I woke up quite well rested, looking forward to breakfast. After the dire bike ride yesterday, I was daunted by what awaited me and only hoped that it would get better. I set off about 9am towards Belgrade. Of course I had to get out of the city first which proved not so difficult as other cities I have departed from. The route, like yesterday was on the road. Coming out of Novi Sad the traffic was moderately heavy but bearable. About 10am I started getting coffee withdrawal as the stuff that I had been served for breakfast tasted like Turkish coffee, which I don't like. I stopped in a lovely little town called Sremski Karlovci. Funnily enough I happened to sit down in a bar that was run by a Serb who had lived for 18yrs in England, in Hastings for some of that time. He made me sit and talk to him about my trip and we talked about his wife and kids which he brought back to Serbia when the war started in 1999, nice eh!

Anyway, I got going again about 11am and was faced with a delightful 5km climb up 'Holy' Mountain. It was soooooo hot. The climb was okay but traffic began to pick up again and I was being overtaken on curves by buses, trucks and tractors which forced me to ride in the rough. Once at the top, I had a reasonably nice downhill ride through small towns and villages but still had to deal with the traffic. There mustn't be any major roads for these trucks if they are passing through these small villages. They have totally destroyed the roads. At one point I was riding down a road which was only tarmacked in one lane and of course everybody wanted to drive on the smoother surface so there was a lot of 'chicken' being played. You have to wonder why they would only tarmac one lane.

As I approached Belgrade, so about 30km out, traffic began to get diabolical. I'd have trucks hugging me and chugging out clouds of diesel fumes. Buses with no air conditioning were driving with the doors open which nearly clipped me as they went by. Cars just zooming past and overtaking from the other direction as I was passing. Some drivers would even hoot me, I'm still not sure if they were warning me that they were there or telling me to move over to the non-existent space beside me. Every now and then I would get some male drivers blowing me kisses, I would have preferred some space instead. I began to feel sick from all the fumes I was breathing in, that mixed in with the heat nearly had me chucking my bike under one of the trucks.

12km outside the city centre a bike path, yes you read right, a bike path started along the river. It was a lifesaver, literally. That 12km seemed to take forever and the I had the task of finding my bed for the night and as usual I managed to have booked one at the top of a hill.

It was a helluva day, not at all enjoyable and if i had had the energy to cry I would have done. If I can't jump ahead on train and bypass the rest of Serbia then this just might be the last day on the bike.