Day 51 - Turnu Mǎgurele to near Nǎsturelu (43 miles)

I was up, out and at the bike shop ten minutes walk from my accommodation just after it opened and fifteen minutes after that I was walking out with a repaired wheel. The lean and aging owner was adamant that the cost was: 'Nothing. It eez free for traveller.' so I bought an unwanted and unnecessary item from his shop by way of thanks before heading back to pack my bike and continue my journey.

Seaca

By 10am I was on the road out of Turnu. This is now the third day I have been cycling the same road (known to Romanians as the 'Danube Road' but some distance from, and with little in the way of views of the river) and today I had the same long, straight stretches exposed to wind and sun and with a similar flat landscape, variations on a theme of agricultural and villages. I chatted to a Swiss cyclist who had started at the Black Sea, getting some useful information, and stocked up on food in a small village store. I passed the tiny village of Seaca with its large half-finished houses constructed by Roma families to demonstrate their wealth.  And I cycled through Zimnicea, the most southerly town in Romania, which has a long history but a post earthquake rebuild in the 1970s has left a planned town with its narrow streets built on a regular grid and with a problem of poor concrete and building standards. That information only added some worrying reality to my half-joking concerns from yesterday.

Ruse, the last stop on this particular stage and my first stop in Bulgaria, was some 78 miles away which was probably achievable in a day - even with my late start - but my heart was not in it today. I had decided to camp overnight and to finish the journey to Ruse in the morning so I enjoyed a more relaxing ride without the need to achieve a particular destination before the end of the day. By late afternoon I was on the lookout for a suitable spot for the night but the landscape here is a little different to that of three nights ago: the villages are more extended and at times almost merge into each other and the area between is almost exclusively farmland with nothing by way of common woodland or uncultivated fields. Eventually I found a place amongst a thin line of trees down a rough mud track, not ideal but out of the way and far enough from the road. The tree cover was not enough to protect me fully from the force of the evening breeze so I pegged the tent down securely before dining on tuna, bread and cheese and settling down to the sound of wind, frogs and the barking of faraway dogs.