DAY THIRTY: "MAI MARE ZI DIN LE TOUR DE CONTINENT"

Day Twenty-Eight (Bela Crkva to Dubova) Daily Distance: 120.39 kms

Day Twenty-Nine (Dubova Rest Day) Daily Distance: 20.19 kms

Day Thirty (Dubova to Negotin) Daily Distance: 118.36 kms

Total Distance: 2731.45 kms

If Érd is twinned with Poynton, then this Serbian town should be twinned with every town in my country of birth, ‘Straya’:

After a training hill first thing in the morning, we crossed back into Romania from Serbia after only 45 minutes, and almost immediately began the biggest climb of the trip. It took us about 10km up a steep, winding road and it was only after 35 minutes at the top that we realised that Jim was MIA. Passengers in a passing car noted seeing him “looking at his bike a couple of hundred metres back”, so I rode down to see him and naturally I descended nearly 2km before I found him with a flat tyre walking his bike up the hill (please do not ask me to explain his logic for walking to the top before only then fixing the puncture, for I can only explain what I myself understand). Once we fixed his flat we had what was my (cycling) highlight of the trip so far: a mammoth descent into the beautiful Danube gorge.

On arrival in the gorge, I set about changing my opinion of Romania by making new friends, and so spent 20 minutes or so riding side by side with a galloping horse dragging a cart with one father and five children, all eager to talk to me even after their obvious discovery that I speak absolutely no Romanian.

As you may be able to see in that photo, we formed a truly special bond, and they seemed sad to wave me goodbye as I pulled off the road and into a small town for lunch in its local “disco pizzeria”, as Dan called it. After lunch we became slower as the scenery became more impressive, since photos took priority - until which point I declared to the others that something would have to go dramatically wrong for this not to be “mai mare zi din le tour de continent” (“the greatest day of the tour of the continent”).

Fisherman on the lake-like Danube.

Nothing went dramatically wrong, although some members of our party may say that we had to cover more distance than desired before we found our lodgings, since corner after corner revealed dozens of fisherman who had clearly travelled a distance to find their favourite spot, since there was not a town – or even house – to be seen all afternoon. I’m sure that those same members of this party would also tell you, though, that it was worth the wait. We stumbled across a lovely B&B set in the middle of spectacular scenery right on the banks of the Danube, with colourful un-touched hills all around, and a view to Serbia across the (at least) kilometre-wide river.

The view from our Dubova B&B.

Jim and Alan were in equal parts astonished and thrilled to find the Sunday Manchester City game on Romanian television, but much less happy that they dropped two points to Arsenal. We had a lovely meal cooked by our host, who is obviously the owner, manager and sole staff member responsible for cleaning, cooking ... and teaching Romanian.

Yes, on our rest day I utilised all of my mime skills to explain that we wanted to stay for a second night and have a meal again that night, and this led to a half-hour Romanian lesson – and I don’t even think she will add it to our bill! I can now proudly count to ten, ask for a range of meals, articulate all the time-appropriate greetings and can also utter a long list of suitable pleasantries. Romanian is strikingly similar to Italian (one, two, three = unu, doi, trei; good evening = bună seara; wine = vin), French (hello = salut; excuse me = pardon), and Russian (yes = da), although when they establish that we don’t speak Romanian, the locals always surprisingly want to try to talk to us in German. This taught me two important things: that Romanian is a Romance language (like French, Italian, Spanish and Potuguese), as in derived from Latin; but also that Romania has previously had a large Germanic population.

The rest of the day I sat by the water reading my book, rode into Dubova for lunch, and performed a little maintenance on my bike.

All in all, a great couple of days with some lovely locals to remember. Consider my opinion of Romania changed!