Today was an easy day, and will just about pass as a rest day. Only 25 miles – taking us south, crossing the Danube, to Goulobac. It’s also the last day with Luca and so it’s good we’ve got the afternoon off and can actually ‘holiday’ for the day.

Last nights accommodation was ‘interesting’ – the chap (pictured above), was lovely. However hygiene and cleanliness were perhaps not high on his agenda. The room was pretty awful and the smell in the whole place was that of overpowering urine!! As a result we decided not to eat there and instead opted for a place across the ‘road’. 

We left the zimmer early to catch the 07:00 ‘ferry’ – we’re not talking P&O here. Was us and a single car. While waiting for it to set off the car driver whipped out a fishing rod and started fishing – random – then fed the small fish he was catching for his dog to play with, torture, then eat – one way of saving on chum!

The 25 mile pedal down from Ram was fairly nondescript – half decent, undulating roads, bridging village after village. Of real note however was the change in geography taking place in the distance. Goulobac sits on the banks of the Danube just as it hits the Carpathian Mountains, and for the next 2 days myself and Matt will be cycling through this gorge – more famously known as the Iron Gates. Incredibly the river is 83m deep at that point – the deepest river on Earth. Is amazing to think we have seen it as a stream in the Black Forest become this:

For the rest of today it’s feet up time and a few beers. Goulobac feels like a resort town and probably fills up with Serbians on holiday in the summer, as a result the accommodation we’ve found is clean, modern and cheap. We needed somewhere to decompress before 2 weeks of real slog.

And now for that beer!

Here’s some more pics from today….