September 23rd Filling the gap( 2) Ban Brestovac to Belgade centre 46 kms
I knew this had to be the final day of
riding and so I really savoured the first 20 kilometres to the outskirts of Panchevo where the traffic began to build. I had
thought that Sunday would be quieter on the roads but this didn’t seem to be
the case. Already in Kovin there was more activity than yesterday: people
shopping at the market down the road, boys off to football games, farmers to
their fields on tractors, men gathering in the cafes, but not many people, it
would seem, going to church. By the time, later in the day when we got to
Belgrade, everyone seemed to be working.
Nowhere was work more obvious than in
Starveco on the outskirts of Panchevo at the enormous and brand new power
station complex that seemed to be in the process of being completed. Men were
swarming all over the shiny machinery. At the main gates an electronic machine
proudly displayed its virgin nine sets of zero ready, presumably, to start
showing how much power the complex was generating. It was startling to see this
immensely sophisticated power station as a backdrop to two horses and carts,
mother and father on the front seat and the children in the cart clutching the
iron chain to keep their balance.
I took to the tree-lined pavements, and
followed Katherine into the large town of Panchevo. A pleasant bicycle track
followed the canal for a short distance but then petered out and took to the
very busy main road into Belgrade. Afraid of losing each other at the very last
minute and by no means sure of where we would meet in Belgrade we decided to
put the bike in the car and drive to the bridge over the Danube from where I
would cycle into the centre (to be exact, to the elevator for cycles on the
Bratstvo I jedinstvo bridge over the River Sava). Katherine would then drive
back to Panchevo where I would meet her. In this way all of the missed section
between Belgrade and Veliko Gradiste would have been made up.
And thus the final sting in the tail began.
There was no problem driving across the Danube Bridge and parking in a petrol
station on the far side. I cycled up the November 29th Street, most
of the time on the pavement, into the Square of the Republic, past the bus
station and down to the bridge where I photographed myself reflected in the
glass of the elevator. And so back to the Danube bridge.
Now my difficulties began. Getting on to
the bridge required threading a tricky path through complicated and slip shod
road works and snarling, incessantly horn-blowing, smelly traffic. Once on the
slipway it was necessary to balance on the metre wide so-called sidewalk, which
was cracked, potholed and covered in gravel, litter and broken glass. Halfway
down the slipway the sidewalk degenerated completely into broken tarmac. On the
bridge proper, the old, rusting, dirty green central girders flanking the
railway that runs along the centre of the bridge, reared up intimidatingly, and
the traffic raced past centimetres from the slightly raised pavement. Possibly,
this long kilometre or so across this monstrous bridge was the worst bit of
riding of the entire 4000 kilometres. I confess to pushing the bicycle a part
of the way, which did at least allow me to gaze down on the lonely fishermen in
skiffs in the middle of the river beneath this shaking, pulsating bridge and
wonder what on earth propelled them every Sunday afternoon to go fishing there,
of all places, when they had acres of empty water elsewhere to go fishing in.
Eventually I made it (safely) to the other
side, and then amazingly, after negotiating a small, drab, housing estate, I
was in the countryside, completely alone, riding along a last unpaved
embankment with a thick belt of trees protecting me from the busy road to my
left and a maze of creeks, green ponds, dead tree stumps and vegetation to my
right. I slowed down, I was quite tired anyway, and enjoyed the solitude, and
the feel of my Cannondale bicycle that had served me so reliably for more than
4000 kms as it bounced, the last few kilometres, over the hard mud of the track.
46 kms Total from Schaffhausen 2155
kms Grand total from Galway 4065 kms
No comments:
Post a Comment