The Iron Gates Gorge

The Iron Gates gorge has been cut by the Danube as it forces its way through the barrier formed by the Carpathian and Balkan mountains between Romania and Serbia. It is actually 80 miles of four distinct gorges connected by wider sections of river and although strictly speaking only the last is the Iron Gates gorge, generally the name is used to refer to the whole series. The second of the two gorges (Gospodin vir or 'lady's whirlpool) has cliffs rising over fifteen hundred feet above the river. At this stage the river has a depth of 270 feet deep making it the world's deepest river. The entire area has been incorporated into two national parks, one Serbian and the other Romanian. 

The Iron Gate gorge itself has been dammed and that dam will be my crossing point into Romania. Building of the Derdap I Dam started in 1972 and caused the river level to raise by a hundred feet resulting in the need to relocate 17,000 residents of towns and villages in the gorge. One noteworthy loss to the water was the island of Ada Kelah which had a mostly Turkish population, a throwback to the time of Ottoman rule of the area. Another loss was a Roman road, completed in AD 100 and commissioned by Emperor Trajan. It was hewn out of the rock face, a major engineering achievement for the time, and served Roman military settlements along the Danube. Although the road was lost to the water, a large plaque commemorating its completion was cut from the rock and raised above the new river level. Unfortunately the plaque is my side of the river and below my route so will not be visible to me. As well as producing electric the building of two huge locks has greatly improved navigation with calmer water now replacing the strong current that boats previously encountered on the river.