Day 62

18/10/2011 – Day 62

Olteniţa to Silistra – 84km

Once again, during the night the wind howled and the rain drummed against the window. But by the morning everything was quiet, the wind was still blowing but not as bad as it had been. More importantly the direction had changed from the North East to the North West.

As we ate breakfast the news was full of the storm from yesterday, showing the waves breaking over the shore line at Constanţa, which were big when you consider the Black Sea is not tidal.

However, as we are so close now to the end, we have to carry on despite the weather. The forecast for today was not brilliant but good enough to go with. The wind would be over our shoulder for most of the day, which was good, and we had some options if it got too bad.

Setting off we actually cheated for the second time on the route, by taking a short cut to the main road instead of riding all the way back into town to come out again. The down side was that the road was flooded in many places and this hid the pot holes, fortunately we were not travelling very fast and those we found we could cope with.

Once we hit the main road we were surprised at the lack of debris in the road. But looking closer there was a lot of broken branches at the side of the road; someone must have been out early cleaning the mess. Hang on, cleaning up in Romania, surely not! But the facts speak for themselves, the roads were clear. I wonder if people actually stop and get out of their cars to move branches and stuff, or is it the gypsies with their horse and wagon that do it.

With the wind behind us we were soon flying again, which is a big contrast to Sunday where I was struggling in the lowest gears, today it was top gear all the way, even up some of the hills. Our objective had been Calǎrasi with the possibility to go over the river to Silistra if we had time, at this speed we will have plenty of time.

The ususal problem of finding somewhere to eat or drink has not changed; there are no roadside cafés or restaurants in this part of the world. The shops are the only places where you can get food and sometimes sit down to eat. The problem with that is leaving the bikes fully loaded outside where they can be seen as unattended.

But in the village of Ciocǎneşti we found a shop with a big window and a table just inside so we could sit and see the bikes. As we entered the shop it instantly reminded me of the shop my parents used to own in Consett. The husband and wife team who ran it were the perfect match. Unfortunately, just as we walked in the power failed! This led to a problem weighing the meat she had just cut so we had to guess at that. We were asked the usual range of question, where we are from, where we are going and they always seem interested in listening to our answers.

When they realised we planned to eat at the table inside there was a flurry of activity to make it presentable, which is funny if you could see the state of us, two dirty, sweaty cyclist and they are laying a paper table cloth for us! Once again we had met some really good people.

Setting off again we were making really good time and reached the outskirts of Calǎrasi well ahead of schedule. The question was ‘do we stop here or push on?’

The ferry crossing is every three hours according to the timetable on Google and as we had plenty of time we decided to cross now and spend the night in Silistra in Bulgaria. Following the bypass to the ferry port we knew there was at least one hotel there if it all went horribly wrong. But when we arrived there was a ferry waiting, so we bought the tickets (2.50€) and about 20 minutes later the ferry left for the other bank. The crossing now takes about 30 minutes, which as I have said before reminds us how small the river was when we first met it in Donaueschingen all those weeks ago.

Landing on the other side but still in Romania we turned right into the border crossing, at this point there is a thin strip of land a few hundred metres wide that is Romania. At the crossing the Romanian exit post was closed and everything is now done at the Bulgarian side. Not being part of Schengen these two countries still have passport checks, but here the two sides stand together and just check the face on the passport is you and you are through, simple.

There are about 6 hotels listed in the guide and we cycled to the town centre to find any one of them. The first we found was the Danube which is 5 stars, not for us I don’t think. As we stopped to look at the map a cyclist stopped next to us and asked if we were looking for a hotel, when we said yes he told us to follow him.

He took us to a 2 star hotel just outside the town centre and for the price it was almost perfect. It had heating, through the air-conditioning; it was clean although a bit tatty but we did not get towels. Apart from that it was OK.

Bulgaria or rather the bit we saw of it, is a slightly upmarket Romania, but not that far upmarket. The town is rundown and dirty, everything needs to be cleaned and repaired. Having said that, at least every place we have stayed in so far has had free internet, unlike Germany and Austria where you still have to pay in some places.

The only place we found that was modern and smart was the ever present pizza place. They actually had everything the menu said. The service was good and the food too. While we were there the place was full, it seems to be the ‘in place’ to go in downtown Silistra.

As we were only staying the one night in Bulgaria we tried to take the minimum amount of money possible out of the cash machine, but we still ended up with 6 Lev left over. Not wanting to waste it we went to a shop to buy water plus anything else could to spend everything. We had water, crisps, one battery and a bag of the worst tasting corn you have ever had, it was a sort of half cooked popcorn, we will not be buying that again.