A day spent walking through the parks, woods and suburbs of Belgrade, finishing with a climb up the mountain of Avala.
After breakfast at the Palace hotel, attended by numerous young waiters and waitresses, I returned to the Kalemegdan gardens to start my walk out of Belgrade. "Rambling through Serbia" describes the route as going through the city's parks and woods so this is what I did, walking through Hajd park, Topciderski park and then along a winding road through the woods of Košutnjak, before crossing through suburbs such as Miljakovic to another park, the Memorial park of Jajinci, with a sculpture remembering the 65,000 people killed here in the second world war. I joined the "Sultans trail" near Kumodrazh. I first crossed the long distance Sultans trail near Vienna and for a while followed it down to the village of Beli Potok. In places the track after Kumodrazh was pretty overgrown, but as it was with Michaelmas Daisies rather than stingy nettles it was not too bad, but may be impassable in future years.
While the route I took was generally in the area of the E4 as described in the booklet I am sure there are better routes involving less walking along roads. I saw plenty of footpaths in the woods and also red and white waymarks at various points but as I did not know where they went I stuck to roads or tracks that were on the map or which I had spotted from Google Earth. Anyone willing to contribute a better route add a comment below and put a GPS track on Wikiloc.com, Viewranger or similar.
After the plains of Vojvodina the hills of southern Belgrade were a contrast. The final climb to Avala was particularly steep (I was following blue and white triangle waymarks at that point). I was prevented from reaching the memorial to the unknown soldier at the very top by policemen (there were a lot of them). It seems the President of Greece was visiting and had not been told to expect me. So it was off to the nearby TV tower, bombed by NATO in 1999 and subsequently rebuilt to look a bit like a rocket at its base. I bought the "viewing station plus beer in the tower's cafe" ticket which I would recommend. The beer tastes better after sweating up the mountain and sitting in the bar high up in the tower is a warmer and generally more pleasant way to view the scenery compared with the lookout platform. It was pretty hazy so the scenery was rather indistinct but I could see that I had walked a good distance today.
Then it was back down the mountain (foĺlowing red and white waymarks) and some retracing of steps to reach the Hotel Sucevic Garni a few kilometres away, which was the nearest accommodation I could get. It does have a nice "Etno" restaurant where the helpful waiter recommended what to eat and I agreed. Now I am stuffed!
Including retracing my steps to the hotel I walked 38.7 kilometres today. My route can be found on Wikiloc.com, on ViewRanger.com as johnpon0024 and on Wandermap.net. In loading my route into Wikiloc.com I noticed a number of trails published for Košutnjak and Avala that I missed when first planning my trip. If you are planning to follow my route, you may well want a look at these to see if you can improve on the path I took.
After breakfast at the Palace hotel, attended by numerous young waiters and waitresses, I returned to the Kalemegdan gardens to start my walk out of Belgrade. "Rambling through Serbia" describes the route as going through the city's parks and woods so this is what I did, walking through Hajd park, Topciderski park and then along a winding road through the woods of Košutnjak, before crossing through suburbs such as Miljakovic to another park, the Memorial park of Jajinci, with a sculpture remembering the 65,000 people killed here in the second world war. I joined the "Sultans trail" near Kumodrazh. I first crossed the long distance Sultans trail near Vienna and for a while followed it down to the village of Beli Potok. In places the track after Kumodrazh was pretty overgrown, but as it was with Michaelmas Daisies rather than stingy nettles it was not too bad, but may be impassable in future years.
While the route I took was generally in the area of the E4 as described in the booklet I am sure there are better routes involving less walking along roads. I saw plenty of footpaths in the woods and also red and white waymarks at various points but as I did not know where they went I stuck to roads or tracks that were on the map or which I had spotted from Google Earth. Anyone willing to contribute a better route add a comment below and put a GPS track on Wikiloc.com, Viewranger or similar.
After the plains of Vojvodina the hills of southern Belgrade were a contrast. The final climb to Avala was particularly steep (I was following blue and white triangle waymarks at that point). I was prevented from reaching the memorial to the unknown soldier at the very top by policemen (there were a lot of them). It seems the President of Greece was visiting and had not been told to expect me. So it was off to the nearby TV tower, bombed by NATO in 1999 and subsequently rebuilt to look a bit like a rocket at its base. I bought the "viewing station plus beer in the tower's cafe" ticket which I would recommend. The beer tastes better after sweating up the mountain and sitting in the bar high up in the tower is a warmer and generally more pleasant way to view the scenery compared with the lookout platform. It was pretty hazy so the scenery was rather indistinct but I could see that I had walked a good distance today.
Then it was back down the mountain (foĺlowing red and white waymarks) and some retracing of steps to reach the Hotel Sucevic Garni a few kilometres away, which was the nearest accommodation I could get. It does have a nice "Etno" restaurant where the helpful waiter recommended what to eat and I agreed. Now I am stuffed!
Including retracing my steps to the hotel I walked 38.7 kilometres today. My route can be found on Wikiloc.com, on ViewRanger.com as johnpon0024 and on Wandermap.net. In loading my route into Wikiloc.com I noticed a number of trails published for Košutnjak and Avala that I missed when first planning my trip. If you are planning to follow my route, you may well want a look at these to see if you can improve on the path I took.
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| Belgrade Park |
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| Avala mountain with TV Tower |
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