{"id":1441,"date":"2011-05-30T21:42:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T19:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onmytodd.org\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2015-03-10T15:38:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T14:38:08","slug":"pancevo-veliko-gradiste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onmytodd.org\/?p=1441","title":{"rendered":"Pan\u010devo – Veliko Gradi\u0161te"},"content":{"rendered":"

This night my right shoulder was aching and I didn’t sleep well. I’m getting old. Fortunately the pain was gone in the morning.<\/p>\n

The plan for today was to leave between 8 and 9am and go as far as possible.<\/p>\n

Well. I spent the morning with Ka\u010da and her brother, sister and grandma, having breakfast and lunch. Then went to town to get some postcards and met Tijana for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

I finally left at half past 1pm!<\/p>\n

This was day four and the last day of crossing the Pannonian Plain which extends from Budapest to Belgrade. Being entirely flat, it was convenient to cycle at first (with a nice tail wind) but soon got a bit boring due the lack of any interesting visual features.<\/p>\n

It is mostly being used for agriculture, I’d guess 98%, and there’s loads of pestizides being sprayed onto the fields everywhere. Both commercial sized and backyard style ones. You also see people with hand-operated pumps spray chemicals against grass and stuff onto pavement and along their houses’ front walls.<\/p>\n

The villages and towns on the plain have some very beautiful old houses – which are mostly in various states of decay. On the other hand, there are many newly built houses, huge ones, in a somewhat mediterranean style, with columns and sculptures and stuff. And they are unfinished or uninhabited. It’s a total mystery to me.<\/p>\n

Cycled east from Pan\u010devo, then crossed the Danube. Met a guy from Germany, riding his bike from Greece to W\u00fcrzburg.<\/p>\n

The first hills appeared near Smederevo, just south of the Danube. Had some of the sandwiches for lunch which Ka\u010da’s mum had prepared for me near that city.<\/p>\n

Cycled east towards the Danube. Even though it is now hillier, the countryside is still used heavily for agriculture. Didn’t want to camp and asked for a hotel. The guy took a screwdriver and scratched a map into the rusty surface of the water tank his tractor was pulling (or was it pestizides?). He directed me to Veliko Gradi\u0161te, which is somewhat off my route but I found a cheap and simple place to sleep here. The hotel is for sale, by the way. Contact me if you’re interested, I’ll give you the details. :)<\/p>\n

Cycled: 115km (about 10 of which were ‘wasted’ by backtracking to Veliko Gradi\u0161te)<\/p>\n

A bit less than 700km to Varna.<\/p>\n