Yesterday we started to enter the Iron Gates passage.
Today we departed Donji Milanovic (Serbia) and cruised through the remaining Iron Gates after we had a walk through the village and up to the highest point to get some panoramic photos. It truly is a wonderful part of the world.
Kevin standing beside the hay stacks.
The drainage basin of the Danube is enormous, covering 805,300 km. Importantly for the trans-European communication, the Danube is now part of the Rhine-Main-Danube waterway, an inland waterway which links the North Sea at Rotterdam with the Black Sea on the Ukrainian / Romanian border. The inland waterway also links the Mediterranean via the Rhine-Rhone waterway. The Black Sea canal cuts through the Dobrogea platform to link the Danube directly with the Black Sea south of Constanta thus avoiding the delta area.
The Iron Gates section of the river held a reputation for hazardous whirlpools, currents and rocks just below the surface. Passage through this section of the river was limited to 200 or so days a year when the water level was high enough and even then experienced captains had to be taken on board at Moldova. Substantial deepening and widening of sections of the Iron Gates took place in 1896 but the river did not become easily navigable until the 1970s with the construction of the Portile de Fier scheme. The Kazan Gorge 16 km upstream of Orsova has cliffs which fall 60 metres into the Danube.
The carving of an ancient king respected by the people – Decebalos Rex Dragan Fecit.
This church on the edge of the Danube is literally miles and miles from anywhere in all directions. It is a Serbian Orthodox Church.
The iron gate dam with its flooding of the Danube as far up stream as Belgrade has had a massive effect on increasing traffic on the river in recent times. The problematic Iron Gates section of the Danube, with it’s narrow, hazardous gorge was always a difficult part of the river to navigate. The substantial rise in water level following the construction of the dam between 1960 and 1971 made the navigation of the Iron Gates far easier. River traffic passes through a double lock system to descend the 33 metres to the Drobeta side of the dam. There are locks on the Serbian side of the river and on the Romanian side of the river.
In 1956 following a bilateral agreement between the Yugoslavian and Romanian Governments it was decided to build a hydroelectric pland on the Iron Gates region. The building plan was completed on the 30th November 1963. The work on the Iron Gates I hydroelectric Power Station and Navigation System started on 7th September 1964 and was finished on 18th May 1972. The main part of the system was completed between 1965 – 1970 in accordance with the stipulations of the agreement and conventions between the two nations.
The place was chosen in order to improve the navigation on the Danube, as in this area there we many thresholds at very low water rocks appeared above the water level. Due to these conditions the price and the time of travel was 4-5 times higher than on any other part of the river.
There have been a number of serious environmental impacts on the dame scheme. Firstly the raising of the river has caused a marked change to the infamous and formidable gorge or Kazan section which has been deplored by many who saw the Kazan section as one of the great river gorges of the world. Secondly, the waters have submerged the historically important island of Ada Kaleh and the old town of Orsova and a population of 35,000 inhabitants had to be removed, as well as the system of roads and the railway which were situated along the Danube.
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