Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

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and so to return

1-IMG_6934With Sulina been the end of the road waterway, it’s time to start my return to another adventure. I’ve been reading lots of good things on various blogs about Romania’s capital, Bucharest so I’m making that my next port of call.

The ferry leaves Sulina at 7am so it was an early start to meet another mega group of fishermen, now with fewer bags but with their precious caught fish already frozen, complaining about how few fish there are now in the delta,

The  boat  with us packed like the proverbial sardines arrived in Tulcea. The port conveniently has an integrated bus station. Yesterday I had chatted to the bus driver going to Torino (Turin in Italy) via Bucharest  and he said there was no problem putting bikes on big buses. Which was very good news as there are plenty of problems with bikes on trains. So I went to the Augustina window, emphasizing my need for a BIG bus, normally they use minivans. No problem – they had one today (Friday) at midday taking 5 hours or so for £14

1-IMG_6958The bike easily fitted on although I was worried about folks putting heavy cases on top of the rear wheel, in fact they were just bags of flowers so it all went very easily.

Whilst on the bus i twittered about visiting Bucharest and got an immediate reply from @bucharestlife recommending The Rembrandt Hotel, a few clicks on the booking.com app and I was booked in. Modern technolgy at its most awesome.  The ride from the bus station to the hotel was only a few minutes. The hotel is excellent, cosy & right in the centre of the old town, so I lengthened my stay till wednesday morning.

The photos of the day are here

 

 

Down the Danube from Tulcea to Sulina on a boat

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The 0km marker! The end or start of The Danube

The final 37km of the Danube Bike Trail has to be done by boat as there are no roads in the delta, although Ceausescu was intent on draining the region and making it farmland. There is an interesting website about it here

The main river splits into three channels around Tulcea the North channel is the border to Ukraine whilst the centre channel is used by shipping and ends at Sulina where the Zero km marker is situated. The land has ‘grown’ so actually the channel is now a fair bit longer

Its not possible to go there & back in the day so I took the 1.30pm ferry, it takes 3 hours to get to Sulina with several stops en route. It was totally packed with fishermen and their huge quantities of tackle, apparently autumn is peak fishing time. The price is reasonable at £8 plus £2 for the bike.

1-IMG_6818You are greeted by a huge number of folks desperate for you to stay with them! However, I ploughed through them and stayed at Vila Alga where I was smoked for dinner.

A relaxing interesting day especially seeing the huge size of the grain carriers passing each other in the river channel.

check wear on tyre
A Romanian road grate!

All my pictures of the day are here including the one below which warns you about riding in Romania with too narrow wheels on your bike.

Final day of cycling on The Danube Bike Trail – Constanta to Tulcea

This was my 28th day of pedalling on The Danube Bike Trail.  With today’s 93.5 miles it made my total mileage from Cambridge to be 2,996 miles of which 3,071km was on The Danube Bike Trail as outlined in Book1,  Book2,  Book3 & mostly Book4 (I stayed in Romania) of the Bikeline series

1-IMG_6726It started by going through all the ghost summer holiday towns all wrapped up for the winter. At Navodari you actually get a short & bumpy stretch of real bike track 🙂  then onto long straight but hilly roads all well made & pretty quiet  though pleasant enough villages.  You eventually hit the nightmare stretch of Highway 22 for 14km before turning off to Jurivloca. straight into a roaring headwind.  I’m not sure quite why this area has such beautifully kept roads & pavements. Must be to do with the all the wind farms I guess.

1-IMG_6754It started to get late  by the time I reached Agighiol so I skipped the big detour and went straight to Tulcea, which is just as well as by the time I arrived it was pitch black & my front light ran out of battery 🙁 coupled with AroundMe failing, by sending me the long way to the hotel where I was told it was full! they were lying of course but I had already spotted The Hotel Rex so that’s where I ended up pretty well exhausted.

I hadn’t spotted any places to stay except maybe a pension around Enisala so it’s a pretty long day.

All the time in Romania I haven’t seen ONE E6 cycleway or any navigation signs for The Danube bikeway

Here’s my Strava and some pictures

Strava_Ride___Constanta_to_Tulcea

Day off in Constanta

Tuesday 22nd October

Cabling Constanta
Cabling Constanta

After yesterdays tough ride from Silistra on the Bulgarian)Romanian border I decided to take a day out and luxuriate in mv somewhat  faded 5 star accommodation.

I managed to get the data sorted with Vodafone on my iPhone, I think it broke because I tried calling the UK on my Romanian number. This wasn’t allowed so basically I lost my data plan.  £9 later I walked out with another 1GB of data all working.

I went into a few travel agents, but they all laughed and thought I was nuts wanting to return to Budapest on a boat 🙁 The town itself is one hell of a mess with all the pavements torn up whilst they are laying miles of ducting for cables, interestingly using masses of labour rather than diggers. Took a lot of effort to find a coffee shop but worth the wait to find Zoomserie and it’s yummy ice cream & pleasant staff after a haircut it was back to the hotel.

Grain for Turkey
Grain for Turkey

In the afternoon I took myself of to the docks & Pier 31,the grain terminal. Fascinating to see the huge queue of trucks waiting to unload the corn  alongside  the hundreds of rusting, disbanded railway wagons. I spoke to the manager who rang the shipping company but it was all no can do. I pottered off to the ships that were loading corn up. One was off to Izmir, i suspect if I had $150 to thrust in his palm I could have had a lift, but didn’t fancy Turkey just yet. The other boat was of to Pakistan. It’s interesting and I feel you can travel this way but you need hard cash in your pocket & your stuff with you. Another time maybe…

So basically there seems to be no straight forward way to get a  boat back up The Danube from Constanta. Tomorrow I continue  to find The Danube,

Some pictures of the day are here.