Mountain Lifestyle: The final few kilometres

We’ve arrived in Belgrade after just over 500km of peddle powered adventuring. The final piece in our travel puzzle was overcome thanks to the new train line from Novi Sad to the Serbian capital.

It was only a short peddle to get to the enormous station hall. Inside there were equally long queues of people at the ticket desk, so I tried my luck with an automated ticket machine nearby, which confirmed everything except how to pay for a bike. A local said that you can pay on the train for bikes, so we took our tickets and found the train, which was surprisingly modern.

Although there was a bike symbol on the door, we felt a bit bad wheeling into the plush carpet of the new carriage. Someone moved their case out of the bike area to make room for us, and we fitted into the area and settled down for the ride.

We had taken the fast train on purpose, as a cheaper regional train stopped at many little stations along the way. This one went straight to capital at 120km/h, which upped our daily travel average somewhat. Looking out of the train window as we zipped through the countryside, we were glad of our decision to adapt the final part of our journey. The terrain was a little more undulating and industrial and the roads became busy. Although it so would have been nice to have ridden the entire way, neither of us felt we were missing out. Much better to have a day sight seeing in the city than cycling through smog and heavy traffic. In Belgrade, the station was still a building site, but I t’s going to be impressive once it’s finished.

We found a lift at the end of the platform that took us up on to the street and we cycled away. Our first stop came soon after when I spotted a roadside bakery. An old woman served us some warm pasty things and said ‘welcome to Serbia’ with a smile when I paid. It was a nice start to the city experience.

We had a few hours until we were due to give back the bikes, so firstly went to check out the city’s enormous new church.

It’s a whopper, and outside, various Easter celebrations were underway. Headdresses made of flowers were being sold and around the church gardens were piles of snow (presumably the remains of snowmen), which showed how much snow we’d managed to miss at least!

Inside the church was unreal. The whole thing is decorated in golden tiled mosaics. All the the detail in these photos are made from 1cm square tiles! An astonishing achievement.

From the church, we followed a route that Clare had programmed into the GPS, that took us through town and down to the river cycle path. The buildings are such a mix of beautiful old and falling down (or bombed out?) and new. This one was especially crazy. A but if scaffolding had been put up to ‘protect’ pedestrians on the sidewalk!

We pulled over every now and then when we saw something interesting, like this massive sculpture.

Down at the River, we were officially in Belgrade.

A cafe by the waters edge had an outside heater, so we pulled over to soak up the moment.

The new cycle path almost got us to our hotel, but was explicably stopped by a huge hole in the ground. A bit of pushing up a steep bank got us back on track.

The last section passed underneath Belgrade Fortress and the victory monument. Before we cut inland and found our hotel. Here we unloaded all our gear, so we could take the bikes to the hire shop and return them.

Unbelievably, after such a long journey, as we approached the bike shop, we both crash our bikes and were sent sprawling across the road!! I’ve not fallen off a bike in quite a while, and certainly not as dramatically! As we rode down hill to the bike store, the road curves around to the left and a tramline joined diagonally from the right. The road was wet and greasy, and as Clare’s front wheel hit the tracks, it slide from under her and she was off in an instant. I saw what had happened and was astonished to find myself repeating the exact same move! Only, where Clare had managed to leap back up, I was sent sliding across the tramlines on my side, alongside my bike. Thankfully, my gloves bore the brunt of the impact and my helmeted head only briefly touched down, but I still managed to put a hole in my jacket and cover myself in mud! And all of this happened literally in the last 2m of a 500km journey! Unbelievable!

We literally had to pick ourselves and the bikes up, dust ourselves off and wheeled the bikes over the road into the shop. There was no more peddling to be done - we’d come to a skidding finish! The owner had seen us crash and had thought that they looked like his bikes, but then said to himself, no, it can’t be the couple from Wales as they’ve ridden from Budapest and must be pros! Ha ha! Luckily, neither us or the bikes were damaged too much and after replacing my front light and twisting Clare’s handlebars back the right way, we had a laugh together about it and the owner even asked for a selfie with us as he’d not had a couple cycle so far with his bikes before! We left before we were charged extra for trashing his bikes in the last breath of a two week odyssey!

Back on foot and looking a little disheveled, we limped back to the hotel through the streets.

Stopping for a celebratory burger and beer on the way!

The hotel is a haven from the bustle of the city and after a drink in the bar, we gratefully collapsed into bed, knowing that our expedition aim of getting from Budapest to Belgrade, very much a ‘journey with an unknown outcome’ was complete. We giggled ourselves to sleep thinking about the absurdity of the final crashing right outside the bike shop.