Distance covered: 80km; Total climbed: 1680m; Total descended: 2075m; (a record day for ups and downs!) Max. elevation: 1400m; Current location: N43.39.3 E019.50.2, elev. 800m; Latest revelation: people build roads. They’ve been doing it since Roman times at least, so why am I suprised that some parts of the route we planned that were “cross-country” on our ancient maps are now tarmac?! Despite a slightly uneasy relationship with the asphalt, today was pretty close to perfect. We headed up north away from Sjenica, cycling in t-shirts in sunny weather, despite last night’s freezing temperatures, to rejoin our original cross-country route. It was a great feeling to see our track showing up on the GPS again and to come to a crossroads which most would drive past without a moment’s thought:

You can see our original route coming out from the right (we’ll have to try it one day, when there’s no snow) and continuing left, past a monument to the Serbian victory against the Austro-Hungarians, along tarmac initially. Well, this turned out to be a fantastic ride, through rolling countryside, sometimes along routes where only the GPS kept us on track. The highlight was surely the Ravna gora/Mocionica valley, a descent through breathtaking scenery, of which this picture can only give you a tiny taste:

All I can say is, when the first mountain biking tourists start coming in numbers to Serbia, this is where we will take them. The strange thing about today’s ride was that the route we had planned using 50-year old maps in some cases (you cannot get up-to-date detailed maps of Serbia) frequently hit tarmac - new roads (well, newer than our maps) that had on occasion obliterated all traces of the old ones, while at the same time making our progress much quicker. Hence the great mileage today, but also the sense of unease, that a rough track from a few decades ago could now be a main road, with actual cars using it, albeit relatively few. One stretch in particular I found rather disturbing - a road to some moribund village, once a beautiful scenic forest track, now a swathe of destruction soon to become yet another asphalt road, all in the name of “revitalization” which will probably never happen, no doubt at the whim of some local functionary (I will just say that the town of Cacak is nearby)… Wouldn’t creating a great tourist route do just as much for revitalization, and stop the forest and mountain getting hacked to pieces? We pushed on through evening sunshine to our next camp site, making our best mileage yet, not to mention best total climb along the long approach to Zlatibor, our next mountain.

We are almost a day behind schedule, but it doesn’t matter: trout grilled over an open fire, the starry sky above us, a great day’s ride behind us and more before us - asphalt or no asphalt, we are right on track…

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Posted on May 2nd, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: MTB Serbia (All)