Beating a Retreat: Day 49 - Vukovar to Novi Sad - Get It While It Lasts... A Big Loop Through Europe 2017

September 25, 2017

Beating a Retreat: Day 49 - Vukovar to Novi Sad

"I'm just not feeling it anymore" said K when she woke up this morning.

I was in shock, I didn't see this coming.

I though our relationship was stronger than that ... until I realized that she was talking about another day of riding along flood dykes on the Danube.

Ok, I can see that. It's been a bit repetitive for the last few days, and apart from a few days in the Danube Gorge and the Iron gates, this flat rather featureless riding is what we have ahead of us.

But we've got country number 8 today and that always brings a bit of excitement doesn't it? With that, we once again threw our legs over the cross bar and set off out of Vukovar toward Serbia.

It was a cold morning, not cool, cold. And misty. However, for the first 30 km on the Croatian side of the river we actually had four decent hills to climb, and even better, to descend. It was all on roads, no more bike paths, but the traffic was pretty quiet and the drivers were quite considerate.

When we crossed the river, and hence the boarder, into Serbia, I felt the usual twinge of excitement I get with every new country. We had about 15 km of road riding to do until the EV6 route went back to a path (gravel and dirt) along the Danube flood dykes.

The first big truck that grazed us and sent me onto the grass erased that excitement twinge. When a second semi trailer with a full load of logs came within inches of us (when we were about 100 m from turning off the nasty highway onto the gravel bike path), my thoughts were firmly with K. Neither one of us was feeling it anymore.

We did get onto the flood dyke bike path that alternated between decent gravel road, some rough single track and some pavement, and this took us into Novi Sad. Our conversation while we were riding along was basically that we were not enjoying this part of the trip, and it was not going to get any better. About the only thing that we were even somewhat interested in seeing was the gorge and the Iron Gates, but not at the risk of getting hit by a truck or some crazy 20 year old in a clapped out Golf. In less than 15 km on Serbian roads we'd already seen to many of these. There was a lot more road riding in front of us, much of it in Romania, where everything we've read and heard is that it's worse than here.

We saw a few interesting things along the way into Novi Sad ... farmers with cages full of carrots and beets washing them in the Danube (pics below), lots of friendly people along the path waving and shouting out words of encouragement (we think) in Serbian. None of that however changed our view on continuing on down the Danube.

When we reached our home for the night, a pension above a restaurant in the centre of Novi Sad, we settled on a new plan. Retreat to Vukovar and then head west across Croatia to the Adriatic coast where we would then turn north to the Alps. This will take us through Slovenia and then onto Salzburg , Munich and eventually Frankfurt.

We'll piece this together a few days at a time, and we will have to keep an eye on the weather as we will be going through the Alps in early October (think snow potential), but the riding and countryside will be a lot more interesting, and much safer (particularly once we get back into Austria).

We did see this as a real possibility when we set off on this trio, and it looks like that's how it's going to turn out.

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Song of the Day

The Thrill is Gone ... classic BB King in a duet with Tracy Chapman

Great song and my favourite version of the many that BB's done. This was playing on the Boom a few days ago, and I remarked to K that we might need it as SOTD later in the trip. It's time has come!

The bombed out water tower at Vukovar - it's being kept in this state as a monument to the 1991-1996 "Croatian War of Independence"

Country number 8 ... definitely not in the EU anymore

bee hives along the trail ... interesting way of housing and moving them

Serbia has done a very good job of signage along the EV6 route ... they just haven't got a very good route ... based on the small part we rode ... also only about half the signs still seem to be in place. We saw many posts at junctions that clearly used to have signs ... but they've since disappeared

The route along the flood dyke ... pretty decent gravel

... a few km's later ... muddy single track ... this lasted for about 7 km before miraculously turning into brand new pavement

the country side was very agrarian, and mostly pretty dilapidated compared with what we saw in Croatia, and certainly Hungary ...the people however seemed very friendly ... nearly all of them, including this woman, waved and called out to us (in a good way we hope)

This was quite cool ... each of these tractors was pulling a cage full of carrots or beets. They would back the cage into the river and then a motor would rotate the cage, like a washing machine, to clean off the veggies

... you can probably make out the carrots in the cage

a pretty common scene on the way into Novi Sad.The vehicles were either clapped out Yugo's or brand new black Mercedes. A lot more of the former

I think everybody stops and takes a picture of this bar on the way into Novi Sad. That;s the back end of a Russian military helicopter sticking out of the bar

The view from our pension ... the center of Novi Sad has a pretty attractive and lively pedestrian area just on the other side of these buildings

Novi sad at night. For a Monday night, there were a lot more people out and about here than in most other places we've been in so far

Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 3,469 km (2,154 miles)

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