Day 42: There’s a storm coming, Mr Brenkel

Silistra to Fetesti (75km)

Despite the left hand side of the river being Romania since day 29, I was still yet to spend a night in country. With Bulgaria fading away, the river became completely surrounded by Romania and my policy of avoiding the country would have to change.

Immediately, we had a decision to make. The river splits into two and doesn’t merge back together for about 100km. We didn’t have any indication which route would be best, but based on the fact that the left hand route had a hotel a manageable distance away, we plucked for that one. It was a warm, calm day on the river and we were keen to make good progress. The forecast for the next few days was enough to send a shiver down the spine of any kayaker, 20mph winds, thunder, lightning and even a bout of acid rain. Resigned that the next few days would inevitably be miserable, we continued on the town of Fetesti. The river distance markers are on the other stream, but we estimated that Fetesti was around 300km to go, an exciting prospect.

The hotel that I’d found was a few kilometres past Fetesti and situated perfectly on the river bank. We pulled the kayaks out and tied them to neighbouring trees. I took a little longer getting my stuff out of the kayak, so by the time I got to the hotel, the guys had already been told that there were no rooms available. We asked if we could camp on their lawn, not allowed. We offered to pay to camp on their lawn, not allowed. We pondered what to do, the closest hotel was in Fetesti, about 5km away. As we debated, a local man came over that spoke decent English. He phoned a hotel in town, who did have space but warned that they had a wedding that evening and it would be loud until late. We didn’t mind and agreed to stay there. The guy kindly drove us into town and dropped us at the hotel.

A couple of days ago, Toby described Oryahovo as the worst place on the river. In my opinion, this prestigious award should be reserved for Fetesti. It is a miserable place, filled with miserable looking people. We wandered through the town for a while trying to find anywhere to get some dinner. Finally, we found a decent place and headed in. The food was pretty good, far outclassing the now customary poor service. As we ate, the skies darkened, thunder began to roll in and it was positively horsing it down by the time we left the restaurant. The rain did nothing to improve the aesthetics of Fetesti and we arrived back at the hotel with the wedding now in full swing. As promised, the wedding continued late into the night. Fortunately, I was too tired to notice and slept through the entire thing.