574km were canoed in ten days this ‘week’.
This week we finished the Danube, entered Romania, paddled the length of the Canal of Death and made it to the Black Sea. Next week we hope to start canoeing towards Istanbul. Ironically, we make it about 575km.
The last ten days have seen the sun return to our expedition. Moving east towards the Danube delta, we have reached a dry ecosystem. The mornings are freezing cold and often misty. Then the sun rises and cold mornings have been transformed into days of tanning above 20 Celsius.
To complement the sun there has been an almost complete lack of wind. Once again we have been left with flat, easily canoe-able waters where waves are irregular and surprising. Although islands have made navigation more complex as the river’s flow has slowed, the conditions of the last week aided our progress.
This progress saw us cross the Bulgaria-Romania border and have our passports checked five times in four days. But, to be honest, we’ve kind of got used to that by now. We have just canoed from the Atlantic Coast to the Black Sea. Yes. France to Romania. Done.
A couple of years ago a man called Alexander Martin canoed from Nantes to Constanta. He followed a similar route to us, although he walked to the start of the Danube rather than taking the more indirect river route down the Rhine and upstream on the Main. We’ve now canoed from Nantes to Constanta including these rivers. Arguably, we’ve canoed the continent.
However we haven’t found anyone who has canoed from Nantes to Istanbul, and this is what we now intend to do. The 575km that span from Constanta to Istanbul along the Black Sea coast therefore present a massive and new challenge.
First, we need to find a good place to launch the canoe, having been denied entry to the lock by our last set of border police. We’ll have to deal with tides and waves and pay far more attention to weather forecasts and the dangers they predict. We’ll have to make sure we have towns to stop in and don’t get caught on cliffy outcrops. Ultimately, for our own sake, we’ll have to try and do it all before early December.
So, we’ve reached the Black Sea but there remains a lot to be done. With no downstream current to help us we won’t do it in another 10 days, that’s for sure.
Either way, we’ve already canoed the continent in a way never done before.
For more detailed updates you can follow our progress @CanoeingEurope on Twitter and read our regular blogs at www.canoeingthecontinent.com.
