So I wake up to a very cold morning as frost still lingers on the ground. Andreas and Caroline tell me it’s possible to get some breakfast at the bar so I do that.
So it seems that I’ll be travelling the same way as Andreas and Caroline for a while anyway, so we decide to cycle together. It should be fun as I’ve been cycling on my own since Denmark so it will be good.
We decide that supplies are needed so we go shopping in town which always takes longer the more of you there are. And then later along the route we meet another couple of cyclists. Welcome Danny and Kim, a nice dutch couple. We are all talking and getting to know each other on the cycle path for a while, I kind of decide that seeing as it’s lunch time that perhaps we can eat and talk together.
A nice hourly lunch by the river and it seems now we are all heading the same way for the next few days so now the cycling gang is even bigger – although I don’t go around saying “Do you want to be in my gang, my gang, my gang” – some of you won’t get the music reference.
As we cycle along at a leisurely pace suddenly there are two more cyclists just catching up with us. Welcome to Paddy and Peter. As you can tell from the names they are Irish. It’s getting fairly close to evening and sunset so it seems now there is going to be 7 of us camping tonite. this is quite a turnaround seeing as the day before it was just me.
Everyone is quite surprised as we are kind of all thinking a little bit that we are crazy to be cycling this time of year when it’s starting to get colder so for 7 of us to all be here at the same time is quite remarkable.
Danny is looking out for nice places to camp and we are well away from roads and villages with the cyle path so it shouldn’t be too much problem. It looks like there might be a nice spot when a car comes along a dirt road. They don’t speak english but with gesturing I try and make out we are looking for a campsite. The guys in the car indicate that here isn’t safe and make motions of gun shapes. This doesn’t mean they want to hunt us for sport, but I’d rather hope it just means that they go hunting for boar here so isn’t safe.
I tell the others and we return to the path and carry on looking. We do find a nice spot right by the river and not in a hunting area.
As we pitch up we make a great dinner of combination of food from everyone. This means fresh vegetable and pasta with bacon. Danny is the main cook and has brought a few spices and herbs and culinary skills which is a bonus for me as my usual cooking is heat pasta, heat sauce and eat.
It’s been a nice day to meet all those different people and I’m lucky that the common language is English, well if you can say that the Irish speak English of course. It seems though that Paddy and Peter are in a hurry to make it to the black sea so are leaving early in the morning. They usually leave at 7:30am, it’s briefly tempting to go with them as they will be doing a pace that I’m more used to, but the fact is that I’m not a morning person. So staying with the dutch and german couple and having a more leisurely ride is probably the best idea.
I go to bed nice and snug afer we’ve built a nice fire and chatted until it’s late and getting cold.
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