budapest. Sprayed my shoes & bike bags with the waterproofing and set of with my new Aldi biking trousers bought over by Sally, which rapidly proved to hot! So will now have to find somewhere in my overpacked bag to put them. The first major obstacle was trying to get the rear bottom gear with my right thumb, going up the incline to The Danube Bridge leaving Belgrade. I ended up doing a U turn then using my palm to change gear. A passing motorist even offered to help.. Hopefully before I hit the hills in a couple of days it will have calmed down.

The Danube Book 4 by Bikeline makes no mention of the left bank route which is now well marked, all be it a  rough mud track in many places. The route goes through some pleasant villages with food & drink shops plus passing an oil refinery and derelict factories. I made it a lazy day by stopping after 46 miles in Kovin at the Villa Milano hotel not 5 star but plenty good enough for a nights stay.

Here is the Strava for today:

and a few more pictures here

The first job on entering a country is to get the internet fixed on the phone, especially when @threeuk want £6 per megabyte! So straight into the Vip shop where to my surprise and utter delight I walked out 5 minutes later with a nano sim already online with 300 megabytes of data for 300RSD  (£2.20). or 8000 times cheaper than 3.  Why is it that non EU countries are so efficient at getting you on the internet so quickly and cheaply.

Another thing that caught my eye in Novi Sad is that the central area is all in new paving blocks. However, contrary to every other place that is taking part in this mania. Here they have paved the whole lot with no kerbs etc etc and just a large central gridded drain. How much cheaper  must that be to do than all the angle grinding of concrete kerbs, fiddly drains that block up etc.

The first part out is a bit of a nightmare with the traffic and no bike lanes, I guess no EU money for Route 6 here, after going through Sremski Karlovci I did a bit of creative thinking with OSM and made my own route through the National Park, total bliss a real winner 🙂 However, my second attempt at doing this after Beska was a total disaster, with a huge amount of very steep climbs up very rough tracks, so anyone reading this doing the E6, just keep straight on in Beska 🙂

Then it was across the vast plain with it’s huge clouds of tiny winged insects making for very uncomfortable riding plus the atrocious driving with a totally new twist, slamming your car in reverse and ramming it down the road to get into a parking space you missed 5 minutes ago.

So I did get into Belgrade down, what could be, a very attractive street. Except the ancient cobbles were all loose with big holes where a cobble had disappeared . It’s interesting how all towns were cobbled (Cambridge had the luxury of wooden blocks, so as not to upset the dons with noise) only to get them modernised & covered in tarmac, now to return to cobbles.

The Vila Terazije is OK ,nice and central as the disco beat  outside last night proved. It has the most complicated shower ever with an inbuilt radio more jets & buttons than necessary and must be a nightmare to keep clean.

Today I’m off to find my hero’s museum. The inventor of the 20th century Tesla!, radio, AC power etc are all down to him. I went to see his birthplace with Emily 12 years ago and also visited where he died, a broken man, In New York. At last he is getting credit over Edison & Marconi who ruthlessly ripped of his designs & denied him credit.

The Strava for the 62 miles yesterday is below and the pictures are here. That makes it 1.674 miles since leaving Cambridge 54 days ago & yep I’m loving it 🙂 There is now a two week interlude from biking the Danube as I’m off walking in Hungary with Sally who won’t be in Norfolk!

The Serb authorities are keen to know where you entered the country, imagine the receptionists amazement when I pulled up my Strava data on her computer 🙂