Serbian People

These are some of the people that were so generous to us in Serbia, yes I have finally managed to get the pictures to download, (less of the laughing!!) Read the bit we put up earlier about the people we met..... then look at these pictures.. if you want, or have a cup of coffee or tea or a beer.. its up to you, you dont even have to read this.. we are not forcing you (Nic has told me to stop now)

Serbian olympic hopefull. and iron man Marco
Fruit picker from the mountains
Maric and Tatiana Alexsanoar.. best mountain bike contact in Serbia, (think he may be quite good on a bike himself!!)

Durmitor National Park Special

After spending 4 days here in the park we thought that we should tell you all about this gem of a mountain area!!
The mountains are all limestone and shine pink in the mornings and in the evening, they are so accessible and give a challenge for all.
This is Slovadam who gave us the strange alcohol and the apples
Expect to meet Austrian Fungi experts who will cook fantastic meals (as long as you make him coffee) The forests are beautiful and natural, the floors been covered in the most amaizing variety of fungi.
See mountains that mimic the helmet of a mountain biker, get info on eastern european vehicles from crock Germans.
Get to the most superb mountain views availible in the world, Where could this be?
Expect to have the local hounds following you up the mountains accross rocks ridges all day if need be!!
This has been a real eye opener, we knew nothing about the place before but think that it is somewhere that we need to come back to!!

Computers and pictures!!!!!

Bloody things.. they never seem to work when you want them to..
Sod it then.. no more pics today.. Hope all of you doing have (or if you are reading this after) had a great time and the weather was good at the three peaks cyclocross...
We are going into the mountains tomorrow the Durmitore national park looks fantastic from our campsite, we have also met a Canadian cyclist who is going to camp on the same site tonight so maby a couple of beers.. why not

Vehicles in the Balkans

What a delight to arrive in Serbia.. The familiar sound of the 3 cylinder 35.. Yes this is the home of IMT who for the past 30 years or so have been building the MF35, Everyone has one too, gone are the horses and carts now the chugging of the 35. interestingly enough they have also in their time reproduced not only the MF65 but I also saw a MF 4840 with the IMT badge on it!!! this of course has the V8 diesel engine producing around 300 hp.
As for cars the Zastava is the main manufacturer here, they produce old fiats... 120 series but also the collectors favorite the Yugo.. they also build the Iveco vehicles under the zastava name, that is the old range up to the 7.5 tonne size vans and chassis.
Now in Montenegro we find that all the old VW diesels have migrated here for their retirement.
That's enough vehicles for now... now the trip.

We got across the boarder no problem and to our great amazement met another cyclist!! he was from Austrian and was cycling the Danube, not knowing much about it we asked him what it was like!! anyway we decided to give it a go. so off we went when.... puncture No 2... fixed and on our way.. see the picture.. Next we met another cyclist.. Bruce from Canada, he was also cycling the Danube on a 3 week trip. we swapped money and info then on our way.
The one thing we have found out about Serbia is that people are so helpful! Cycling through the towns we have been offered breakfast coffee lunch, bed / just about everything.
One of these days we were passing through a quite big town (home of the Zastava) when a guy stopped us and offered us a drink and the use of his internet, he owned a bike shop and was interested in our trip..talking bikes etc he said he had an idea.. it was international no car day and if we would join him and his club for a short ride to celebrate he would buy ud lunch.. how could we refuse, it also turned out that he was training the Serbian national MTB champ for the Olympics in London.. Sorry
The computer will not seem to load any more pics.. we had some lovely pics of the people we have met here but you will just have to believe us that they were lovely!!

Its not always that easy to keep the blog up to date cos contrary to pop belief every little town does not have internet, and also hooray cos macdonalds has not taken over eastern europe at all so jon.s free wi/fi options seem a bit limited. Then also we are often not only off road but also off map heading up some dirt track hoping we will meet someone who can cope with the sight of us.
Luckily when jon suggested today that maybe he should strip to his underpants when cycling uphill , cos he sweats so much , i said ., I think not .. So hopefully there will be no more developments in this area. I have probs with cyrillic keyboards ,,,can.t find brackets and all sorts. .

Ill see if jon wants to have another try at the photos. . We don,t have hardly any of serbia, cos it was the people that overwhelmed us more than the landscape.We left fully loaded with plums, tomatoes, a bottle of serbian herbal alcohol,,,,

Holidays r us

We are going to head west from here towards the Dalmatian coast and the Durmitor national park, Sarajevo is the nearest airport, then down the coast to Greece.
There will be some other obscure airports (Tirane is one) (try whizz air) you could do a in one and out another (Athens?)
txt us if you are thinking of it over the next few weeks.

Romania to Serbia

Romania's very own scalectrix track... Full Size!!!
Nic'snew freinds

Romania has never stoped amazing us! we looked at the map and noticed a 2000m pass from which it looked like the highest mountain would be able to be reached. The pass would be 1600m climbing over 35km, how could we resist. And what a marvel of a hill it just went on and on at the top turning into what looked like a scalectix track. at the top a tunnel to the other side and cabanas, stalls and a refuge, we even got given a free sausage by a trader for cycling all the way from UK, and well worth it for the beer at the top. The next day we had a go at the highest peak(cant remember the name but it was above 2500m) but lethargy took over and we realised that it was really a 2 day trip. so just did a bit of a walk and another peak.
we have been facinated by the romanian roads,we rode up a pass on the best road possibly in europe! up a gourge for about 30km near the top of the pass the road turned into a dirt track, whats that all about, it didn't even get anywhere!! the other side of the pass would be difficult for even a Dacia to get down? there seeemed no sense to it all, most of the roads in romania are poor at best, but to build a new road that goes nowhere and nobody uses seeems strange! Ah those Romanians!!!
We have for once taken a Hotel for the night. We stayed in the Hotel Hercules. this hotel would have been a star attraction in the late 50's early 60's. You could imagine James Bond pulling up in his Aston and the porter taking his bags to his room. Time however has taken its toll on the building and by the looks of it the staff too. I am not sure it deserves its 2 star rating. interesting however!

This bit is just about fire service stuff,and only works with the photos that hopefully jon can put on. Incidently,after a brief phone call jon told me that his brother mathew was _ dimmer than a dim thing with dim written all over it on a dim night _....i don't what you had'nt done.mathew, but it seems a bit harsh to me !Last night on a menu what jon had decieded was ice cream in different flavours....well,we ended up with three pieces of gateaux!Great!
Anyway,back to the old fire service,. Well,thought i,d lost interest in the ukraine,as we never saw any fire stations ...as invisible or non existant as rubbish collection service.But then,suddenly,t'other day in Romania,as unexpectedlyas everything is there,in nowhere's special town,outside small dusty football pitch ,2 fire engines,1 ancient old thing that can carry 9000 litres ,so prob v useful, and a brand spanking new volvo,that was fully equiped with all the latest holmatro gear.!! They let me open up all the lockers ,and i nearly got quite excited. Some of it was still in boxes it was so new,!and they had more stuff than we have at barrow . How.
we cant do question marks on these funny keyboards ...a bit too dim maybe.
So,what with that in the morning and the scalectric road climb in the afternoon..what an exciting day

eating out in romania

Yes!!! Can you believe it. The stove is packed away and we are at a pension camping for free so therefore having a meal. The special occasion is Harry and Steve's wedding.
Drinking beer and eating ice cream and using the free wi fi. Can life get better? Hope you all have a great day!
Going to romania's oldest town tomorow then off up the highest mountain.
Spelling mistakes due to Ciuc beer.
We may celebrate tomorow too,as they say in romania.... DRUM BUN

Vehicles of Romania

If you are reading this at the moment, you will have to realise that we have got some free Internet time so have done 3 updates in the last 1 hr,
That could be something of a record.
But I wanted to say something about the vehicles found in Romania. so......
The main form of transport does seem to be the horse, reliable and very useful.
But after that and a very close second is the Dacia (pronounced dachia) those of you who remember the dacia will realise that they are Renaults built under licence. Well the old 12 I think has now died but still can be seen on the roads (loaded fully with home produce and 5 kids) going strong, but there is a new dacia.... the logan, this is quite a modern product available in saloon estate or van, the original dacia is also available as a van pick up and in 4wd:
as for tractors... Fiat and universal seem to keep things running over here. But in the woods the TAF 657 skidder is king. 5 tonne double winch pivot steered, with a 4cyl diesel engine, I assume it is about 7ö -1öö Hp. These come in a choice of colours either red or red.
Another interesting machine seen out here is the mk3 transit, we saw allot of these in the Ukrain but they have a 4wd version over here a bit like the County conversion.
Sorry no pictures but watch this space for more vehicular information from around the Globe::

some more pictures

The local Bland family blessing the cheese!!

Just another bit of random Romania

still in Romania

Romania is the big country which is nearly all hills!! big ones at that.

We keep taking our bikes up stupid roads in the best eden wheelers tradition! and Hartside has finally been surpassed, several times. We have walked high biked high and camped high.

The URSUS black beer is lovely, thinking of starting a Romanian shop in Penrith when we get back.

Travelling quite slowly as always too much to look at....plus on the roads potholes the size of small elephants....thats partly why cars drive in middle of it,or weave about.

Don,t know why none of us have been here before....its almost too good to be true...there must be loads of amaying mtn biking to be pioneered,and we went through a huge gorge yesterday with some shiny new bolts as well as ancient wooden pitons. Plus romanian language is a mixture of italien,spanish and latin...so its not totally ukranian . It is very affordable; jon,s beer cost about 40p yesterday. I may have to make him drink more today as i think he is getting so lean i might be able to pick him up !

Anyway, its going to take us a while to get through rest of country,and we don,t know where we are going next .

You could all make helpful suggestions,and we could follow the most common one !....

We bumped into the romanian version of borrowdale shepherds meet whilst passing through a small village. Lots of traditional dressing,singing groups,priests blessing cheese *quite long winded*,horses fancied up, some big scary sheepdogs ,puppies for sale, plus polenta and beer. You could tell it would all degenerate later on. For some young lads our bikes were the most interesting things....how many gears etc.

Oh and Colin... I think that you will find that you can park anywhere in Romania!! as long as you dont block another mans sheep from a water source!

One of the pictures is of the new Zanussi washing machine, just out here in Romania

Ukraine to Romania

Moving on from Poland we passed into Slovakia. Gone were the Ursus and in for the Zetor's and skoda cars. What a change!!!!
The Tatras from this side seemed more accesible and just as lovely. we scooted through Slovakia having an impressive stop in Kosvice, it deserves more tourists!! The country does however have some big social problems that need sorting out, with a very obvious underclass of rural slum dwelers of a different racial origin, we didn't manage to find out what was going on but its not pretty.
Once the Ukranian border guards finaly let us in (had to go 30 km uphill to anither crossing!!)
What a wild surprise!! an exhuberant place, friday evening must be vodka and party night! in the villages everybody out all dressed up! its horse carts and Ladas now!! Watch out!!
It has an amaizing countryside! totally traditional still, very little infastructure i.e. no litter collections! plastic bottle problem is huge! but more people spoke (ot tryed to) speek to us than anywhere else - kids all waved and tried to race Jon! We will have to go back to do more exploring there.
In Romania, hardly had we crossed the border when we fell into the hospitable hands of Anka and John, and Ankas family! Camping in their garden and being spoiled, see picture!! Going to find it hard to leave, but quite excited by the map of Romania- lots of mountains. ( thanks everyone for E mails will try to reply later, stuck with poor comunications in the Ukrain!!)
And Matthew!! who have you been drinking with???? hope you havn't drunk all of Freds whiskey!!