Today we paddled through between a couple towns. Ruse is a big city with 163.000 inhabitants on the Bulgarian side on the bank. Giurgiu is much smaller, with its 69.000 inhabitants on the Romanian side. It only has its port on the bank of the Danube, the town could not be seen from the river.
Today we managed to get into the kayak very late, it was already quarter past eleven. Maybe there's a "anyway we will do it" feeling, and sure enough, we succeeded. We could paddle the planned 75 kilometers till the evening. It implicated by the fact that we are west of the GMT + 2 time zone, and it gets dark nearly an hour later like in Budapest. Nevertheless, we should get ourselves together, since the late afternoon paddling is not so pleasant. The wind is getting much stronger than in the morning. The temperature is also getting low, so the shower isn’t too pleasant as well after the arrival at the camp site. I was thinking about this, while we were paddling between Ruse and Giurgiu today on the windy Danube. Then when we arrived I put together a heated shower cubicle:
But lets return to the beginning (middle) of the day. We looked after the Russian memorial tower that helped Sztoji to find the coast. It also turned out that next to it is an extensive ruins of a Roman military camp. Before departure were sown even a glimpse and to the tower blocks of Svisthov and then we got into the kayak.
There was slightly any wind, but we still had a good speed, and the flow of the Danube also helped. We agreed to meet around Pietrisu a for the first meeting with Sztoji, but unfortunately he was not able to approach the river. We do not even met him until the evening because at Slobozia we failed to meet again. He came down to the harbour at Giurgiun, but we were paddling on the Bulgarian side, and by the time he noticed, we left the place.
Since we didn’t saw any good points to dock at the beach we chose to rest on a sandbar again. We docked on the top of the shallow water and pulled the kayak out in the sand. I walked a little farther into the sand, which has not made the seagulls happy, they flew over me with loud caw.
After the break we could see the Ruse TV tower in the distance. Before we reached the city we paddled next to three islands other islands. At the first one did not choose the shipping lanes, we paddled from the right side. We found an interesting rock walls washed by the water, as well as a huge building complex at the top of the hill, about which we could not decide what it is. That only seemed to be in a dodgy condition. Because of the many lamp posts and the massive building blocks, we guessed it is a prison, but as we took photos and downloaded the to check the complex it turned out that they are crumbling, which are not in use.
Ruse is a big city with its population of 163,000. It is situated on the Danube. Unfortunately, much of the coast is packed with industrial facilities, the city itself rather crawled up the nearby hills.There are some residential buildings and a park near the water. There were tourist ships in port, including one of Arosa company’s vessels, that could be often seen in Budapest.
We wanted to paddle through to the port of Giurgiu (although we did not know that Sztoji was waiting for us there), but a maneuvering ship did not allow this. We had to stay close to the right bank. When he turned back and docked behind the barge we already passed the port. Since we paddled already for a long time, we chosen a sandy coastline at the foot of the Giurgiu-Ruse Bridge. We do not much time because I was getting chilly. We did not stay long, it started to get cold, we got back into the kayak again, paddled through under the bridge. We struggled a little at the foot of the bridge with the vortices, and paddled forward. It was about 10 kilometers until the camp site. We sent Sztoji to a village called Gostinu, thet has a beautiful sandy beach. He was waiting for us with standing tent. This time we were not alone, this is a popular place among fishermens, there were 5-6 tents on the beach. We will sleep here, and we will try to start earlier tomorrow.
New routs on the Endmond:
http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/531343105/188839
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