Day 41
Sleeping location: Thistly but beautiful meadow close to Perperikon, Bulgaria
Distance (km today/total): 103 / 4052
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 33600
Number of fish churches I have now seen in my life: 1
Day in three words: Upset tummy blues
I set out from Plovdiv in reasonable time, going via Lidl which I can attest is as crap (but cheap) here as it is everywhere. On the advice of my dad I’d adjusted the route slightly to go via the ancient city of Perperikon, which was a bit more distance and a lot more climb but avoided staying on the main road for almost 200km. The first 20km out of Plovdiv was on a huge motorway, but thankfully it had the Shoulder of Dreams, which was wide and smooth as silk. In the first town I stopped for coffee and had a nice conversation with a man in a bizarre mixture of English, German, Bulgarian, Russian and Turkish. My dad had also recommended a fortress here, which was quite nice, but had neglected to mention that there was also “The Fish Church”, which I simply had to check out. It turned out not to be a shrine to the mighty fish god, but it was very pleasant and well worth 15 minutes of my time.
After this I set off into the semi-wilderness through rolling hills on a badly surfaced road. This description applies to the rest of the day, and I found the going pretty tough as I had been suffering from an upset stomach for the past day*. In the middle was a long hard ascent up through dense woodland for several km. Bulgaria has so much woodland, most of it far from buildings, so it’s an absolute dream for wild camping. During this section I saw a car that had clearly just been in a massive accident but was still driving anyway, with a taxi just behind it in case something went REALLY wrong. In one of the last villages I tried to buy water in some kind of strange working men’s club, and the guy was completely dumbfounded by such a complicated request.
As the light was going I decided to head up to Perperikon and camp close to it, then walk round it in the morning. This led me to pick a slightly exposed, but very pretty, campsite on a sloping meadow near the site. I’d been told that wild camping in Bulgaria is fine, and nobody seemed at all bothered that I was there, if they even noticed at all. I locked Maggie to a thorny bush for extra protection. The whole meadow was like some festival of thorns and thistles, including one vicious bastard that ejected loads of tiny splinters when you touched it, which of course I pitched my tent on top of. Around dusk I saw a little deer prancing around just below me, which increased the loveliness of the spot even more.
*This is especially bad for cycling as you get dehydrated quickly and find it more difficult to take on enough food.
Distance (km today/total): 103 / 4052
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 33600
Number of fish churches I have now seen in my life: 1
Day in three words: Upset tummy blues
I set out from Plovdiv in reasonable time, going via Lidl which I can attest is as crap (but cheap) here as it is everywhere. On the advice of my dad I’d adjusted the route slightly to go via the ancient city of Perperikon, which was a bit more distance and a lot more climb but avoided staying on the main road for almost 200km. The first 20km out of Plovdiv was on a huge motorway, but thankfully it had the Shoulder of Dreams, which was wide and smooth as silk. In the first town I stopped for coffee and had a nice conversation with a man in a bizarre mixture of English, German, Bulgarian, Russian and Turkish. My dad had also recommended a fortress here, which was quite nice, but had neglected to mention that there was also “The Fish Church”, which I simply had to check out. It turned out not to be a shrine to the mighty fish god, but it was very pleasant and well worth 15 minutes of my time.
After this I set off into the semi-wilderness through rolling hills on a badly surfaced road. This description applies to the rest of the day, and I found the going pretty tough as I had been suffering from an upset stomach for the past day*. In the middle was a long hard ascent up through dense woodland for several km. Bulgaria has so much woodland, most of it far from buildings, so it’s an absolute dream for wild camping. During this section I saw a car that had clearly just been in a massive accident but was still driving anyway, with a taxi just behind it in case something went REALLY wrong. In one of the last villages I tried to buy water in some kind of strange working men’s club, and the guy was completely dumbfounded by such a complicated request.
As the light was going I decided to head up to Perperikon and camp close to it, then walk round it in the morning. This led me to pick a slightly exposed, but very pretty, campsite on a sloping meadow near the site. I’d been told that wild camping in Bulgaria is fine, and nobody seemed at all bothered that I was there, if they even noticed at all. I locked Maggie to a thorny bush for extra protection. The whole meadow was like some festival of thorns and thistles, including one vicious bastard that ejected loads of tiny splinters when you touched it, which of course I pitched my tent on top of. Around dusk I saw a little deer prancing around just below me, which increased the loveliness of the spot even more.
*This is especially bad for cycling as you get dehydrated quickly and find it more difficult to take on enough food.
Comments
Post a Comment