Day 1,408
Life on the road
We arrived at the campsite just before 6pm. I have to admit, I was exhausted. No proper meal the previous evening due to ‘The Invasion of the Blood Sucking Beasties’, and a rushed lunch before we had raced for the ferry, had all taken its toll. I needed food and I needed it now. Tom gave me some biscuits and then sensibly said tent up, shower, then food. We greeted the three other tourers, nicked the largest of the remaining, very small, camp spots for ourselves, had an amazing hot shower then hit the kitchen! Yep, a real live kitchen, with drawers full of kitchen stuff, 2 fridges, a freezer, a kettle! I’d have settled for just that (and I have) but there was more. Tom was taken by the shot glasses on the draining board, we'd clearly missed a party the night before. I fell in love with the little dining table, complete with tablecloth. This was serious luxury. Now being on tour for as long as we have, we are pretty organised, so none of the set up took long. We also know we need to eat proper food when we can. I do the food shopping for several reasons, the main two being Tom generally spends more than our daily allowance but still doesn't manage to buy the ingredients to make a meal, more like ingredients for a party, and he hates food shopping. I sympathise, every country has its own weird rules, especially in shops, but I'm pretty good at coping with them. I'm also an ace at checkouts, I am fluent in cashier-chat whatever the language. No, I don't want a carrier bag, I haven't got a store card, I don't want this week's mega offer of 200 toilet rolls for a fiver etc. I even manage to laugh at their jokes. It's a skill, and I'm damn good at it now.
So for food, we had gnocchi (which cooks quick and doesn't need to be stored in a fridge), mushrooms, a tomato and a carrot, so some fresh goodness, plus a jar of pasta sauce. I'm not so hot on Serbian, so I'd bought the spicy version. Then I added leftover cheese from lunch, and some assorted seeds we've carried since Northampton that really needed eating. I'll not lie, it looked good and tasted even better. The 3 tourers made room for us at the outside table, and gazed at our meal dumbfounded. The two French guys were eating large blocks of the cheese, the, I think, Swiss one, was on the beer. One of the French guys then made some soup, but he couldn’t get any French bread to go with it. Like we have done many a time they'd made the mistake of waiting till they arrived and shopped at the local store. It’s no 1 review online is that someone once bought a nice tin of tuna there! Other than tuna it mainly sold alcohol, month old vegetables, and big blocks of ‘cheese’ so their options were limited.
We sat down to eat and chat. Despite Tom and I barely meeting any other cyclists, these 3 solo cyclists had found each other and were loosely riding the same route. I kept missing bits of the conversation, so don't hold me to this, but I think they were all doing a couple of months touring and finishing in Turkey. We chatted about our tour plans and they were impressed and interested in our achievements.
It was a lovely evening, we chatted away, discussed route options, and night began to fall. Then Tom said “its going to rain”, and within minutes we had a thunder and lightning storm of biblical proportions, and all dived for the safety of our tents. Now I always feel super safe under my micron thick piece of nylon, it's kept us safe from packs of wolves, hungry bears, random strangers, and howling wildlife that has no name, but my faith wavered a bit last night, this was some storm. Still we survived the night, though I confess it was somewhat sleepless.
Unlike previous days though the storm had gone, but the wind hadn't, it was strong and proud, and it was a headwind. The guys were up, tents packed and on the road by 7am. Tom and I sat bleary eyed, drinking coffee and debating how far we would ride today. Then Tom said the magic words, “We could stay here today”. Now I'm not often a dutiful wife but you've got to choose your arguments, and as I was in complete agreement, I happily said I'd obey.
Tom got a bit stir crazy after half an hour, but fortunately I discovered the WiFi password, so he's busily editing photos and planning on maybe starting the film of Serbia. I've promised to write a blog, but I'm mainly going to laze about in my jim-jams (pyjamas), read my book, drink more coffee and eat biscuits. We popped up to the tuna shop, we've got what passes for food there for lunch, and some peach rakija in case any more tourers arrive, and we can get the shot glasses out. Bliss.
Camp Kalinovac
