Jane and Ken's 2014 Adventure: Day 166: Sunday 31 August

The night was very cool and the duvet made a very welcome addition to our bedding. It seems it will be a permanent feature for the remainder of our trip. We awoke to find the Turkish contingent had moved on during the night and we were the only people left. Once out of bed we felt cold and turned Mabel’s heating on to take the chill off.

I set off to find the key to the cabin where Jane had used the toilet yesterday. Two people were sitting outside the restaurant eating a Turkish breakfast, the man serving them didn’t know where the key was. I found toilets and showers adjacent to the restaurant and reported my find back to Jane. Later we walked over to have our showers, Jane found hers was locked and used mine when I was finished.

Back at Mabel a man approached me speaking in German. The showers we used were for restaurant customers, we should have used the cabin Jane used last night which was now unlocked. Perhaps he should have unlocked it earlier? He only served to reinforce our impression that Camping Caski Drum was one of the least welcoming places we had stayed at.

Mabel and Smarty At Camping Caski Drum

We weren’t sorry to be on the road at 9:00 and heading north towards Serbia’s border with Croatia. The two lane road was in need of repair, but we could see a four lane road, possibly a motorway, was under construction parallel to the road we were on. Signboards alongside the road carried Arup’s name along with others. Much of the new road ran parallel to ours for quite a way until approaching a range of hills it deviated to the west and disappeared from view.

New Road Under Construction

We travelled through a few unlit tunnels cut on tight curves. They didn’t feel very safe. We were still on the migratory route of the Turks. We passed numerous Turkish restaurants by the roadside. We saw parking areas that were empty but full of Turkish droppings of water bottles and litter. Every now and then we came across a flock of Turks resting by the roadside.

Turkish Restaurant In Bulgaria

The road followed a gorge through the hills with a half dozen tunnels taking it through rock spurs. Between tunnels the rock face had been cut such that the hillside above overhung the road.

Tunnels Felt Rather Tight When We Met Trucks Coming Towards Us

Rock Face Overhanging Road

Just south of the town of Nis the new road construction ran alongside us again merging with our road as we joined a two lane motorway. We were getting low on fuel and pulled into a service station to fill with diesel and swap drivers. It was a Gazprom station, the pump attendant confirmed they took credit cards so we had Mabel filled. The pump attendant had good English and asked how far we had travelled in Mabel. He told me Serbia had had a very poor summer, cool with lots of rain – “just like London” he said. While Mabel was being filled a small crowd gathered around Smarty and photographs were taken. The bill for diesel came to 11,406 dinars, I couldn’t help but think they need to revalue their currency, or perhaps they are biding their time and will switch to the Euro when they achieve membership of the EU.

Joining The Queue At A Toll Plaza In Croatia

We reached a toll plaza shortly after leaving the filling station. There Jane was handed a ticket and we were told to drive on. The motorway geometrics were of a high standard comparable to the best we have seen in Europe. Unfortunately, the design of the pavement had let them down and the slow lane had deep ruts caused by trucks. I hadn’t spotted them but Mabel let me know they were there shimmying violently as soon as we hit them. This had happened before and I believed it was the result of the track of her rear wheels being greater than the front. Thus, while the front wheels might be sitting in the bottom of the ruts, the rear are on the side and try to drop into the bottom which pushes the front wheels up the side. The only way we have found of dealing with this is to drive with Mabel’s right wheels on the hard shoulder and her left in the centre of the slow lane between the ruts. We just had to be careful in crossing ruts when we had to move off the shoulder to clear broken down vehicles of which there seemed to be a lot.

A German registered camper van overtook us, a man in the passenger seat was beaming from ear to ear giving us the thumbs up as he pointed to Smarty. We stopped at another service area at about the half-way point of the trip to switch drivers and let Jane drive the third leg. Our third stop was at another service station just south of Belgrade for lunch. We thought we should try the cheese we bought yesterday in Bulgaria to accompany our bread. It was to cheese what cold black tea is to whisky. It was the right colour and had a cheesish texture, but tasted nothing like cheese. It was so tasteless in fact, on a scale of tasty with a good blue scoring 25, a Wensleydale would score 5 and the Bulgarian Kasar 0.5. We had kilos of the stuff, what on earth we were going to do with it?

I took over driving duties for the remaining 100km approximately. The motorway was very busy as we passed through the centre of Belgrade where we crossed the River Danube which was absolutely massive. At one point a motor scooter pulled alongside us, the female pillion passenger appeared to be taking a video of us on her mobile. We gave her a wave.

Belgrade

We left the motorway just 17km short of our destination. Skirting round the town of Sremska Mitrovica before crossing the mighty River Danube again. Our camping ground, Camping Zasavica Sremska, was situated just south of the quaintly named village of Zasavica II, a close neighbor of Zasavika and Zasavika I (no-one can say Serbian planners don’t have any imagination). It looked very busy with a couple of dozen camper vans and a few caravans. Jane was worried there wouldn’t be room for us, but I took a quick walk round and found a few vacant pitches.

By the time I got back to Mabel a small crowd had gathered around Smarty and the manager was there talking to Jane, he said to take any pitch, more than one if we liked. We did, but no sooner had we stopped under some trees than a man from a Serbian registered motorhome came over and advised us not to park there, we were on the edge of a nature reserve where sprays were not used to keep down mosquitos. Instead we could have his pitch in an hour as he was in the process of packing up. I got into conversation with him, he had very good English. He told me he had stayed recently at the camping ground in the centre of Istanbul that Voray had told us was closed. Jane got talking to another man who was regretting not taking the opportunity of going to Australia as a Croatian refugee, he was now in a dead end job, the writing was on the wall he wouldn’t have that much longer and there were few job opportunities in Serbia.

We decided not to wait for the Serb to finish packing up. Instead we took another pitch away from the trees.

Around 19:00 we were about to leave to get dinner. The young man who had collected our passports earlier turned up, he collected bank notes and wanted to know if we had any New Zealand notes he could buy, he had €6. I dug out a $5 note which we gave him, I also had a £5 note which he didn’t have in his collection, but didn’t want to spend all his €6 on that. We set off to walk about 300 metres along a lane to a restaurant in the nature reserve. We hadn’t got far when the young man returned with two coasters and two postcards as a thank you for the $5 note.

The grassed area in front of the restaurant was dominated by a large lookout tower on top of which was a stork’s nest complete with a stork keeping an eye on happenings below. We asked in the restaurant if they were serving food and received “Goulash” as a response. We ordered two and then took a seat in a rustic covered cubicle outside. The waitress brought me a beer and a glass of red wine which Jane thought was one of the worst she has tasted. The spicy goulash came with bread and cabbage and the whole lot cost €16.50.