15-19 October 2019.
Bulgaria via Sofia and the Valleys Below the Balkan Mountains.
299 miles with 7803 feet of climbing.
Bulgaria via Sofia and the Valleys Below the Balkan Mountains.
299 miles with 7803 feet of climbing.
Beyond Vrandol, where I resumed a mindful, water- and revolution-inspired vigil alongside the same Nišava River from earlier in the morning, a dry, intermontane valley, dominated by man's modern agricultural manipulations, gradually opened up as I approached and rode into Bela Palanka. From my vantage heading east on essentially flat roadways in this large Serbian town, isolated hills and high mountains, part of the eastern fringe of the Dinaric Alps, abutted the town to the south and were only a few miles away, across the valley, to the north. The way to the east, in contrast, the upstream direction of the Nišava River was open in space and time and I cycled that way with little effort on Route 259, a secondary road that closely follows and sometimes merges with the high-speed A4.
Avoiding the A4, which may have been off-limits to bikes, had its disadvantages of course, principally my route was far from straight. However, those disadvantages were outweighed by many more advantages, including the opportunity to remain proximate to, the suggestion if not the real thing, the sound of water in the Nišava River versus the very real sound produced by man's inefficiencies in engineering (friction) including noise generated by combustion engines and tires grinding away on the surface of asphalt. Within the confines of a typical car and its noise-cancelling cabin, the noise of an autobahn often goes mostly unnoticed. But from the perspective of a bicycle, that noise is disastrously loud and chaotic, effectively cancelling-out any hope of effective meditation and its benefits including a deeper awareness of nature, her sounds, patterns in landscape, and much more. The quality of that meditation hinges, for a cyclist, on proximity to steady-state breathing and smooth, consistent pedalling and it's easy to get distracted from these repetative actions and motions in the presence of frenetic energy.
Below and west of the village of Sopot, I transitioned from Route 259 to the 221 and immediately began followed a wide bend of the Nišava River, first north and then east before turning south towards Pirot. Where the 259 diverged from the 221, the 259 merged with the A4 and was now tracking south on the west bank of the river which I could easily see from my comfortable perspective on the east bank. A short, uneventful cycle from this point delivered me to Pirot, a town built at the head of another expansive valley, dry like the one I descended into beyond Cucale two days before, all of them surrounded by hills and higher mountains blanketed in green forests. The valleys were far from "dry" in every sense of the word, but relative to the lush valleys that I encountered in the heart of the Dinaric Alps, in places like Mokro, Bosnia (not far east of Sarajevo) and Osaonica, Serbia (a few miles above Novi Pazar), parklands between the eastern fringes of the Dinaric Alps in this part of Serbia appeared to be relatively water-stressed by climate and likely man's inability to make sensible choices about the water that was available.
South of Pirot, I rejoined the 259 (absent the A4 designation) through the valley, my only direct option to close the gap, about 10 miles, from here to Dimitrovgrad, the last town in Serbia before I arrived to the Bulgarian border. Border crossing options are sparsely distributed along the border of the two countries. If, for traffic reasons such as restricted highways, I wasn't able to cross at the nearby station then I would be forced to ride an extra day before I could resume my track east towards Istanbul. This unlikely conclusion, based on lots of discussion with locals the last few days, was nevertheless on my mind along with the infrastructure, a four lane highway in particular, that I could see converging on the border using map layers integrated into the Ride With GPS route building tool.
Dimitrovgrad was a momentary but nonetheless memorable and unanticipated distraction. By this point, I was 62 miles into my most recent bicycle-inspired day, about 5 hrs 30 minutes of moving time, on a gentle ascent that topped-out at ca. 3400 feet above sea level in Dragoman, Bulgaria a few miles over the border. Dimitrovgrad was recently redesigned and rebuilt from ground level, starting with stone pavers and cobblestones, to the rooftops of the main street. I stopped outside what I recall might have been a city administrative building or perhaps a police station. Either way, a wide area directly in front of that building provided comfortable refugia for me to make a brief stop to transfer my passport to my Bedrock Bags top-tube bag and otherwise mentally prepare for my encounter with one more border crossing station; a snack no doubt was fit in as well.
At mile 65, captured by the Strava app, a short out-n-back records my exploration of the only alternative (based on Ride With GPS map layers) means of accessing the nearby border other than the four-lane highway (each side, total of eight lanes). As I suspected, this alternative was blocked by a high fence and barbed wire; and I thought it was probably best not to ignore suggestions made by the barbed wire in particular even if I could find a way to squeeze through with my seemingly peaceful bicycle and Lycra clad body. So I backtracked, made my way over a bridge and both sides of the highway, before descending on a widely arching onramp onto the highway. Every pedal stroke was accompanied by an awareness of breathing, slowly in an out as I approached what I had been concerned about, off and on, for a handful of days. As this implies, I didn't rush over the bridge or down the ramp, instead my here-and-now slowed, as if passing through mud contaminated with the mineral known as betonite (forms a sticky clay), seemingly holding my breath but in reality calmly breathing as I've learned to do as a Yoga student. Ultimately, I was preparing for a storm that, thankfully, never arrived.
Below the bridge, now passing under it in fact, I found nothing but asphalt and lines on either side of my very exposed, in this environment, body and bicycle. It wasn't silent, but nearly so, and in stark contrast to the surrounding infrastructure. Relieved by this outcome, I pedaled forward, feeling only gratutude, towards the obvious buildings comprising the border. The facility was modern in design and construction, including darkened, security-type windows, those that allow border agents to look out whist you cannot look in. Passing through the Serbian checkpoint took only a moment, perhaps two cars were ahead of me, and the few words that passed between the guard and I were all friendly and well wishing. On the Bulgarian side, understandably given travelers are heading into versus out of a nation, a few more cars were lined up, perhaps eight, reflecting the more careful check conducted by the Bulgarians. A car ahead waved me forward, containing strangers from a strange land that nonetheless responded to my vulnerable state by kindly inviting me to jump them in line. I accepted their kind offer and soon was in conversation with a border agent that was pleased to hear my story and welcomed me to Bulgaria.
Unfortunately, I missed my chance at the border to cash-in my remaining Serbian currency, something like 1,500 Dinar, naively thinking that I would have plenty of chances ahead in Bulgaria and eager to initiate my exploration across the border. Exchange from Dinar to the Bulgarian Lev would turn-out to be problematic, in large part because the Bulgarian's consider the currency to be nearly valueless; and my impression was they didn't look favorably towards Serbia in general, but that's certainly speculative given how long I was in each country. Looking ahead in this story, I'd carry the nearly valueless 1500 Dinar, equivalent to about 14 US Dollars, with me all the way to Istanbul where I exchanged the currency to Euro at a small currency exchange shop.
Beyond the border crossing and a government-run (I assume) currency exchange office, I rolled-up on the first evidence, other than my digital maps, that I was approaching my destination 56 days (including 21 August) since departing Duncansby Head, lands-end in the far northeast of Scotland. I don't typically stop for images with a road sign, finding them too predictable, but seeing an Istanbul kilometer marker for the first time on the tour was arguably an exception worth stopping for. Here's the image from that moment, just beyond the border, that I posted to Instagram later that evening once I'd settled into a guest house in Sofia, a city from antiquity that eventually became the capital of modern, democratic Bulgaria in 1991. As in other photos from deep into the tour, I'm looking a bit like a chipmunk because of the unkempt hair growing from each of my cheeks. A scenario that would persist until I made my way to a barbershop in Istanbul at the end of the tour.
Because of a well practiced habit of staring wide-eyed and mesmerized at maps and hours spent day dreaming about faraway places, prior to actually arriving to this part of the world I had a clear image in my head of what I expected to find: a landscape and plant community dictated by a dry climate, something proximate to a desert but not quite that extreme. And I imagined that this scenario would persist from the eastern slopes of the Dinaric Alps all the way to Istanbul and more or less on gently rolling plains. However, as I rolled out of the mountains east of the Kopaonik Massif, towards Niš, it was already becoming apparent that the climate and associated plant community in this region was going to be very different from what I had imagined.
The climate was on the dry end of the spectrum, for sure, but only just to the right of the middle versus what I had visualized. In addition, it was already far more mountainous than I had expected. I had ridden out of the mountains beyond Kopaonik Massif but I would never completely ride out of the hills associated with the regions primary montane systems, the DInaric Alps and Balkan Mountains foremost among them. The last hill of the tour would literally conclude, a descent, at the west bank of the Bosphorus. In fairness to students of geography, I should note here that from Sofia I chose to return to the proximity of the next montane system, the Balkan Mountains. If I had instead taken the most direct route available from Sofia to Istanbul then I certainly would have experienced more or less flat roadways, highly trafficked and high speed; and I suspect a drier climate as well, similar to the one that I had visualized.
Recall that I was ascending for many miles before I reached Dimitrovgrad and the border, and that the same climb concluded a few miles inside of Bulgaria. Much to my surprise given my expectations, on the Bulgarian side that ascent brought me into the company of an expansive hill country blanked in an obviously dry, deciduous forest but nonetheless still green and productive, apparently part of a protected "xerothermic oak ecosystem." The forest was dominated by scrubby oaks and the forest floor was covered in associated leaf litter. Based on the frequency of bed rock exposures, limestone in character including color and fracture patterns, soils appeared to be thin. Above the soils, a typical, dry-forest understory was apparent, not rich in biomass but nonetheless home to a variety of non-woody plants such as grasses and many types of wildflowers. From these forested hills, I eventually exited onto an expansive plain where I continued to climb until I reached Dragoman. At this junture, I temporarily transitioned off of Route 8, the primary road in this part of Bulgaria.
I was hoping to avoid some of the associated noise and traffic, a gamble that I often repeated throughout the tour, not always successfully: imagine cul-de-sacs, other unanticipated obstructions and all sorts of scenarios that can slow down an ambitious cyclist. My diversion in Dragoman turned-out to be a poor choice, soon after departure from the main route I was struggling to navigate across a landscape of human residences, industry, and train tracks. Eventually, I exited the maze on the south side of town and was actually pleased to see the main route and access to it ahead of me. South of Lake Aldomirovsko, I threw the dice again and this time was rewarded by a series of mixed-surface, secondary and tertiary roads that brought me, more or less comfortably, to the next large town, Slivnitsa; and a handful of miles beyond, to Boben where I resumed a heightened state of awareness and commitment to holding a line fitting for high speed Route 8, my only free-flowing option for traveling southeast from this point to Sofia.
Among many memorable encounters with less-than-ideal road conditions on my transect from Scotland to Turkey, a highway construction bypass that I was forced to use at about this point in the tour, as I approached Sofia, easily comes to mind and is worth sharing. The entire highway corridor, from Sofia to the Serbian border, was then and remains now amidst a massive reconstruction phase, a project to expand lanes and traffic capacity. Given the ongoing nature of this project, the exact location of the bypass that I experienced on 15 October 2019 is probably irrelevant; but the memory remains, about six miles of cobblestone roadway that was absolutely torn-up at the edges where I was forced to ride alongside speeding trucks and automobiles.
Fortunately, I was feeling relatively rested for this particular challenge and I also brought to it many years of experience riding a mountain bike. Always within centimeters of smacking a wheel and perhaps annihilating a tire and even a rim, because of my somewhat rested state, following a rest day in Niš, I showed the challenge no mercy as I took control of my narrow strip of road edge at a pace that no doubt caused some drivers to take note. I was on and off the road as I searched for the least destructive path. What was under my tires at any given moment was never more comfortable than widely spaced cobbles and sometimes as treacherous as isolated, deeply embedded, stone blocks that I weaved and dodged, occasionally bunny-hopping back onto the road or down to a hard or lose shoulder. Despite what could have gone wrong my mind was focused and the output from my consciousness was child-like in spirit and outlook. No doubt because of a myriad of wiggles and whispers, I came through the ordeal unscathed and gleaming. An enviable state given what I was about to ride into following a long day of adventure cycling as darkness was beginning to descend all around a horizon, to the east, that was dominated by high rises and other signs of a true, urban metropolis.
I have no doubt that there is a much nicer way to ride into Sofia on a bicycle; but like my experiences in Hamburg and other German cities, when I was living there on and off again for about four years, you have to learn these privileged ways either through generously shared, local knowledge or trial and error. Absent any local knowledge, I plunged straight into the city on high speed, multi-lane Route 8. Soon cars were whizzing past me at uncomfortable speeds, but I held on to my Niner Bikes RLT 9 Steel with the confidence of a seasoned traveler and then amplified this impression as I began to navigate busy, multi-lane traffic circles inside the city itself. Trolley buses, taxi cabs, and a cornucopia of personal use vehicles, from scooters to autos, enveloped my proximity but never encroached my last line of defense, about twelve inches on either side of my bicycle. Fortunately, if you've learned to survive in one city then you'll likely persist, and perhaps even have a little fun too, in the next. Hamburg, in particular, had taught me to remain calm, hold my line, and always stick to my commitments, versus making sudden left or right divergences which could lead to a worst case scenario such as getting peeled off the front-side of an unsuspecting bus.
When Sofia's infrastructure closed-in around me in the burb known as Republika on the northwest edge of the city, I was 96 miles into the days ride and over 8 hours on the saddle. To close the gap to a room at a guest house that I'd booked for $12.00 earlier in the day, required another hour to cycle just seven miles. That time included one error in navigation, easily seen if anyone zooms in on my GPS line through Sofia. By chance, when I arrived to the locked gate at the guest house and yoga studio affectionately known as Art House Ararita, one of my kind and generous hosts, Hristo, was just about to close the gate. My arrival by bicycle triggered his memory of my booking and he quickly reversed his steps and gave me a warm welcome on the sidewalk, before welcoming me in similar fashion to the guest house. My first order of business, as usual, was food and then a warm shower, both were a little bit better than usual given the unusual challenges of the day, foremost that mutilated cobblestone "highway" that I mentioned and my warrior-inspired transect of Sofia.
Subsequently, I slipped out of everything I was wearing and added these items to every other piece of clothing I was carrying. All of these went into the laundry and were subsequently hung to dry, which they didn't quit achieve before the morning. In between, I either wandered quickly in and out of the shared spaces wearing a towel or stayed wrapped in a blanked in my private room. The same scenario was played-out a few other times on my tour; a procedure that I fine tuned, typically in public laundromats when I was touring the United States and Canada on a 1982, CX500cc motorcycle in my twenties. In those days, I cooked my meals with a Whisper Light camp stove and camped every night, almost exclusively for free and sometimes as an outlaw if necessary; the peaceful revolutionary inside me was primary in those days.
The challenges the day before and my vulnerability in such a large city motivated me to ride, without many stops, east and directly out of the urban jungle the following morning. There is no doubt that I missed many opportunties to witness relicts from bygone days in this ancient city; but sacrifices are inevitable on a long bicycle tour, Sofia and it's opportunities would have to wait for another adventure. The route I chose, after careful consideration the night before, whilst wrapped in a blanket and listening to the sounds of the city just beyond a modest balcony where my clothes were slowly drying, directly passed Sofia's international airport. As bad as that sounds, in the absence of local knowledge I felt then and now that the alternatives, assessed using digital maps, were worse.
Well before I approached the airport, I was already on a multi-lane, high speed road, identical in appearance and character to "highways" in the United States. However, the shoulder was also substantial, and at times a well crafted, modern cycle lane paralleled the road, an outrageously joyous reality in my small part of the known universe. With patience and persistence, I eventually rode-out of a city of exceptional antiquity, Sofia, a history that dates to at least the 30th millennium BCE, and then turned right off of Botevgradsko Shose Boulevard. The Boulevard is actually the A4 is disguise, in reality nothing changes in character from the A4 farther east to this segment that transects the city. From this point, well within the sound of approaching and departing aircraft, I could clearly see hills 'that beckoned' to the northeast below plains and roadways 'that did not' despite obvious advantages, more or less flat terrain and a direct route to Istanbul.
As this implies, in addition to a rendezvoaus with the airport, the route I'd chosen the night before also avoided the fastest route to conclude my tour. This was, in large format anyway, my final opportunity to celebrate the journey by taking the scenic and more difficult route back into the shadow cast by impressive mountain summits. Despite accumulated fatigue at this point, and I felt then and now that the physical and mental burdens of the tour were really starting to catch-up with me in Bulgaria, I came to a conclusion that I still favor involving an initial transect of a series of passes to a wide valley below the Balkan Mountains. Once through those passes, my route, part of the BP5 bicycle-designated route, would follow the northern edge of the valley, sometimes dipping into the foothills of the Balkan Mountains, nearly to the Black Sea before I turned south at Sliven and a few hours later, hopefully, arrived to the Turkish border south of Lesovo.
Beyond the chaos of man and his machines on the A4, I plunged back into the countryside that had nourished me all the way from Scotland. It wasn't all bliss and reflection, but after the onslaught of my senses in Sofia it felt nearly so. After navigating the medium-sized towns of Musachevo, Elin Pelin, and Petkovo the land once again began to rise below my tires and with it I inevitably, fighting gravity with legs that were tapped nearly to their limit, began to climb. The initial pass rose from the valley floor, about 1750 feet above sea level in Sofia, to ca. 2680 feet. From that initial ascent I descended back to 1700 feet before ascending to Mikrovo, by now on a quality secondary road, Route 6006, and then beyond the town back to ca. 2600 feet. Nothing like repeating a climb in scope and distance in such proximity on tired legs! However, the third ascent was the toughest, a gain of 1300 feet over 13 miles, to 3600 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, an intentional diversion, a gamble, through the village of Anton to try to avoid some of the main route, lightly trafficked but nonetheless high speed and high energy didn't go well. Before I managed to escape the village and many confused farm cats and chickens, examples of "you can't get there from here" accumulated until I was nearly shouting at the universe to release me from its latest expression of well-practiced mischief.
However, when the top of the pass finally arrived, I found myself looking down at a beautiful scene, the chickens and cats mostly forgotten. On my left, above the valley and the town of Klisura below, the Balkan Mountains rose sharply from the valley floor en route to higher summits that drained towards nearby Romania, to the north, and the famous Danube River. To the right, extensive foothills covered in oak forests blended with the horizon. Directly behind Klisura, my way to Sopot and an eccentric and inspired lodging opportunity that I'd booked the night before, the valley floor seemed unprecluded by additional climbs. That turned out to be the case, a generous apology, perhaps, from an otherwise deviant universe; and enough, despite the traffic, to help me maintain, all the way to Sopot, a portion of the grin that I assembled as I plummeted down to Klisura.
The ride from Sofia had been substantial, nine hours on the saddle and over 90 miles with nearly 5000 feet of climbing to add to well over 200,000 feet by this point on the tour. But that climbing was also the majority of what I'd face along the southern front of the Balkan Mountains. I arrived to Sopot with curiosity in mind but also hungry. A grocery shop for the next day and a massive döner from a local street-side vendor satisfied those needs and then I was on my way in search of my host, Daniela, at a nearby restaurant.
As I ascended the narrow streets and other corridors in the village of Sopot, I was already slipping into an enviable state of mind as I tumbled down into Wonderland beyond the margins of mankind's celebrated dullness. Daniela had requested that we meet first at a restaurant operated by her friends; from there she would guide me to Humsafar Place high above town. This led to a second meal, on top of the döner, and a forthcoming uncomfortable cycle and walk to my refuge for the evening. My habit of eating beyond sensibility in the evenings was becoming a burden that I was looking forward to removing from my daily life. In partial defense of this less-than-ideal habit keeping modesty and responsible living in mind, the desire for calories (ca. 6000-8000 a day) seemed to come from deep within, so perhaps these consumption habits were the only conclusion that would get me to my goal.
Humsafar Place and my host, Daniela, quickly overwhelmed me with comfort and welcoming smiles. From within the confines of this funky event center, bar, and bed & breakfast, tall and straight pines towered over a low fence that surrounded the property and covered the proximate hill on all sides. Beyond the fence and Daniela's gardens, long, brown needles formed a thick carpet on the forest floor, a barrier that favored regeneration of more pine trees at the expense of ground cover. Conveniently, for minimizing what can take away from an otherwise efficient rest. the forest adjacent to Humsafar Place is a designated natural area and includes many paths; some of them lead to a series of stone stairs that descend, sharply, to a tranquil and historic church and convent situated above the main town.
On one of my walks to and from the village, I spent some time in the courtyard of these relics of a former time. Both the church and convent were nearly silent, implying an absence of conclusions that were once prevalent, feared among the majority of homo sapiens, and used to perform great injustices. Despite these thoughts which are far too accessible when reminded of mankind's religions, I was nonetheless inspired by the setting and the feeling of this space, between the church and the convent, and in the pine forest above the town. In both cases, I discovered a peacefulness that seemed alive and nurturing, feelings that inspired memories that I'll always remember and cherish.
A full day of rest came and went at Humsafar, including two spectacular, in color, flavor, and craftsmanship, breakfasts observed and then far too quickly consumed. As it had been the day I arrived and the day I rested, a clear blue sky, an impression collected by our eyes that stems from the physics of light, contributed in a positive way to the anticipation that I was feeling about what remained of the tour. The atmosphere was also favorable for a Lycra-clad adventurer, warm, mid-70s by 11 am, perhaps 80 degrees by mid-afternoon; and there was no sign of moisture or wind that would preclude forward progress. These observations had been the rule since exiting the heart of the Dinaric Alps east of Kopaonik, Serbia.
From the pine forest surrounding Humsafar to the upper limit of the village of Sopot, I descended down centuries old cobblestone roads then down to street level not far from where I'd enjoyed a döner two days before. I turned left, rejoining Route 6 and the BP5 cycle route towards my goal for the day, Sliven, about 120 miles away and like Sopot also nestled on the southward facing slopes of the east-west trending Balkan Mountains. I remained on the main route for this area, Route 6, all the way to Gurkovo, a distance of 75 miles. At that juncture, the BP5 cycle route made a loop to the north, following the base of the Balkan Mountains and I followed that option. Cycling on Route 6 was for the most part comfortable despite the speeds most motorists preferred even in my proximity but the alternative route was even better. I quickly settled into a much more relaxed state-of-mind away from the unnecessary haste of the majority of travelers.
After a rare coffee paired with a coke, purchased at a Gurkovo gas station cafe at the intersection of Route 55 and 5007, I ascended a modest climb, about 300 feet, pedaling north towards the Balkan Mountains. Beyond the climb, the cycle route followed the margin of the rising Balkan Mountains, gradually turning east and passing through the towns of Konar, Tvarditsa, and Shivachovo. A few miles north of Binkos, I passed through a series of small hills, which look far more significant on a terrain map than they actually were even on a loaded bicycle. At Binkos, the route resumed an eastward trajectory for another 10 miles before connecting to the burbs of Sliven. The entire diversion off of Route 6, from Gurkovo to the outskirts of Sliven was about 30 miles, no more than about 5 miles longer than the more direct, Route 6 option.
Along this stretch, I was often inspired by my wandering mind and curiosity to zoom-out on my GPS map layer as a way to assess the shrinking proximity of my here-and-now to the famous Black Sea that was not far away and with each pedal stroke getting closer still. Those distractions inevitably got me thinking about diverting east to the Black Sea then south, but the way was problematic even for a guy like myself that gravitates towards the unknown and so I eventually dismissed the idea in favor of a southerly route from Sliven to the border.
Sliven would be my last night in Bulgaria, a country that I visited for the first time on this tour and only for a few days. For these reasons, it was serendipitous that I experienced some communication challenges when trying to close the gap from a grocery shop in Sliven to my destination for the night, a plush apartment booked for about $33 whilst sipping a beer at Daniela's open air bar. Those challenges led me to a handful of brief encounters that nonetheless helped to solidify my positive impression of the locals.
When I arrived to the second floor, street-facing apartment, bike now loaded with enough food for dinner, breakfast, and lunch, no one was available to greet me or let me inside and my Bosnia-based SIM card was no longer providing service. I backtracked to the grocery shop and then approached a group of men that were sitting outside on a hip-level, concrete retaining wall below a neighborhood built on a steep slope. None of them spoke more than a few words of English and so those "conversations" were understandably brief and not productive. However, within a few minutes I located a bread delivery man and his English, though marginal, was sufficient to communicate my predicament. He waved for me to follow him and soon we were zipping along narrow roads towards the social-center of a nearby neighborhood.
Sliven may or may not have "city" status but it's certainly the biggest town that I visited, city-like in many ways, between Sofia and Kirklareli in Turkey. The delivery man delivered me directly to a cafe, parked his van on the sidewalk, and then explained to the staff that I needed to use their WiFi connection to contact my host for the evening. It all went very well, and soon I was passing messages back-and-forth using Airbnb's messaging platform on the cafe's WiFi connection. My savior didn't go far, instead he sat down for a pint where he had already located some friends and monitored my progress and needs until he was satisfied that all was well. In the meantime, I conversed with the cafe manager in comfortable English. Towards the end of the visit, a half-pint now filtering into my own interstitial spaces, the manager led me to the street and his new scooter which he described in some detail. His excitement for life was contagious and his curiosity about my travels by bicycle were filled with respect and kindness.
Somehow I had found my way to this place, a town I barely knew, a country and a people I knew less, but yet I was already surrounded by the comfort that comes with proximity to friends even if, just before, all of them were strangers. The implications of this conclusion, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet, implying shared interests, desires, and more, are significant given our species tendency to not only associate strangers with danger but worse, to elevate the underlying fear towards conflict and bloodshed. This simple observation, that ignorance and intolerance leads to fear and the cultivation of fear leads to war, brings to the surface a tragedy of our species, perhaps "the" tragedy. However, it also leads to the recognition of a tremendously simple and valuable conclusion, remove fear and it's dissemination from our societies and with it conflicts between individuals, groups, and nations will also dissolve. An impressive bit of parsimony that filled my heart with hope as I often revisited the idea on what remained of my Le Tour de Europe and since returning to "normal life" in Colorado.
The eventual interaction with my hosts at the apartment was brief but friendly. I was encouraged to bring my bicycle indoors, always my favorite outcome given the bicycle is my only constant on this journey. The next morning, following a breakfast bought at the grocery shop the night before, I was on my way, back on the bike tour, at 8 hrs 19 minutes past the most proximate mid-night, on a Saturday, 19 October 2019. For the opening section of my route, I chose a small track that appeared to be paved on digital maps but ultimately turned-out to be a very rough track, fit for a full-suspension mountain bike and certainly no gear. A few smiling grandmothers were also using the route, walking down a steep slope, oak forests on either side, the town behind and hidden from us by now. The road surface was deeply rutted and washed out. I envied my momentary companions lack of concern as I dodged one rim crushing obstruction after another and lots of glass fragments. It was a short departure from more or less civilized roads that nevertheless left a lasting mark on my recollections.
Back in civilized, Bulgarian normal, I joined very few vehicles on Route 7 heading south on a sleepy, early Saturday morning. Just beyond the burbs where I'd come into town the day before, I was enveloped in a thick, wet, low-lying fog that despite being mostly moisture also had the smell of a combination of exhaust pipes and burning trash, including plastics. It wasn't my first clue that I had ridden into a filthier atmosphere than I was used to back in Colorado and had experienced whilst crossing the European heartland but it certainly elevated the impression and for what remained of the tour I would now be thinking about air pollution on a regular frequency. Burning of trash and vegetation is commonplace in the Balkans and Turkey and that source is probably what contributed most to my observations. However, I also sensed the downstream effects of a much more significant and deadly source, discard from factories and their kin farther to the east in places like India and China where American selfishness, among other developed nations, has led to unregulated manufacturing and recycling, including recycling of electronic waste, aka, "e-waste".
Alongside, in reality and prose, and well before my departure from Sliven I had also noticed an accumulation of roadside trash, beginning on my ride from Sarajevo to Rudo. In that section of Bosnia, the problem was almost exclusively, and seemingly avoidable, overflowing, roadside dumpsters from which trash had blown all over the nearby, proximate, landscape. Beyond these waste piles and overflowing dumpsters, the forests and plains to Rudo were essentially trash free and lovely to behold in their autumn greens, reds, yellows, and browns. Between Rudo and Sliven, I noticed fewer of those mobile (blowing) trash heaps but the frequency of randomly discarded bits of trash nevertheless increased steadily . Eventually, roadside trash would become the norm, somewhere on my ride through Turkey but well before I approached Istanbul. By then, I was witness to a near constant stream of mainly discarded plastics with other human garbage mixed in including cans and bottles on both sides of the road. A perfect yet ugly storm that changed my perspective in valuable ways.
The trash and air pollution that I observed or sensed in other ways are sad realities that I've not written about elsewhere in this travelogue. In large part, because my realization of the problem and perspective was growing as I rode east and with it my thoughts on the topic continued to evolve behind a backdrop of much more frequent and positive experiences. In the thick of a low-lying fog mixed with man's pollution, on the outskirts of Sliven, I had finally arrived to a breaking point of awareness which the introspective cyclist inside me has not forgotten. Looking forward, I would arrive at a new respect for the impact that my next cell phone, automobile, or laptop computer would have on my environment, all technically e-waste when I'm finished with them. But more importantly, mankind's utter reliance on Plant Earth for it's persistence in mind, I had witnessed what was coming, a wave of pollution that was already spreading westward. Contemporaneously and since I have often thought to myself that soon this ugly storm will arrive to Europe's heartland where it will continue west, eventually overwhelming the Unites States and Canada in the stench and refuse of man. It is a very sad conclusion but like awareness of any problem, it is our only hope for making the necessary changes, modesty among them, to avoid the pinnacle of this trashing of Planet Earth and instead dial the problem back to a healthy environment for the mutual benefit of man, beast, and vegetable.
Amidst that enveloping fog, scenes of a trasholyptic world on hold for a moment, I felt a familiar sway and immediately recalled my previous bike tour when on two occasions the mounting pin, left side, holding my rear rack to the bike broke from the frame. Sure enough, a brief stop confirmed that about 4000 additonal touring miles were enough to break the welds holding the mounting pin to the seat stay on the right side. The left side was repaired and improved in the process, by Oddity Cycles in Fort Collins shortly after I returned from my 2019 bicycle tour. Of course, at this point I wished I'd asked Oddity to improve by cutting and welding the right side as well. In the absence of a welder, I went to work on the side of the road with what I had in my bags to try to secure the rack to the frame well enough to proceed. After about 15 minutes I was satisfied with the job and rode on, hoping that I could at the very least reach a village north of Kirklareli where I'd booked a night on a small, organic farm hosted by a Turkish family.
Rather than ride directly south to Yambol on Route 7 then onto Elhovo and the border with Turkey, my route benefited from another opportunity to celebrate the journey as I directed that line to depart the company of the Balkan Mountains on a transect that plunged into the Bulgarian countryside, to the south, between Sliven and the border. When my route rejoined Route 7 in Elhovo, I was a bit more than 50 miles into my day and over four hours on the saddle. Between Elhovo and the border, I cycled another ca. 20 miles on Route 7 which was reasonable for a primary road and surface-wise was in good shape. The villages northwest of Elhovo, that I otherwise would have missed if I'd taken the direct route, were much larger than I anticipated. In one town center, a place free of cars, I enjoyed a cappuccino with locals. Elsewhere, another town, I stopped into a bakery, ate some of what I bought right away and tucked the remaining treats into my jersey pockets. As I had done throughout my tour, I managed to find water and typically at roadside wells.
It's worth repeating the following even if by chance I've written the same elsewhere in my recollections: by being creative and whenever possible asking locals, I avoided buying water in any type of plastic bottle throughout the tour, start to finish. The only water I purchased was twice in restaurants in Sarajevo, in both cases the water was packaged in a glass bottle. The idea that Nestle and other companies encourage, that water is only safe when it comes from one of their plastic bottles, is pure rubbish and destructive as my observations of plastic trash on the roadside demonstrate. We can and should want to assist in the global de-trashing of our environements, avoiding plastic in our purchases including water bottles is one way we can do that and its impact would be very significant if even a fraction of citizens from so-called "developed" nations (perhaps in scale but not in responsibility) adopted the habit.
Not long before arriving to Elhovo, I transected a human trash dump that was splayed-out on both sides of the road. Inside, four forms emerged, two youngsters and their parents. This was an opportunity to share my good fortune, so I slowed down and gave the daughter most of the remaining Bulgarian Lev that I still had in my possession. It was a modest sum that unfortunately wouldn't last them long, and I thought then and now that I should have done more. In the meantime, it was a brief experience that I often reflect on as a missed opportunity rather than any form of success. The family of grubbers, a term for people (including many Americans back in the day) that search for recyclable (sellable) items in human waste dumps, was on my mind as I approached the border and prepared for my last encounter with armed border agents on this tour. The miles between Elhovo and the border had been for the most part peaceful despite the routes significance, a primary artery. And so far, the ad hoc fix that I used to secure the rack to the right seat stay was holding well.
The border came into view in an unusual way, a line of tractor trailer trucks lined-up for about a mile or more on the Bulgarian side. Here and there truckers sat in lawn chairs, seemingly unconcerned about when they'd move-up in a line that didn't move one iota during my transect. I glided past the row of trucks, no doubt to the envy of a few of their occupants, and soon arrived to the familiar infrastructure of a border crossing, such as the Detroit-Windsor station connecting the United States and Canada, that services considerable commercial vehicle traffic. On the Bulgarian side, gas stations and restaurants were on offer before the border itself. I stopped to use a gas station bathroom but was denied unless I purchased something; the conclusion was enough to send me down the road in search of an alternative.
In the next chapter of my travelogue, I'll pick-up the story at the Bulgarian-Turkish border and then recall my journey from there to the end of my tour, 63 days after it began, in the middle of the Bosphorus where I departed the European-subcontinent and entered the realm known as Asia for the first time in my life...
Avoiding the A4, which may have been off-limits to bikes, had its disadvantages of course, principally my route was far from straight. However, those disadvantages were outweighed by many more advantages, including the opportunity to remain proximate to, the suggestion if not the real thing, the sound of water in the Nišava River versus the very real sound produced by man's inefficiencies in engineering (friction) including noise generated by combustion engines and tires grinding away on the surface of asphalt. Within the confines of a typical car and its noise-cancelling cabin, the noise of an autobahn often goes mostly unnoticed. But from the perspective of a bicycle, that noise is disastrously loud and chaotic, effectively cancelling-out any hope of effective meditation and its benefits including a deeper awareness of nature, her sounds, patterns in landscape, and much more. The quality of that meditation hinges, for a cyclist, on proximity to steady-state breathing and smooth, consistent pedalling and it's easy to get distracted from these repetative actions and motions in the presence of frenetic energy.
Below and west of the village of Sopot, I transitioned from Route 259 to the 221 and immediately began followed a wide bend of the Nišava River, first north and then east before turning south towards Pirot. Where the 259 diverged from the 221, the 259 merged with the A4 and was now tracking south on the west bank of the river which I could easily see from my comfortable perspective on the east bank. A short, uneventful cycle from this point delivered me to Pirot, a town built at the head of another expansive valley, dry like the one I descended into beyond Cucale two days before, all of them surrounded by hills and higher mountains blanketed in green forests. The valleys were far from "dry" in every sense of the word, but relative to the lush valleys that I encountered in the heart of the Dinaric Alps, in places like Mokro, Bosnia (not far east of Sarajevo) and Osaonica, Serbia (a few miles above Novi Pazar), parklands between the eastern fringes of the Dinaric Alps in this part of Serbia appeared to be relatively water-stressed by climate and likely man's inability to make sensible choices about the water that was available.
South of Pirot, I rejoined the 259 (absent the A4 designation) through the valley, my only direct option to close the gap, about 10 miles, from here to Dimitrovgrad, the last town in Serbia before I arrived to the Bulgarian border. Border crossing options are sparsely distributed along the border of the two countries. If, for traffic reasons such as restricted highways, I wasn't able to cross at the nearby station then I would be forced to ride an extra day before I could resume my track east towards Istanbul. This unlikely conclusion, based on lots of discussion with locals the last few days, was nevertheless on my mind along with the infrastructure, a four lane highway in particular, that I could see converging on the border using map layers integrated into the Ride With GPS route building tool.
Dimitrovgrad was a momentary but nonetheless memorable and unanticipated distraction. By this point, I was 62 miles into my most recent bicycle-inspired day, about 5 hrs 30 minutes of moving time, on a gentle ascent that topped-out at ca. 3400 feet above sea level in Dragoman, Bulgaria a few miles over the border. Dimitrovgrad was recently redesigned and rebuilt from ground level, starting with stone pavers and cobblestones, to the rooftops of the main street. I stopped outside what I recall might have been a city administrative building or perhaps a police station. Either way, a wide area directly in front of that building provided comfortable refugia for me to make a brief stop to transfer my passport to my Bedrock Bags top-tube bag and otherwise mentally prepare for my encounter with one more border crossing station; a snack no doubt was fit in as well.
At mile 65, captured by the Strava app, a short out-n-back records my exploration of the only alternative (based on Ride With GPS map layers) means of accessing the nearby border other than the four-lane highway (each side, total of eight lanes). As I suspected, this alternative was blocked by a high fence and barbed wire; and I thought it was probably best not to ignore suggestions made by the barbed wire in particular even if I could find a way to squeeze through with my seemingly peaceful bicycle and Lycra clad body. So I backtracked, made my way over a bridge and both sides of the highway, before descending on a widely arching onramp onto the highway. Every pedal stroke was accompanied by an awareness of breathing, slowly in an out as I approached what I had been concerned about, off and on, for a handful of days. As this implies, I didn't rush over the bridge or down the ramp, instead my here-and-now slowed, as if passing through mud contaminated with the mineral known as betonite (forms a sticky clay), seemingly holding my breath but in reality calmly breathing as I've learned to do as a Yoga student. Ultimately, I was preparing for a storm that, thankfully, never arrived.
Below the bridge, now passing under it in fact, I found nothing but asphalt and lines on either side of my very exposed, in this environment, body and bicycle. It wasn't silent, but nearly so, and in stark contrast to the surrounding infrastructure. Relieved by this outcome, I pedaled forward, feeling only gratutude, towards the obvious buildings comprising the border. The facility was modern in design and construction, including darkened, security-type windows, those that allow border agents to look out whist you cannot look in. Passing through the Serbian checkpoint took only a moment, perhaps two cars were ahead of me, and the few words that passed between the guard and I were all friendly and well wishing. On the Bulgarian side, understandably given travelers are heading into versus out of a nation, a few more cars were lined up, perhaps eight, reflecting the more careful check conducted by the Bulgarians. A car ahead waved me forward, containing strangers from a strange land that nonetheless responded to my vulnerable state by kindly inviting me to jump them in line. I accepted their kind offer and soon was in conversation with a border agent that was pleased to hear my story and welcomed me to Bulgaria.
Unfortunately, I missed my chance at the border to cash-in my remaining Serbian currency, something like 1,500 Dinar, naively thinking that I would have plenty of chances ahead in Bulgaria and eager to initiate my exploration across the border. Exchange from Dinar to the Bulgarian Lev would turn-out to be problematic, in large part because the Bulgarian's consider the currency to be nearly valueless; and my impression was they didn't look favorably towards Serbia in general, but that's certainly speculative given how long I was in each country. Looking ahead in this story, I'd carry the nearly valueless 1500 Dinar, equivalent to about 14 US Dollars, with me all the way to Istanbul where I exchanged the currency to Euro at a small currency exchange shop.
Beyond the border crossing and a government-run (I assume) currency exchange office, I rolled-up on the first evidence, other than my digital maps, that I was approaching my destination 56 days (including 21 August) since departing Duncansby Head, lands-end in the far northeast of Scotland. I don't typically stop for images with a road sign, finding them too predictable, but seeing an Istanbul kilometer marker for the first time on the tour was arguably an exception worth stopping for. Here's the image from that moment, just beyond the border, that I posted to Instagram later that evening once I'd settled into a guest house in Sofia, a city from antiquity that eventually became the capital of modern, democratic Bulgaria in 1991. As in other photos from deep into the tour, I'm looking a bit like a chipmunk because of the unkempt hair growing from each of my cheeks. A scenario that would persist until I made my way to a barbershop in Istanbul at the end of the tour.
Because of a well practiced habit of staring wide-eyed and mesmerized at maps and hours spent day dreaming about faraway places, prior to actually arriving to this part of the world I had a clear image in my head of what I expected to find: a landscape and plant community dictated by a dry climate, something proximate to a desert but not quite that extreme. And I imagined that this scenario would persist from the eastern slopes of the Dinaric Alps all the way to Istanbul and more or less on gently rolling plains. However, as I rolled out of the mountains east of the Kopaonik Massif, towards Niš, it was already becoming apparent that the climate and associated plant community in this region was going to be very different from what I had imagined.
The climate was on the dry end of the spectrum, for sure, but only just to the right of the middle versus what I had visualized. In addition, it was already far more mountainous than I had expected. I had ridden out of the mountains beyond Kopaonik Massif but I would never completely ride out of the hills associated with the regions primary montane systems, the DInaric Alps and Balkan Mountains foremost among them. The last hill of the tour would literally conclude, a descent, at the west bank of the Bosphorus. In fairness to students of geography, I should note here that from Sofia I chose to return to the proximity of the next montane system, the Balkan Mountains. If I had instead taken the most direct route available from Sofia to Istanbul then I certainly would have experienced more or less flat roadways, highly trafficked and high speed; and I suspect a drier climate as well, similar to the one that I had visualized.
Recall that I was ascending for many miles before I reached Dimitrovgrad and the border, and that the same climb concluded a few miles inside of Bulgaria. Much to my surprise given my expectations, on the Bulgarian side that ascent brought me into the company of an expansive hill country blanked in an obviously dry, deciduous forest but nonetheless still green and productive, apparently part of a protected "xerothermic oak ecosystem." The forest was dominated by scrubby oaks and the forest floor was covered in associated leaf litter. Based on the frequency of bed rock exposures, limestone in character including color and fracture patterns, soils appeared to be thin. Above the soils, a typical, dry-forest understory was apparent, not rich in biomass but nonetheless home to a variety of non-woody plants such as grasses and many types of wildflowers. From these forested hills, I eventually exited onto an expansive plain where I continued to climb until I reached Dragoman. At this junture, I temporarily transitioned off of Route 8, the primary road in this part of Bulgaria.
I was hoping to avoid some of the associated noise and traffic, a gamble that I often repeated throughout the tour, not always successfully: imagine cul-de-sacs, other unanticipated obstructions and all sorts of scenarios that can slow down an ambitious cyclist. My diversion in Dragoman turned-out to be a poor choice, soon after departure from the main route I was struggling to navigate across a landscape of human residences, industry, and train tracks. Eventually, I exited the maze on the south side of town and was actually pleased to see the main route and access to it ahead of me. South of Lake Aldomirovsko, I threw the dice again and this time was rewarded by a series of mixed-surface, secondary and tertiary roads that brought me, more or less comfortably, to the next large town, Slivnitsa; and a handful of miles beyond, to Boben where I resumed a heightened state of awareness and commitment to holding a line fitting for high speed Route 8, my only free-flowing option for traveling southeast from this point to Sofia.
Among many memorable encounters with less-than-ideal road conditions on my transect from Scotland to Turkey, a highway construction bypass that I was forced to use at about this point in the tour, as I approached Sofia, easily comes to mind and is worth sharing. The entire highway corridor, from Sofia to the Serbian border, was then and remains now amidst a massive reconstruction phase, a project to expand lanes and traffic capacity. Given the ongoing nature of this project, the exact location of the bypass that I experienced on 15 October 2019 is probably irrelevant; but the memory remains, about six miles of cobblestone roadway that was absolutely torn-up at the edges where I was forced to ride alongside speeding trucks and automobiles.
Fortunately, I was feeling relatively rested for this particular challenge and I also brought to it many years of experience riding a mountain bike. Always within centimeters of smacking a wheel and perhaps annihilating a tire and even a rim, because of my somewhat rested state, following a rest day in Niš, I showed the challenge no mercy as I took control of my narrow strip of road edge at a pace that no doubt caused some drivers to take note. I was on and off the road as I searched for the least destructive path. What was under my tires at any given moment was never more comfortable than widely spaced cobbles and sometimes as treacherous as isolated, deeply embedded, stone blocks that I weaved and dodged, occasionally bunny-hopping back onto the road or down to a hard or lose shoulder. Despite what could have gone wrong my mind was focused and the output from my consciousness was child-like in spirit and outlook. No doubt because of a myriad of wiggles and whispers, I came through the ordeal unscathed and gleaming. An enviable state given what I was about to ride into following a long day of adventure cycling as darkness was beginning to descend all around a horizon, to the east, that was dominated by high rises and other signs of a true, urban metropolis.
I have no doubt that there is a much nicer way to ride into Sofia on a bicycle; but like my experiences in Hamburg and other German cities, when I was living there on and off again for about four years, you have to learn these privileged ways either through generously shared, local knowledge or trial and error. Absent any local knowledge, I plunged straight into the city on high speed, multi-lane Route 8. Soon cars were whizzing past me at uncomfortable speeds, but I held on to my Niner Bikes RLT 9 Steel with the confidence of a seasoned traveler and then amplified this impression as I began to navigate busy, multi-lane traffic circles inside the city itself. Trolley buses, taxi cabs, and a cornucopia of personal use vehicles, from scooters to autos, enveloped my proximity but never encroached my last line of defense, about twelve inches on either side of my bicycle. Fortunately, if you've learned to survive in one city then you'll likely persist, and perhaps even have a little fun too, in the next. Hamburg, in particular, had taught me to remain calm, hold my line, and always stick to my commitments, versus making sudden left or right divergences which could lead to a worst case scenario such as getting peeled off the front-side of an unsuspecting bus.
When Sofia's infrastructure closed-in around me in the burb known as Republika on the northwest edge of the city, I was 96 miles into the days ride and over 8 hours on the saddle. To close the gap to a room at a guest house that I'd booked for $12.00 earlier in the day, required another hour to cycle just seven miles. That time included one error in navigation, easily seen if anyone zooms in on my GPS line through Sofia. By chance, when I arrived to the locked gate at the guest house and yoga studio affectionately known as Art House Ararita, one of my kind and generous hosts, Hristo, was just about to close the gate. My arrival by bicycle triggered his memory of my booking and he quickly reversed his steps and gave me a warm welcome on the sidewalk, before welcoming me in similar fashion to the guest house. My first order of business, as usual, was food and then a warm shower, both were a little bit better than usual given the unusual challenges of the day, foremost that mutilated cobblestone "highway" that I mentioned and my warrior-inspired transect of Sofia.
Subsequently, I slipped out of everything I was wearing and added these items to every other piece of clothing I was carrying. All of these went into the laundry and were subsequently hung to dry, which they didn't quit achieve before the morning. In between, I either wandered quickly in and out of the shared spaces wearing a towel or stayed wrapped in a blanked in my private room. The same scenario was played-out a few other times on my tour; a procedure that I fine tuned, typically in public laundromats when I was touring the United States and Canada on a 1982, CX500cc motorcycle in my twenties. In those days, I cooked my meals with a Whisper Light camp stove and camped every night, almost exclusively for free and sometimes as an outlaw if necessary; the peaceful revolutionary inside me was primary in those days.
The challenges the day before and my vulnerability in such a large city motivated me to ride, without many stops, east and directly out of the urban jungle the following morning. There is no doubt that I missed many opportunties to witness relicts from bygone days in this ancient city; but sacrifices are inevitable on a long bicycle tour, Sofia and it's opportunities would have to wait for another adventure. The route I chose, after careful consideration the night before, whilst wrapped in a blanket and listening to the sounds of the city just beyond a modest balcony where my clothes were slowly drying, directly passed Sofia's international airport. As bad as that sounds, in the absence of local knowledge I felt then and now that the alternatives, assessed using digital maps, were worse.
Well before I approached the airport, I was already on a multi-lane, high speed road, identical in appearance and character to "highways" in the United States. However, the shoulder was also substantial, and at times a well crafted, modern cycle lane paralleled the road, an outrageously joyous reality in my small part of the known universe. With patience and persistence, I eventually rode-out of a city of exceptional antiquity, Sofia, a history that dates to at least the 30th millennium BCE, and then turned right off of Botevgradsko Shose Boulevard. The Boulevard is actually the A4 is disguise, in reality nothing changes in character from the A4 farther east to this segment that transects the city. From this point, well within the sound of approaching and departing aircraft, I could clearly see hills 'that beckoned' to the northeast below plains and roadways 'that did not' despite obvious advantages, more or less flat terrain and a direct route to Istanbul.
As this implies, in addition to a rendezvoaus with the airport, the route I'd chosen the night before also avoided the fastest route to conclude my tour. This was, in large format anyway, my final opportunity to celebrate the journey by taking the scenic and more difficult route back into the shadow cast by impressive mountain summits. Despite accumulated fatigue at this point, and I felt then and now that the physical and mental burdens of the tour were really starting to catch-up with me in Bulgaria, I came to a conclusion that I still favor involving an initial transect of a series of passes to a wide valley below the Balkan Mountains. Once through those passes, my route, part of the BP5 bicycle-designated route, would follow the northern edge of the valley, sometimes dipping into the foothills of the Balkan Mountains, nearly to the Black Sea before I turned south at Sliven and a few hours later, hopefully, arrived to the Turkish border south of Lesovo.
Beyond the chaos of man and his machines on the A4, I plunged back into the countryside that had nourished me all the way from Scotland. It wasn't all bliss and reflection, but after the onslaught of my senses in Sofia it felt nearly so. After navigating the medium-sized towns of Musachevo, Elin Pelin, and Petkovo the land once again began to rise below my tires and with it I inevitably, fighting gravity with legs that were tapped nearly to their limit, began to climb. The initial pass rose from the valley floor, about 1750 feet above sea level in Sofia, to ca. 2680 feet. From that initial ascent I descended back to 1700 feet before ascending to Mikrovo, by now on a quality secondary road, Route 6006, and then beyond the town back to ca. 2600 feet. Nothing like repeating a climb in scope and distance in such proximity on tired legs! However, the third ascent was the toughest, a gain of 1300 feet over 13 miles, to 3600 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, an intentional diversion, a gamble, through the village of Anton to try to avoid some of the main route, lightly trafficked but nonetheless high speed and high energy didn't go well. Before I managed to escape the village and many confused farm cats and chickens, examples of "you can't get there from here" accumulated until I was nearly shouting at the universe to release me from its latest expression of well-practiced mischief.
However, when the top of the pass finally arrived, I found myself looking down at a beautiful scene, the chickens and cats mostly forgotten. On my left, above the valley and the town of Klisura below, the Balkan Mountains rose sharply from the valley floor en route to higher summits that drained towards nearby Romania, to the north, and the famous Danube River. To the right, extensive foothills covered in oak forests blended with the horizon. Directly behind Klisura, my way to Sopot and an eccentric and inspired lodging opportunity that I'd booked the night before, the valley floor seemed unprecluded by additional climbs. That turned out to be the case, a generous apology, perhaps, from an otherwise deviant universe; and enough, despite the traffic, to help me maintain, all the way to Sopot, a portion of the grin that I assembled as I plummeted down to Klisura.
The ride from Sofia had been substantial, nine hours on the saddle and over 90 miles with nearly 5000 feet of climbing to add to well over 200,000 feet by this point on the tour. But that climbing was also the majority of what I'd face along the southern front of the Balkan Mountains. I arrived to Sopot with curiosity in mind but also hungry. A grocery shop for the next day and a massive döner from a local street-side vendor satisfied those needs and then I was on my way in search of my host, Daniela, at a nearby restaurant.
As I ascended the narrow streets and other corridors in the village of Sopot, I was already slipping into an enviable state of mind as I tumbled down into Wonderland beyond the margins of mankind's celebrated dullness. Daniela had requested that we meet first at a restaurant operated by her friends; from there she would guide me to Humsafar Place high above town. This led to a second meal, on top of the döner, and a forthcoming uncomfortable cycle and walk to my refuge for the evening. My habit of eating beyond sensibility in the evenings was becoming a burden that I was looking forward to removing from my daily life. In partial defense of this less-than-ideal habit keeping modesty and responsible living in mind, the desire for calories (ca. 6000-8000 a day) seemed to come from deep within, so perhaps these consumption habits were the only conclusion that would get me to my goal.
Humsafar Place and my host, Daniela, quickly overwhelmed me with comfort and welcoming smiles. From within the confines of this funky event center, bar, and bed & breakfast, tall and straight pines towered over a low fence that surrounded the property and covered the proximate hill on all sides. Beyond the fence and Daniela's gardens, long, brown needles formed a thick carpet on the forest floor, a barrier that favored regeneration of more pine trees at the expense of ground cover. Conveniently, for minimizing what can take away from an otherwise efficient rest. the forest adjacent to Humsafar Place is a designated natural area and includes many paths; some of them lead to a series of stone stairs that descend, sharply, to a tranquil and historic church and convent situated above the main town.
On one of my walks to and from the village, I spent some time in the courtyard of these relics of a former time. Both the church and convent were nearly silent, implying an absence of conclusions that were once prevalent, feared among the majority of homo sapiens, and used to perform great injustices. Despite these thoughts which are far too accessible when reminded of mankind's religions, I was nonetheless inspired by the setting and the feeling of this space, between the church and the convent, and in the pine forest above the town. In both cases, I discovered a peacefulness that seemed alive and nurturing, feelings that inspired memories that I'll always remember and cherish.
A full day of rest came and went at Humsafar, including two spectacular, in color, flavor, and craftsmanship, breakfasts observed and then far too quickly consumed. As it had been the day I arrived and the day I rested, a clear blue sky, an impression collected by our eyes that stems from the physics of light, contributed in a positive way to the anticipation that I was feeling about what remained of the tour. The atmosphere was also favorable for a Lycra-clad adventurer, warm, mid-70s by 11 am, perhaps 80 degrees by mid-afternoon; and there was no sign of moisture or wind that would preclude forward progress. These observations had been the rule since exiting the heart of the Dinaric Alps east of Kopaonik, Serbia.
From the pine forest surrounding Humsafar to the upper limit of the village of Sopot, I descended down centuries old cobblestone roads then down to street level not far from where I'd enjoyed a döner two days before. I turned left, rejoining Route 6 and the BP5 cycle route towards my goal for the day, Sliven, about 120 miles away and like Sopot also nestled on the southward facing slopes of the east-west trending Balkan Mountains. I remained on the main route for this area, Route 6, all the way to Gurkovo, a distance of 75 miles. At that juncture, the BP5 cycle route made a loop to the north, following the base of the Balkan Mountains and I followed that option. Cycling on Route 6 was for the most part comfortable despite the speeds most motorists preferred even in my proximity but the alternative route was even better. I quickly settled into a much more relaxed state-of-mind away from the unnecessary haste of the majority of travelers.
After a rare coffee paired with a coke, purchased at a Gurkovo gas station cafe at the intersection of Route 55 and 5007, I ascended a modest climb, about 300 feet, pedaling north towards the Balkan Mountains. Beyond the climb, the cycle route followed the margin of the rising Balkan Mountains, gradually turning east and passing through the towns of Konar, Tvarditsa, and Shivachovo. A few miles north of Binkos, I passed through a series of small hills, which look far more significant on a terrain map than they actually were even on a loaded bicycle. At Binkos, the route resumed an eastward trajectory for another 10 miles before connecting to the burbs of Sliven. The entire diversion off of Route 6, from Gurkovo to the outskirts of Sliven was about 30 miles, no more than about 5 miles longer than the more direct, Route 6 option.
Along this stretch, I was often inspired by my wandering mind and curiosity to zoom-out on my GPS map layer as a way to assess the shrinking proximity of my here-and-now to the famous Black Sea that was not far away and with each pedal stroke getting closer still. Those distractions inevitably got me thinking about diverting east to the Black Sea then south, but the way was problematic even for a guy like myself that gravitates towards the unknown and so I eventually dismissed the idea in favor of a southerly route from Sliven to the border.
Sliven would be my last night in Bulgaria, a country that I visited for the first time on this tour and only for a few days. For these reasons, it was serendipitous that I experienced some communication challenges when trying to close the gap from a grocery shop in Sliven to my destination for the night, a plush apartment booked for about $33 whilst sipping a beer at Daniela's open air bar. Those challenges led me to a handful of brief encounters that nonetheless helped to solidify my positive impression of the locals.
When I arrived to the second floor, street-facing apartment, bike now loaded with enough food for dinner, breakfast, and lunch, no one was available to greet me or let me inside and my Bosnia-based SIM card was no longer providing service. I backtracked to the grocery shop and then approached a group of men that were sitting outside on a hip-level, concrete retaining wall below a neighborhood built on a steep slope. None of them spoke more than a few words of English and so those "conversations" were understandably brief and not productive. However, within a few minutes I located a bread delivery man and his English, though marginal, was sufficient to communicate my predicament. He waved for me to follow him and soon we were zipping along narrow roads towards the social-center of a nearby neighborhood.
Sliven may or may not have "city" status but it's certainly the biggest town that I visited, city-like in many ways, between Sofia and Kirklareli in Turkey. The delivery man delivered me directly to a cafe, parked his van on the sidewalk, and then explained to the staff that I needed to use their WiFi connection to contact my host for the evening. It all went very well, and soon I was passing messages back-and-forth using Airbnb's messaging platform on the cafe's WiFi connection. My savior didn't go far, instead he sat down for a pint where he had already located some friends and monitored my progress and needs until he was satisfied that all was well. In the meantime, I conversed with the cafe manager in comfortable English. Towards the end of the visit, a half-pint now filtering into my own interstitial spaces, the manager led me to the street and his new scooter which he described in some detail. His excitement for life was contagious and his curiosity about my travels by bicycle were filled with respect and kindness.
Somehow I had found my way to this place, a town I barely knew, a country and a people I knew less, but yet I was already surrounded by the comfort that comes with proximity to friends even if, just before, all of them were strangers. The implications of this conclusion, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet, implying shared interests, desires, and more, are significant given our species tendency to not only associate strangers with danger but worse, to elevate the underlying fear towards conflict and bloodshed. This simple observation, that ignorance and intolerance leads to fear and the cultivation of fear leads to war, brings to the surface a tragedy of our species, perhaps "the" tragedy. However, it also leads to the recognition of a tremendously simple and valuable conclusion, remove fear and it's dissemination from our societies and with it conflicts between individuals, groups, and nations will also dissolve. An impressive bit of parsimony that filled my heart with hope as I often revisited the idea on what remained of my Le Tour de Europe and since returning to "normal life" in Colorado.
The eventual interaction with my hosts at the apartment was brief but friendly. I was encouraged to bring my bicycle indoors, always my favorite outcome given the bicycle is my only constant on this journey. The next morning, following a breakfast bought at the grocery shop the night before, I was on my way, back on the bike tour, at 8 hrs 19 minutes past the most proximate mid-night, on a Saturday, 19 October 2019. For the opening section of my route, I chose a small track that appeared to be paved on digital maps but ultimately turned-out to be a very rough track, fit for a full-suspension mountain bike and certainly no gear. A few smiling grandmothers were also using the route, walking down a steep slope, oak forests on either side, the town behind and hidden from us by now. The road surface was deeply rutted and washed out. I envied my momentary companions lack of concern as I dodged one rim crushing obstruction after another and lots of glass fragments. It was a short departure from more or less civilized roads that nevertheless left a lasting mark on my recollections.
Back in civilized, Bulgarian normal, I joined very few vehicles on Route 7 heading south on a sleepy, early Saturday morning. Just beyond the burbs where I'd come into town the day before, I was enveloped in a thick, wet, low-lying fog that despite being mostly moisture also had the smell of a combination of exhaust pipes and burning trash, including plastics. It wasn't my first clue that I had ridden into a filthier atmosphere than I was used to back in Colorado and had experienced whilst crossing the European heartland but it certainly elevated the impression and for what remained of the tour I would now be thinking about air pollution on a regular frequency. Burning of trash and vegetation is commonplace in the Balkans and Turkey and that source is probably what contributed most to my observations. However, I also sensed the downstream effects of a much more significant and deadly source, discard from factories and their kin farther to the east in places like India and China where American selfishness, among other developed nations, has led to unregulated manufacturing and recycling, including recycling of electronic waste, aka, "e-waste".
Alongside, in reality and prose, and well before my departure from Sliven I had also noticed an accumulation of roadside trash, beginning on my ride from Sarajevo to Rudo. In that section of Bosnia, the problem was almost exclusively, and seemingly avoidable, overflowing, roadside dumpsters from which trash had blown all over the nearby, proximate, landscape. Beyond these waste piles and overflowing dumpsters, the forests and plains to Rudo were essentially trash free and lovely to behold in their autumn greens, reds, yellows, and browns. Between Rudo and Sliven, I noticed fewer of those mobile (blowing) trash heaps but the frequency of randomly discarded bits of trash nevertheless increased steadily . Eventually, roadside trash would become the norm, somewhere on my ride through Turkey but well before I approached Istanbul. By then, I was witness to a near constant stream of mainly discarded plastics with other human garbage mixed in including cans and bottles on both sides of the road. A perfect yet ugly storm that changed my perspective in valuable ways.
The trash and air pollution that I observed or sensed in other ways are sad realities that I've not written about elsewhere in this travelogue. In large part, because my realization of the problem and perspective was growing as I rode east and with it my thoughts on the topic continued to evolve behind a backdrop of much more frequent and positive experiences. In the thick of a low-lying fog mixed with man's pollution, on the outskirts of Sliven, I had finally arrived to a breaking point of awareness which the introspective cyclist inside me has not forgotten. Looking forward, I would arrive at a new respect for the impact that my next cell phone, automobile, or laptop computer would have on my environment, all technically e-waste when I'm finished with them. But more importantly, mankind's utter reliance on Plant Earth for it's persistence in mind, I had witnessed what was coming, a wave of pollution that was already spreading westward. Contemporaneously and since I have often thought to myself that soon this ugly storm will arrive to Europe's heartland where it will continue west, eventually overwhelming the Unites States and Canada in the stench and refuse of man. It is a very sad conclusion but like awareness of any problem, it is our only hope for making the necessary changes, modesty among them, to avoid the pinnacle of this trashing of Planet Earth and instead dial the problem back to a healthy environment for the mutual benefit of man, beast, and vegetable.
Amidst that enveloping fog, scenes of a trasholyptic world on hold for a moment, I felt a familiar sway and immediately recalled my previous bike tour when on two occasions the mounting pin, left side, holding my rear rack to the bike broke from the frame. Sure enough, a brief stop confirmed that about 4000 additonal touring miles were enough to break the welds holding the mounting pin to the seat stay on the right side. The left side was repaired and improved in the process, by Oddity Cycles in Fort Collins shortly after I returned from my 2019 bicycle tour. Of course, at this point I wished I'd asked Oddity to improve by cutting and welding the right side as well. In the absence of a welder, I went to work on the side of the road with what I had in my bags to try to secure the rack to the frame well enough to proceed. After about 15 minutes I was satisfied with the job and rode on, hoping that I could at the very least reach a village north of Kirklareli where I'd booked a night on a small, organic farm hosted by a Turkish family.
Rather than ride directly south to Yambol on Route 7 then onto Elhovo and the border with Turkey, my route benefited from another opportunity to celebrate the journey as I directed that line to depart the company of the Balkan Mountains on a transect that plunged into the Bulgarian countryside, to the south, between Sliven and the border. When my route rejoined Route 7 in Elhovo, I was a bit more than 50 miles into my day and over four hours on the saddle. Between Elhovo and the border, I cycled another ca. 20 miles on Route 7 which was reasonable for a primary road and surface-wise was in good shape. The villages northwest of Elhovo, that I otherwise would have missed if I'd taken the direct route, were much larger than I anticipated. In one town center, a place free of cars, I enjoyed a cappuccino with locals. Elsewhere, another town, I stopped into a bakery, ate some of what I bought right away and tucked the remaining treats into my jersey pockets. As I had done throughout my tour, I managed to find water and typically at roadside wells.
It's worth repeating the following even if by chance I've written the same elsewhere in my recollections: by being creative and whenever possible asking locals, I avoided buying water in any type of plastic bottle throughout the tour, start to finish. The only water I purchased was twice in restaurants in Sarajevo, in both cases the water was packaged in a glass bottle. The idea that Nestle and other companies encourage, that water is only safe when it comes from one of their plastic bottles, is pure rubbish and destructive as my observations of plastic trash on the roadside demonstrate. We can and should want to assist in the global de-trashing of our environements, avoiding plastic in our purchases including water bottles is one way we can do that and its impact would be very significant if even a fraction of citizens from so-called "developed" nations (perhaps in scale but not in responsibility) adopted the habit.
Not long before arriving to Elhovo, I transected a human trash dump that was splayed-out on both sides of the road. Inside, four forms emerged, two youngsters and their parents. This was an opportunity to share my good fortune, so I slowed down and gave the daughter most of the remaining Bulgarian Lev that I still had in my possession. It was a modest sum that unfortunately wouldn't last them long, and I thought then and now that I should have done more. In the meantime, it was a brief experience that I often reflect on as a missed opportunity rather than any form of success. The family of grubbers, a term for people (including many Americans back in the day) that search for recyclable (sellable) items in human waste dumps, was on my mind as I approached the border and prepared for my last encounter with armed border agents on this tour. The miles between Elhovo and the border had been for the most part peaceful despite the routes significance, a primary artery. And so far, the ad hoc fix that I used to secure the rack to the right seat stay was holding well.
The border came into view in an unusual way, a line of tractor trailer trucks lined-up for about a mile or more on the Bulgarian side. Here and there truckers sat in lawn chairs, seemingly unconcerned about when they'd move-up in a line that didn't move one iota during my transect. I glided past the row of trucks, no doubt to the envy of a few of their occupants, and soon arrived to the familiar infrastructure of a border crossing, such as the Detroit-Windsor station connecting the United States and Canada, that services considerable commercial vehicle traffic. On the Bulgarian side, gas stations and restaurants were on offer before the border itself. I stopped to use a gas station bathroom but was denied unless I purchased something; the conclusion was enough to send me down the road in search of an alternative.
In the next chapter of my travelogue, I'll pick-up the story at the Bulgarian-Turkish border and then recall my journey from there to the end of my tour, 63 days after it began, in the middle of the Bosphorus where I departed the European-subcontinent and entered the realm known as Asia for the first time in my life...
Top left, crossing the border into Bulgaria; Top right, one of many water sources that I used to hydrate my bike tour. Over the 4392 mile journey from Scotland to Turkey I never once purchased a plastic bottle of water. Above, a couple of the many village scenes that I rolled through between Sopot and Sliven, Bulgaria. Below, the village of Sopot, established in the 14th century, with the Blessed Virgin girl's convent and Church of St. Peter and Paul, built in 1846, in the foreground. The perspective of the photo is south towards the valley.
The owner and chief cook Daniela (above left) of the eccentric Humsafar Place (above, all other images), a wonderful setting including my private hut which cost me $20 per night including homemade breakfasts.
Scenes from the Bulgaria-Turkey border, in particular trucks lined up for at least a mile on the Bulgarian side, a bit less on the Turkey side.