We received the following note from Anne Mustoe after cycling The Danube Cycleway:

“I’ve just got home after attempting to cycle the so-called Danube Cycleway from Vienna to the Black Sea, and I thought you might be interested in my comments. It was not a ride to be recommended!

Beyond Budapest, where the Higginsons finished their guide book, Hungary was a delight -  though I would have been in a real mess had I not been able to speak German with some fluency.   I came across very few people with any English at all, even in the smarter hotels. In Croatia, the Danube Cycleway signs were brilliant, but people were warned not to wander off the roads, as the fields were still littered with land mines. Vukovar, in particular, was bombed and shelled to smithereens. The picture in my hotel room had five bullet holes in it! Serbia was less damaged by the civil war, but beyond Belgrade the terrain became very mountainous, with few places to stay overnight. In Serbia, I was treated to such horror tales about the breakdown of law and order in rural Romania, that I chickened out and took trains to the Black Sea. That turned out to be the wiser course. Romania was a desperate country, with a shattered infrastructure. When I arrived in Bucharest at 5.30 am, I was surrounded on the main station by a mob of beggars, gypsies, hotel touts, taxi drivers, hustlers of all sorts and a pack of six huge brown dogs. It’s as well I’m fairly unflappable.”