Today was spent on board, cruising the Iron
Gates. It was the first day of overcast
and cool weather and standing out on deck to photograph was a challenge.

This is a 134 km stretch of the Danube that passes through a gorge that used to be the most dangerous before they built two dams in the 1960's. There isn't much to talk about because it is primarily a scenic day. Despite the cold and occasional wind driven drizzle, it was still quite stunning in sections.

The sights, apart from some great rock formations are a carving of a face into a cliff face, Trajans Plaque and a castle at the end of the gorges.

The face carving isn't exactly a Mount Rushmore or the Geronimo work in progress. This is more a work in decay and I don't even know who the guy was. It's only been carved in the last decade and already his nose and top lip have fallen off. Patched with cement, he now has a Hitler mustache.

After the building of the dams, the gorge was drowned and some 50,000 people werre displaced. It is now 35 metres higher. Th epeople were resettled, as was Trajans Plaque. A marble Roman plaque commemorates Trajans defeat of the Thracians and the establishment of Roman rule. It was lifted up the cliff face and resited and now is just above the waterline. Not a great monumant however we might have missed the finer carvings depicting his victory.

As usual for me, the highlight was the castle. Bearing in mind that river traffic until the development of motors was only downstreem using the current, the Castle was located at the begijning of the gorge. Initially built by the Hungarians to keep the Ottoman Turks at bay, it was captured by them and extended, recaptured when the Ottomans werre driven out 300 years later and then used by local lords to levy a "protection racket" toll charge. Bloody big and intimidating toll booth.

As I say, not much else to say about the day. Well, other than passing a monestary that hs only just been reoccupied by "nuns" of some description who thought a cruies ship as novel to them as a monestary was to us. They may have taken more photographs of us than I did of them. The there was the landslip, much more dramatic than the one I photographed here. It took out the entire road and it was a tanle of buckled protection rails and bolders. Fishermen laying nets from a timber dingy, the ends supported by bouys made of plastic coke bottles tied together. Apart from that ... not much. ...........