Day 38: The real low point

Marker 620 to Svishtov (70km)

The aim for today was to reach the town of Shishtov around 70km away, leaving only 55km into Ruse tomorrow. It was another early start on the river. Our routine tends to be, Hugo and Toby wake up around sunrise, start to pack up and after a short period, provide me with my morning wake up call. It’s then a quick breakfast, pack everything up and on the river.

It was another hot day on the river, but thankfully, once again, it was calm. Just before lunch, we were passed by the biggest ship I’ve seen so far, a quadruple tanker. A ship this big barely goes faster than I do, only a lunch break meant that we didn’t spend the whole day together. We stopped for an early lunch having already covered a decent 30km, this gave a nice opportunity to cool down.

Our aim at the start of the day had been Svishtov and as the afternoon rolled on, this became an easily achievable target. We arrived in the town in the late afternoon and our initial plan was to find a hotel. However, the place where we stopped, which was also the best place to access the town from, had a real stench about it. In addition to the smell, the area was littered with dodgy looking fishermen, so we decided to carry on for a few kilometres. My maps showed a hotel a little bit downstream, so we headed there. Upon arrival, we pulled the kayaks out and began to scout out the hotel. We were unsuccessful in finding the hotel but we did find a nice restaurant. So we decided to eat at the restaurant and camp on the adjacent beach. The waitress spoke a weird brand of English, a mixture of comprehensible words and words that weren’t English and didn’t even seem to be Bulgarian. The menu was in Bulgarian and German, so ordering proved difficult. I decided to go with a tried and tested option of ordering the most expensive thing on the menu (£5) with the assumption that it must be the best. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was quite tasty and it was definitely food.

Another warm day on the river but another 70km closer to the sea. Svishtov marks the most southern point on the whole river, it is literally all up from here.