Day 41: About a mile, mile and a half

Tutrakan to Silistra (57km)

I wasn’t entirely sure if breakfast was included with the hotel or not, but keen to get going early, I decided to forgo it and instead ate some of my supplies. The breakfasts since leaving the UK have been substandard anyway, so I wasn’t too upset about the prospect of missing some more stale bread and cheese.

This was to be my last day in Bulgaria and it proved to be one of my favourites. Again it was hot, possibly even hotter than yesterday, but river has now assumed a habitually strong current that makes for good paddling. At lunch, I got a message from Hugo, they had made similarly good progress over the past two days and were also aiming for Silistra tonight. However, they were several kilometres downstream, so I continued on and would welcome them when they arrived later on.

The afternoon was some of my fastest kayaking. The currents have been stronger before, especially in some sections in German and Austrian, but that was back when my kayaking skills were still developing. Now that I have improved to the ‘advanced beginner’ level, I was able to take full advantage of the free flowing river. I arrived just after 3pm and set about finding a hotel. There was a picturesque hotel on the water right next to where I pulled up. It was a 5 star hotel, but a mixture of the cheap Bulgarian prices and its perfect location, meant that it was the hotel that I chose.

The guys arrived a couple of hours later and checked into the same hotel. It was then dinner time, where despite the waitress messing up the order, we enjoyed a big feed. Thankfully, her error meant that she brought more food than we’d ordered, which proved little problem for Toby. I can’t remember when we first had one, but for the last few weeks at least, we have been enjoying Shopska salads. They are basically just a Greek salad, but with only one olive, which is perfect for an olive hater such as I. Every time we have passed into a new country, we worry that the Shopska won’t follow us. With Romania looming tomorrow, we ensured that we enjoyed a salad for potentially the final time.