Mountain Lifestyle: Survival Cycling

A tough day of riding through a bleak Serbian winters day! It’s been lightly snowing all day and a stiff northerly breeze has kept the wind chill feeling below freezing. Not ideal conditions for cycling, especially with an unavoidable longest day of riding of the expedition! We set out early to make sure we had plenty of time to get the miles in. As we left Apatin, the thermometer at the petrol station was reading 3°C.

To make the ride as short as possible, we detoured away from the Danube to begin with, using a short cut on a road between two small villages. The road wasn’t too busy, but some vehicles passed quite close. Once again, there were quite a few half fallen down houses, but on the outskirts of town they were very rundown.

At the bridge over the river to Erdut in Croatia, there were long lines of lorries, all queuing with engines off, settling in for a long wait. We snuck by as we were staying on the Serbian side.

We had hoped to find warmth and shelter in the small town of Karavukovo, but to no avail. A kind of fast food type place was open and warm, but far from friendly. I got a slice of pizza just so we could sit in the warm somewhere where we could see our bikes and use the loo. I didn’t even eat the pizza as it was cold and old looking, but it was worth it for the short respite from the cold.

The church’s corrugated iron roof had been ripped off and was flapping in the wind. Opposite was another one, that was half built but now abandoned. The shop only had two huge loaves of bread, so we took shelter in the church’s shell and shared what food we had.

Our rations of a few rice cakes, some slices of cheese, dry roasted peanuts and five olives, would have to provide us with the necessary energy output! We were sheltered from the wind, but still required every layer we had with us!

The snow continued to blew through the air but there wasn’t quite enough for it to settle. At least it was cold enough that we weren’t getting wet.

You can just about see the straight line of the trail in the photo of us below. These trees offered a little shelter for a drink stop, but otherwise, we were out in the open.

In the afternoon, we were back on the dyke, following the rivers course, mostly with the wind at our backs.

Then we moved away from the river towards the accommodation that we had booked (the only place for miles around!).

A cross wind made this quite hard going, but we knew we were getting closer to our destination.

A final town was negotiated, where old style Skodas and Ladas were the vehicles of choice.

Then, we finally saw a sign to our hotel. It had looked like it might be a bit whacky, but with limited options, we had booked it anyway. It’s by a lake and has a sandy beach. In the photos, there are hundreds of people sunbathing and swimming. I couldn’t imagine that there would be anyone there today - and I was right! As we approached, there wasn’t even a car parked outside the ‘castle’ hotel and all the lights seemed to be off. It was a nervous last 100m or so!…. Would we have a bed for the night?!

Relieved to see some movement inside, I went up the steps and in through the front door to find five hotel staff (receptionist, waiter, cleaner, cook and manager), all sat around smoking and clearly awaiting our arrival! The waiter jumped up to greet me and there was no need to say ‘I have a reservation’ - we were clearly the only people they were expecting!

Another man was summoned and took our bikes to be locked in a shed, then we were ushered upstairs to a nice room, where we promptly collapsed and fell about laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Warmed by a hot shower, we returned downstairs where a very nice assistant manager appeared. She seemed to have been drafted in as she spoke some English, and explained a few hotel rules and asked what time she should ask the kitchen staff to come in in the morning to cook us breakfast! She was not working today, but gave us her number so we could call her at home if we needed further translation services! We ordered coffee’s followed by a big mug of warm lemon and honey tea, which was cheerily brought to our table by the waiter. I’m sure the hotel could easily cater for several hundred people, but tonight, it looks like it’s just us for dinner!