Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Our vehicle documents were checked as we left the Romanian border, then a drive through some water I guess to cleanse our wheels then we were in Bulgaria with just a small office open to sell us yet anther vignette this time cost about 5 Euros for 7 days. Immediately we could see that they were putting this money to good use as there was a brand new road awaiting us & the one other car on the road for the first few miles. Our first stop was worth a visit, an unspoilt headland before getting to the tourist development further down the coast. Kaliakra Cape is mostly a nature reserve, important for migrating birds & there are the ruins of old fortresses. It was sunny at last so we had an hour pottering around alone as it was only 9am but the entry kiosk & museum were open so we happily paid our fee of just over a pound each.

Our first town, in search of an ATM was quite a different experience to the other countries we had just travelled through, mainly due to the Cyrillic writing, it's not easily decipherable like most Latin based languages. A bit like when we were in Taiwan, is it a sign for the bakers or the bookies? Most road signs have a translation but not all & my Garmin GPS Bulgaria map from openstreetmaps just shows ??????? for most town & street names. At least the ATM gave me a choice of English so we ended up with a handful of shiny new banknotes. Diesel seems to be about the same price as Romania but many service stations look quite old & you wonder if they have credit card technology. There seem to be many old industrial buildings & more square blocks of flats all covered in clothes washing & satellite dishes. Also a lot more older cars on the road, even Lada's! but not as much traffic as we have encountered in the previous countries.

We headed inland from Varna on a Motorway but were forced to divert off due to maintenance. It was noticeable that many of the roads bypass the villages so at least you get on at a reasonable speed & the small places are spared busy traffic passing through them. Madara Reserve sounded interesting & we arrived at dusk just as the site was closing. We stopped in the parking space in front and had a quiet night & were ready for the 8am opening. 

It is a sheer rock cliff face famous for an 8^th century carved horseman that is depicted on all the Bulgarian coins. There is a fortress up at the top, a 120m very steep climb with uneven steps but a secure handrails & superb views. At the base are some caves & a small chapel with many small religious icons.

We had contacted the owners of the highly recommended http://www.campingvelikotarnovo.com which was closed but they were happy for us to stay & park & had use of a toilet, electric, water, waste & WiFi all of which were a nice change from a car park area. It looks a lovely site, well laid out, good views & excellent facilities.

The owners were away but their caretaker Bev made us welcome & gave us lots of helpful advice & guides of local places to visit. Beautiful blue skies in the morning after another night when the temperature dropped below zero. We spent all day looking around Veliko Tarnovo , a very nice town set on hillsides divided by 2 rivers and with an enormous fortress. 

There is an interesting artisans area with potters, wood carvers & painters & above average interesting dust collectors to take home. We should have had an early warning about portion size after the cakes we had at morning coffee. Eating later at the recommended Ego Pizza & Grill we totally over ordered as the portions were so large & we even had to make up a small doggy bag to take away. All the food was superb & only cost 31 lev (about £13) for 5 dishes & 2 drinks.

Parking in the centre is by the hour for 1 lev, paid to one of the many ticket issuers. We wanted to park for 5 hours & were issued with 5 large tickets which we had to display on our windscreen. 

We could easily have spent more days here wandering around the town & the surrounding area but it is getting time to start the long route back towards home after now having driven just under 3000 miles.