Day 11 - Our First Time Zone
Sofia has been our first main mental target on this trip, the first checkpoint and so waking up on the day, we were tired but highly motivated and managed a really efficient early start from our slopy, but dry and mosquito-free campsite.
The first hills passed easily and we were doing well for time when we stopped for coffee, but quite shortly afterwards the energy levels started to deplete quickly, both of us feeling the 10 days of pedalling and the hard days pushing through the wind adding up.
Overtaking a train! 💪 (one that was all set up to build the new railway we saw under construction)
Queuing at the border (and re-entering the EU!) provided an unofficial, but very hot, lunch-break before crossing into another new country and our first (of many!) timezone changes. Now 2 hours ahead of where I started we'd lost an hour of the day, although the evenings are mercifully longer again now which should help us break our bad habit of arriving in the dark. Emma managed not to crash while cycling across the border looking at her phone waiting for it to change time, but did forget to pick up a sovenir patch for her panniers from Serbia (or "Hungary" as she kept calling it). That's a 1/6 success rate on the patches so far - luckily the cycling is going better!
Setting off from the border we tried to hang a right to our route but were waved back and pointed onto the main road, allegedly also a main cycle route, but looked a lot like a motorway to us, complete with hard shoulder! We passed a police car and officers who didn't seem to mind so we continued onto what later emerged to be a "speedway". Something below a motorway but bigger than a dual-carriageway. Far from being terrifying, compared to the roads and drivers in Serbia, it was a lot of fun, thanks mostly to a hard shoulder and only one car every 5 minutes as the border was slow. Progress was definitely helped and "cycling on a motorway" unlocked.
Coming over the hill on the old road after leaving the "motorway" the scenery changed dramatically. From the green rolling hills suddenly everything was yellow with orange dirt and bigger mountains. It's been a particularly dry summer here and you could really tell.
We were both exhausted by the time we reached the city "150km shouldn't be this hard" and the stop start and heavy traffic made the last 20km very hard work but the reward was definitely worth it as we were made extremely welcome and comfortable by Anna (who I used to work with), Georgi, Joana and Victor!
Food spend today: 27 euros