I left Baja at around 1pm due to a late night watching a Hungarian rock band, a backlog of emails to respond to and just general laziness. I had received as reply from Ljubomir, a Warmshowers host in Gospođinci, Serbia the night before informing me that I couldn’t stay with him in 2 nights time (Sunday), but he would be around on the Monday. Gospođinci, a little town of just 3,500 people, was about a 120mile ride away. Doable in 2 days, but it would be a push. Starting late meant that I would now take 3 more leisurely days to reach the town and arrive when Ljubomir was available to host me.
My last day in Hungary cycling along a fantastically quite road!
I cycled a humid 28 miles and at around 4.30 started my search for somewhere to camp. I love the days when I have time to look around and find a ‘campsite’, rather than rushing to get my tent erected before it gets dark. I can really search to find that perfect place.
To the right of the road it was on was a strip of woodland and beyond that was the Danube river. Currently I only carry 1.5 litres of water. This is enough during the day, so long as I fill up every 20 miles or so (and I like the excuse to know on peoples doors!), and pretty much the bare minimum I need for camping (500ml for cooking and 1L for during the night and the morning), but it is much easier to just camp by a natural water source. With the Danube running only 200 meters to my right it would have been silly not to camp next to it!
Actually finding somewhere to camp was trickier than I’d expected. There were a few tracks that ran down to the water, but these looked well used and I didn’t want to be discovered late at night or early in the morning. So I instead opted for nettle-ridden ouchy-stingy-leggy route. It was an effort to push through the stingers with copious amounts of swearing, but after 10 mins I had won the battle and arrived triumphant on the other side! Once there I was awarded the most amazing view of the river and fantastic clearing to pitch my tent. I had found the perfect campsite (and let’s face it, I was hardly going to push my way back through the stingers in a hurry)!
With a good 3 hours before it got dark, building a campfire was inevitable. Once the tent was up I constructed a fire pit on the ‘beach’ by the waters edge and set about collecting a large pile of firewood. I even made myself a stone chair and table to sit and cook on. I lit the fire, lazed about on my home made throne whilst I cooked my dinner (the standard pasta and chorizo, but this time with added chicken soup that I had been carrying since Stuttgart and really thought needed eating up!).
This is absolute perfection; unicycling, a stunning wild view, camping and food. You will definitely struggle to ever beat that combination!
amazed that you can unicycle any real distance, never mind 18K round the world. I am particularly interested in your trip as my son and his girlfriend did much of your route to date returning from Kuala Lumpur last year – 2 wheels each though and took just over 12 months. Well done and the best of luck on your fine adventure. Chris