{phocamaps view=map|id=4}                                                                    Map with our lodging places

A bike tour by natural parks, along rivers and canals from Geel to Slatina-Timis: 2230kms, 23 days

An alternative way to visit Slatina-Timis is by a trekking bike. Because we are cycling on towpaths and dikes of winding rivers the trip is 500kms longer than the normal route by car.

We start in Geel, along the canal Herentals-Bocholt towards Limburg, crossing the Meuse and a small piece of the Netherlands, up to the river Rur at the German border. Than upstream to Düren and via quiet roads to Bad Breisig on the Rhine.  From there onwards we follow the "Limes Route"  a cycling route from the Netherlands to the Black Sea in Romania, which  approximately follows the northern border of the Roman Empire (1st centery AD). We continue to follow this route up to Kalocsa in Southern Hungary. The "Limes" is a chain of bike paths: the banks of the Rhine up to Mainz, the natural park "Altmühl" up to Regensburg on the Danube.  The Danube cycle path is best known : Passau, Linz, Vienna, Bratislava... Budapest, we avoid the crowds in the Hungarian capital by crossing the hills around the Balaton Lake. In Paks we meet again the Danube. Here we leave the Limes route and we cycle south on the newly marked "Donau Radweg" along gravel roads on the top of dikes through an imense natural beauty in Croatia and Serbia. After Osijek we deliberately run due east to avoid the Serbian capital Belgrade, crossing the flat Serbian Banat for 200kms. The 9th country on our trip: Romania, we enter at Moravita. Here we have to start climbing the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Our last stop is Resita: capital of the county Caras-Severin to which Slatina-Timis belongs. The highest point of the trip (1000m) we have saved for the last day, but after the top we can whiz 20kms downhill to our target on a brand new asphalt road.