Iron gate

Today we travelled along the Serbian-Romanian border, which was a highlight of the entire Danube route: the Iron Gate is one of the most impressive valley breaches in Europe.

In the morning, I started a little later than I originally wanted to. As I was about to set off, I realised that I had almost no air left in the front tyre. Strange. So I pumped it back up to its 4 bar and then checked the rear tyre just to be on the safe side. It was only «missing» 0.5 bar, which I topped up while I was at it. At just before nine I set off after all. Rather late in view of the long stage and the expected metres in altitude.

The weather was still dry at the start, but it was blowing extremely hard again, so I could hardly make any progress. I patiently rolled on, always keeping an eye on the front tyre, which I had to keep an eye on today.

After about 24 kilometres came the pretty Golubac fortress. Just before it, however, I met two other cyclists - Beatrix and Hartmut from Berlin. We immediately struck up a conversation, but Beatrix actually wanted to carry on. As Hartmut really wanted to see my bike pump demonstrated, Beatrix set off on her own. It took a while for the two of us to follow her, Hartmut had so many anecdotes and stories to tell. As we continued on, Beatrix came towards us, I just said «We're coming» and grinned.

At the fortress, I asked Hartmut to take a photo with the fortress and me, which he was happy to do, but that also took time and the next stories needed to be told. Really entertaining and amusing. As I was travelling a little faster, I overtook Hartmut quite quickly as we continued our journey and caught up with Beatrix. Now I chatted to her for a while as we rolled on. I'm very grateful for another great encounter, Beatrix and Hartmut are two good people and it's always fun to meet them. Hartmut has already invited me to Berlin, by the way, and said that if I had a problem on the journey, I should just give him a call, he had already experienced a lot and would certainly be able to help. He also had a stick with him, by the way, as they had also had their experiences with dogs.

After about 38 kilometres, the dryness was over: it started to rain very lightly, but the rain got heavier and heavier. On the other hand, the wind became weaker and weaker - is that what you call equalising justice? But I kept telling myself: I can't complain about the weather. The first time it rained on day 19 (apart from the 15 minutes of trickling rain on the stage to Vienna) was almost unbelievable.

And as I drove through the Iron Gate, I asked myself: When is a landscape really beautiful and impressive? And gave myself the answer, at least for today: when it still looks beautiful and impressive even when it's raining. And it was. So despite more than 100 kilometres in the rain - it didn't stop until the end - it was fun to ride through here.

The roads were also good everywhere today, except for a small detour from the main road to some archaeological sites. The road there first led steeply down into a gorge with a small river, then around a corner the entire road was suddenly washed away and only a pile of very coarse gravel - probably as a temporary solution - was there as a replacement. I was so amazed that I forgot to take a photo of it. However, I was also busy trying to pass the spot somehow.

In the end, I had about two hours of wind and about five and a half hours of rain today. It didn't bother me that much though, it was just a shame that the visibility wasn't that good at some point. The main thing was that I was warm enough, and I was: as long as I kept my heart rate within the usual range, my hands were only slightly cold. As a result, I only took very short breaks for refreshments without sitting down and continued immediately before I got cold. When I arrived at my accommodation, I was still very glad of the warm shower and the opportunity to hang my clothes up to dry. I wondered how it would be with tents when there were so many clothes to dry and I wanted to warm myself up at the same time. For now, I'm just happy to be in accommodation.