Day 33: Almost in Belgrad

Yesterday evening some things went wrong. 

The batteries for the velomobile lights would not charge anymore. The day before this had happened to my first battery pack and yesterday the second battery back showed the same issue.

And since I didn't have internet access I went to the local tourist information in Golubac to ask them for a list of rooms (I had cycled through most of the town, without seeing rooms advertised. Had I cycled 200 m further I'd have seen, that somehow all hotels/apartments/rooms are at one end of town). They organized a room for me, but that room was in the attic with a small window and not climatized. So I could not find sleep for a long time in the heat. 

Instead I started searching for solutions for the battery problem and found that this happens when the battery looses track of the current charge status. Once the battery has been discharged completly the problem should go away. So I will just use the batteries until they are empty and hope for the best. Also I disconnected the switch for the cabin light in my bike since I believe this has some issues and is probably responsible for the unstable electric leading to the battery issue.

Also I found that a local Prepaid SIM card for 10 GB of data costs 500 Dinar (about 4.25 €, compared to my winsim tarif that is just about 30.000 times cheaper). The next shop was in Kovin, so that was my first target today. Unfortunately this is also where the GPS track ends, since I forgot to restart it after installing the new SIM card :(

But let's start at the start of the day. I did not have enough sleep, my breakfast was very simple and the temperatures were already very high. Still the roads to Veliko Gradiste were nice. When I arrived there I could see clouds coming accross the mountains.

Clouds :)

And the clouds brought a nice cool breeze as well. Soon I was riding under complete cloud cover in a nice cool breeze. Wonderful :) How good cycling without any heat stress can feel. 

The clouds only lasted for an hour, but the cool breeze stayed.

In Ram I took the ferry to the other side of the Danube. First I had planned to stay south, but while the northerly route is longer, there are far less mountains to climb.

Waiting for departure.

The ferry was no classical boat, but a tow boat barge. The way they operated the barge was quite impressive. First the tow boat was attached to the front to tow the barge from land and turn it. Afterwards (while the barge was drifting in wind and current towards another boat) they tuned the tow boat and attached it to the bag to cross the river.

I have a motor boat license and probably could probably land a small boat without causing to much havoc, but was these guys did was on another level. Fun to watch.

The ride to Kovin was a fast one. After buying the SIM card I decided to cycle along the Danube again (following the EuroVelo 6 signs).

This was again an gravel path of the worst kind. I hoped it would get better, but it did not. The floodplain forest along the embankment was beautiful though.

Still when I got the chance after more than 10 km I left for some better roads and ended up in Pantschowa.