The Danube is a big river. Where we came to it, it had more than 1000km to its delta by the Black Sea to run and had come at least that much from Baden-Wittemberg. And it is already wide.
We met it the upper end of the stretch where it runs between the end of the Carpathian mountains and of the Balkan mountains.
EV13 runs along the Northern bank in Romania and EV6, the Donau Radweg, along the Southern one in Serbia. We were on EV13 and stuck to it. The whole section is about 130km (80 miles) long and it is backed up behind a hydroelectric dam, so forms a very long lake. Before the dam was constructed, about 70 years ago, there were strong rapids.
To start with the road surface was poor. After merging with another road it got better. At the start of this section there was quite a bit of land by the river; later, it got much more narrow and formed a gorge, leading to the Iron Gates. This day we covered the more open part. On the next day, we were in the narrower section all day. I am not sure where the Iron Gates are exactly, but there were quite narrow bits and the flow would have been fast before the dam was built. The hills and cliffs on the side were impressive.
On the third day we joined a main road with heavy traffic, many trucks, which in the narrower gorge and not- very- wide road was quite scary. This took us to the dam itself where we crossed into Serbia and road peace.
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