A New Beginning.....
Having left my beloved motorcycle in a scrapyard in Germany I'm filling the time it is taking to convince my wife I should have another ... that's a motorcycle not a wife ... walking around the amazing villages, towns and countryside in North Yorkshire.
I'm hoping to share some of those walks with you ... more to follow ...
Around Crathorne Village
I hope you'll indulge me and let me use this post as catharsis.
The journey has come to an end and, unfortunately for me, in more ways than one.
I'm back home in the UK now ... and note I say I. My beautiful bike is sitting in a scrap yard in Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Bavaria, Germany.
We parted company as far as I remember in a rather dramatic manner when a green car on the A3 Autobahn near Nuremberg decided it wanted my bit of road. Of course car verses bike ... no matter how big, heavy powerful shiny red and loved (Bitter, moi!) that bike is ... will always end up with the car winning.
Seeing my bike, or what's left of it, leads me to believe it put up one hell of a fight... it looked like an Airfix model kit fresh out of the box but detached from the grey plastic bit
As for me, well I was apparently laid out like a discarded May at C & A mannequin after ... and here's the bummer ...some vague masked figure cut off all my clothes. Well not all, they removed my boots and left me my socks and pants... and that's not my trousers for my
I did, I seem to remember, derive a bit of satisfaction from hearing a stoutly built nurse grunting as she scissored through my armour and Kevlar. Fortunately, I never was was one to skimp on protective clothing.
SPOILER ALERT ...I am alright. Having been prodded, X-rayed, Scanned, Ultra-Sounded, given away more bodily fluid samples than i realised I had and interrogated in German ... a strangely eerie experience ... I've been declared fit. I do though have joints of a size that would win prizes at a cattle show and the skin texture and colour of an aging Smurf!
I came to properly in a 3 bed ward with only 2 of us in it. With me was a man I know know as Kai who fortunately for me spoke perfect English and was an Anglophile. Kai had also been in a motorcycle accident, also not his fault. He was in a very bad way...yet took it upon himself to look after me in my dazed and language depleted state.
When I was fit to be discharged the hospital staff appeared to be unable to take on my concern that the clothes I had come in with had been turned into some form of HI-Vis bunting and that I had nothing to wear. This was discussed backwards and forwards between the staff, Kai and I and ... I'm sure you will think I'm exaggerating for comical effect but honestly the staff suggested that I best take a 35 minute taxi ride in my boots, socks, knickers and a hospital gown to the Scrapyard were my bike was so I could get some clothes from my panniers.
When I reacted to this suggestion in horror and clutched the slightly soiled gown I was wearing the face of one nurse lit up and she went and got me a clean, pressed gown from a drawer - sorted .. I think not.
Eventually Kai, who picked up ... it actually wasn't all that difficult ... that I was reluctant to arrive at a scrapyard full of Hairy A****d scrappies dressed like a reject from The Village People in a floral gown that was open at the rear ... kindly gave me his Nike tracksuit... the kindness of strangers eh.
If I may, I'll leave it there and talk about the return trip proper later ...the thought of what could have happened ..... in a scrapyard in Bavaria is too horrendous to contemplate at the moment...
Good night.
Well we did it, the Black Sea yesterday and Tulcea today.
17 Days, 10 countries, numerous cakes, even more beers.
926 miles from home to the Source in Donaueschingen
2123 miles following the Danube ...I know the river is only 1770 miles long but I tend to get distracted or lost.
3049 miles in total
I "followed" the river up to its delta then and I say it like that because the road was really quite a way away from the river banks on higher, sandy ground but that meant great views when it did appear.
I didn't realise when I initially stopped to take this shot that I was by a grave yard.
I met these likely lads on the road and at first admit I was a bit wary of them but as you can see they were quite a cheery bunch.
Anything Hollywood can do
What did I do today? Well being a Sunday a trip to the seaside seemed to be the thing to do although after 2 weeks of draining hot sunshine today is typical British Summer weather.
After leaving Ruse in Bulgaria and arriving in Silistra I naively couldn't work out why the route took you into the centre then suddenly it got busy with pedestrians many carrying black carrier bags full of something.
Now, the Danube actually ends at an expansive Delta and Tulcea, my destination, is the last town you can get to easily without a boat. So Although I will have followed the Danube all the way I won't really get a good view of the Black sea.
Problem sorted, its my birthday tomorrow so I've treated myself to a lovely room overlooking the Black sea in Constanta which means that today after going through Silistra I'm taking a short ride away from the river...
And one very chuffed traveller ...
And a bonus... when I returned to my hotel the receptionist called me and gave me a bottle of wine as when entering my passport details she'd noticed it was my birthday tomorrow .
I was going to open in tonight but a beer calls so I take it to Tulcea where I can celebrate reaching my goal and I've got 2 days R and R.
These last few nights have been a bit late so I'm going to cram 2 days into one...hope that's ok. I'm now in Ruse, Bulgaria ... and just as an aside listening to the Women's Rugby World Cup Final on line. ... and the result! I got here earlier than I planned as the Communist Regime's Concentration Camp Memorial on Belene Island requires an ID check to visit as it is still an active Civil Prison. The check takes 2 days so that put paid to that idea.
The ride south from Băile Herculane in Romania to the Bulgarian border not too spectacular, except perhaps for a view of the massive Iron Gate Dam, or Hydroelectric Power Station as it should be called.
I am always interested in 20th Century war memorials, they seem more relevant than those of centuries ago but again in countries like these in the Balkans they can be a source of constant rankle. This one in Romania was to their fallen in both WW1 and WW2 ...
The border crossing to Bulgaria was a game of two halves! First you ride over an wonderful, modern bridge, then you hit cobbled roads. And I don't mean streets and market squares but cobbles for miles, bad for the bike and my fillings.
There had been a lot of recent wildfires in this area but good to see the river still there.
Now looking from Bulgaria over to Romania,
I stayed over night on Thursday 26th in Oryahavo and just outside my B & B was another memorial I wandered up to. I could of course only recognise what I though were names and then dates of birth and death. Whilst I expected to see 1918 and 1940 ish I noticed that there were a lot of men who died in 1923.
Today Saturday 27th, was a much more interesting and colourful day. It started with a walk up to the memorial again and a morning river check...
..... a ride past a village spring ...
... and some great views of the river.
I began to see more of the rural scenes I had expected, shepherds wandering with their flocks of sheep and goats ..horses and cart ... even a farmer using a horse drawn single furrow plough ... but never feel comfortable stopping to photograph people.
I'd also heard about the feral dogs both here and in Romania and I certainly saw them. It's well known that they are not my favourite animals and so I was not impressed when they chased me ... they were not fierce though really and if I stopped they ran away, almost as if they'd never thought through the plan of what they would do if the ever actually caught a motorbike!
Well last night should have ended in Serbia but when I got to the Ilok–Bačka Palanka Bridge border it was chaos ... I'd been warned by a few other people I'd met at various overnights but hadn't taken much notice. There were long queues of lorries and these seemed to be trying to block the cars so there were a lot of frustrated people ... I gathered from those that could speak a bit of English that it was "a pig issue" no not The Big Issue ... and I could believe that. If every person consumed the amount of pork I've had this last couple of weeks there can be no pigs left.
Anyway it was 32 degs and too hot to sit in a queue on a bike and wait so as I had time I decided to ride back the way I'd come to a smaller crossing and I could get there through a National Park. Best laid plans eh, on my bimble through the back roads I got stopped by a police officer who spoke excellent English and wanted to know why I was there ... first time in all my trips I've been stopped and my ID checked...apparently I'd passed a sign saying no access to the public ... in Croatian obviously ... way back. I didn't know the handshake but I did have a membership card which on being shown changed the atmosphere immediately. Apparently the pig situation was Swine Flu. Croatia began culling nearly 12,000 pigs on Monday at farms in the east of the country, in a bid to prevent African swine fever from devastating the industry and I presume Serbia were a bit wary. So my flippant remarks, as they often are, about pork, were completely misappropriate. Anyway the nice officer let me carry on if I promised not to to stop anywhere but he did advise me to try and avoid Serbia if I could ,
Well I'm too old for grief so change of plan, I booked another night at the hotel I'd just left and decided that today I'd ride through Hungary over the top of Serbia, then down to where the Danube left Serbia for Romania and carry on from there. Yes I'd miss out a 147 mile stretch of the Danube through Serbia but I'm riding for pleasure not the Guinness Book of records so hope you'll understand.
In any even this change meant I'd now be able to visit three sites on the Romanian side which I'd really wanted to see.
Like this guy ...The rock sculpture of Decebalus. A colossal carving ... 55 metres ...of the face of Decebalus (r. AD 87–106), the last king of Dacia and again although I knew about the sculpture I didn't know who he was. The carving is not old though, it was commissioned by a Romanian business man in1994 and took 10 years.
Another was Abandoned Baths of Băile Herculane in an old spa town in the mountains of Romania where, according to legend, the great hero Hercules once bathed.
The other site was the Iron Gates ... A spectacular gorge which forms part of the border between Romania and Serbia. The now sprawling river is forced through the gorge which at its narrowest is only 500ft wide but 300ft deep.
Worth the detour.
More tomorrow.
Goodnight
