Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Cycling into Istanbul

Istanbul was a fascinating city where we took a big break and ended up staying longerthan anticipated due to a religious holiday. But before we get into our stay there I have to go over the cycle into the city.
As I mentioned yesterday we had teamed up with English tourer Josh and American tourer Abey just outside Silivri. Both of them were on their first big tour. Today was their last day and they were excited to arrive in Istanbul. We were excited too as we knew a nice long break awaited us once we got in.
We left the BP we had camped at, 40km outside the city and started the run into the centre. As soon as we were in the road we were in developed, urban area and it didn’t let up all the way in. The road was, of course, bust and only got busier the closer we got to Istanbul. We had avoided the motorway into the city, opting instead for the quieter highway D100 (which was still, at its peak, five lanes wide on either side). The difficult part of the ride wasn’t the traffic or the size of the road, in fact navigating this was fun in itself. The real difficulty was the frequency of two lane wide on and off ramps that required a lot of concentration and speed to get across safely.

taking a break, this was before the road really got busy

Josh was supposed to meet his mother at the airport at noon today but he also really didn’t want to miss cycling into the centre of the city with us. The airport was right on the route into Istanbul for us so we figured, he why not check out Istanbul airport. It also served as a nice break from the traffic.
After the brief rendezvous with Josh’s mother in arrivals we were back on the road. During our time at the airport we had looked up what we presumed would be a nice ride into the centre than the road we had been on. We joined up with a road that ran by the coast which was considerably less busy and actually we soon found a park next to the sea with a cycle path through it. Suddenly we could relax and enjoy the ride and watch as we got closer to the centre with the mouth of the Bospherous drawing ever nearer.

The cycle lane ran out abruptly and dumped us back on the road. Fortunately, or perhaps by design, the cycle track ended just opposite the turn off for the Sultanamet, the centre of the historic old peninsula on the European side that house the Aya Sofia and the Grand Bazaar. This was perfect and we made our way up to the Aya Sofia to get some end of trip photos of the two guys and some end of Europe photos for us two.

getting ready for the photoshoot

at Istanbul at last

We said goodbye to Abey here and then waved Josh off after we got to the Galata bridge on the the other side of the Sultanahmet. Our cycle through Istanbul wasn’t over yet though, we still had to get over the Bosphorous and onto the Asian side of the city.
Clearly, the best way to get across would be to cycle across the big bridge that spanned the two continents so we made our way towards it. Our plan of following the bank of the Bosphorous until we came to the bridge didn’t really work out as the by the time we arrived at the bridge it was far above us.
Trying to cycle back up the hills away from the river to get on the bridge didn’t really work out either. A bit of a struggle up some steep roads took us away from where we presumed we could get onto the bridge, but did lead us to a lovely panoramic viewpoint where we had a great chat with the guys working in the car park.

looking across to Asia, thats the bridge were trying to get on

It was another hour navigating on ramps, overpasses and roundabouts before we finally made it onto the road that would take us to the bridge! We were very pleased with ourselves and were soon riding downhill, the Bosphorous and the bridge spread out before us.
At the last merging lane before the bridge we were stopped by the police. Even though the sign before the bridge said we could ride over it on a bike, they didn’t want us to. But we were at a but of an impasse. We couldn’t go forward, the police wouldn’t allow it, but we couldn’t really go backwards either. They didn’t really know what to do, and we were kind of hoping they’d just let us go and be done with it but that didn’t look likely.
In the end we got lucky, a friendly guy in a van pulled onto the little triangle island between the merging Kane and the main road and offered us and the bikes a lift over the bridge! So we didn’t get to ride it, but we did get to cross the bridge a way which was a little victory in itself.
Our driver brought us over the bridge and all the way to the turn off for the neighbourhood where we Couchsurfing, the very pleasant Kadiköy. Anyway, to cut a long post short we finally made it to our hosts Ozgurs place. It was a long day cycling into Istanbul, but I wouldn’t really expect any less.

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 55: Lülbergaz to Outside Istanbul

The riding today was the same as yesterday, a bit flatter but through a lot of industrial areas which signalled the started of the sprawl spreading out of Istanbul and the surrounding towns. Once again I ended up only taking a couple of photos that signify what the riding was like for most of the morning.

you can see the start of thr industrial sprawl on the horizon

There was going to be a significant event today though: reaching the sea, we’d been away from the coast since leaving Split almost a month ago. We got the first glimpse of the sea shortly after we stopped for lunch. We had covered a lot of distance again this morning, and we were planning on continuing our practice of camping a little bit outside the city we intended to stay at so that next day we could spend most of the day in the city and not riding to it.

first glimpse of the sea

Istanbul was not only 50km away and it was mid afternoon so we had some time to kill and decided to ride into and spend some time at the costal town of Silivri.
Silivri was a busy place right by the sea, it had a nice promenade right by the coast that was packed with people and a main square a few streets up that was equally busy. We posted up in a cafe by the sea, I had got a puncture at some point riding into town so I went to fix it. While fixing it a group of kids came over and watched, enthralled by the act of patching a tyre. One kid had shown up on a pretty nice bike and once I had finished, followed me back into the cafe and sat down with me and Finn.

the Silivri waterfront

After some google translate conversation we learned he was from town, it was summer break and he wanted to ride his bike around with us. He wasn’t very impressed with the leisurely break Finn and I were taking. The poor guy just wanted to cycle , but we here we were lounging about a cafe! We did, eventually, get going and he had a great time following along on his bike and leading us back to the road to Istanbul.

getting our little buddy an ice cream

Here we said goodbye to our little friend and not thirty seconds had we said goodbye to him did we see two cycle tourers riding along on the road we were about to join. We shouted some hellos and the rode up to them.
These two tourers were Josh from England and Abey from the US. They were both on tour individually across Europe and had ran into eachother in Albania and decided to team up for the remainder of their ride, which was finishing in Istanbul. All of us were in the same page, looking for somewhere to camp before heading into Istanbul tomorrow so we decide to team up for this last night and day of their journey.

rolling out with the Josh (in the hat) and Abey

We rode out of Silivri together looking for, once again, a petrol station to stop at. We found one maybe thirty minutes later, a BP that had a small area off to the side with a canvas roof and a couple of tables – the little area seemed made for our purpose. We cooked dinner for Josh and Abey with the remainder of out pasta and talked about, well pretty much one, thing for hours: how darn fantastic cycle touring is. Josh and Abey were noticeably excited to be finishing their tour tomorrow, it was great to spend some time with other tourers after so long cycling and camping just the two of us.

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 54: Edirne to Lülbergaz

This will probably be a short post as not much really happened except towards the end of the day and the cycling wasn’t all that interesting.
Leaving the Shell after a morning of taking photos with Erdem we got onto the main road that we took out of Edirne yesterday. We were going to be in this road for the next two days until we got into Istanbul, we didn’t have a map of Turkey yet and it was the quickest route to the city. So it was good road, direct and well signposted. The downside was the the riding was dull and the scenery too. It was all rolling land for miles, and the road not exactly busy but certainly not quiet either. I took on photo and it looked like this for the rest of the day, so that’s about it for the days cycling.

In condition like that you tend to just cycle without stopping much and as such cover a lot of ground quickly. By lunch we had reached the city of Lülbergaz about 70km away and pulled in for lunch and then a look around the city.
It was smaller than Edirne, but nice in its own way with a very busy Main Street that we walked around. At some point we realised that the first Ireland game of the World Cup was on so we spent some time looking for that.
There was one sports bar in the city that didn’t really understand what rugby was or what we wants to watch so we couldn’t get them to look for it on the tv. After a bit of wifi research we found out what channel was showing the rugby World Cup in Turkey and returned to the bar asking them to switch over to ‘tivibu sport 2’. This channel was showing the match so we sat down to watch at, and were soon joined by most of the staff. These were a bunch of young guys who were really curious as to what was going in and got a real kick out of trying to figure out the game.
By the time we left the city it was late enough and the sun was setting. We had figured out while riding that there probably wouldn’t be any good camping spots so we figured the best option would be to check at the petrol stations we passed if we could camp there.
It was dusk by the time we found one that had enough space we felt we could comfortably camp at (if they allowed it). We asked one of the staff if we could camp the night there and he seemed ok with it, but then said he couldn’t since his boss wasn’t around to ask. We didn’t want to push him so made to leave after using the toilet. As we were about to go he came over and pointed to an empty lot beside the station and told us we could camp there is we left in the morning. This was great news, we knew it was going to be hard to find camping so we could now go to sleep easily. We spent the evening in an empty lot next to the busy road to Istanbul.

waking up at the petrol station lot

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Turkey

Day 53: Popvets to Edirne (Border Crossing: Into Turkey)

Border crossing day is always exciting, but today’s crossing into Turkey was particularly significant: we were finally leaving Europe! It was also the first count that we had to get a visa for, though it was an e-visa we just had to purchase online and didn’t even need any additional documents for.
We were following signs (in Cyrillic) for the town nearest the Turkish border called Svilengrad. The ride was much like yesterday evenings, along quiet roads by farms and pastures and through leafy woods. At one point we passed an old Bosnian roady in the full bib and Jersey who had suffered a flat tyre out here in the comparative isolation of the Bulgarian countryside. We offered him a patch to fix his tyre but all he needed was the little bit of sandpaper to prepare the tube.

not pictured here: the swarms of flies that followed us whenever we were climbing

It wasn’t long after this encounter that we came to Svilengrad and we passed through quickly, pausing only briefly to spend the last of our Bulgarian coins on some ice cream.
Leaving Svilengrad was a bit of a challenge. A motorway bypassed the town and went straight to the border, but we had entered the town expecting to pick up a smaller road that would take us to the border without having to ride on the motorway. We got to the edge of town and onto the smaller road to the border only to find it closed and in an awful state.

We could have doubled back into Svilengrad and tried to get on the motorway from there, but we could see it from where we were now, plus we had already cycled a not insignificant distance from Svilengrad, so we didn’t really want to double back. We pushed on along the old road and it curved promisingly towards the motorway and then…passed over it. Now that we we here though, right on top of it we could see it was pretty much devoid of traffic save for the occasional truck so it seemed like the best option get on it for the last few kilometres left before the border.
There was one way to get on, and that was by wheeling our bikes through a gap in the fence and down the embankment onto the road. This process was delayed slightly when one of my front rack bolts sheared off and had to be replaced as we were shimmying through the fence but after that short delay we were on the road and finally making progress again.

trying to get onto the road to the border

We got to the border maybe half an hour later. We saw the huge tail back of trucks before we even glimpsed the border, the queue for the trucks tailed back for almost three kilometres, but was limited to only a lane of traffic. Getting over the border was a relatively painless procedure, we had to unload our bikes and open the bags for customs but we didn’t have to dump the contents out which would have been a real pain.

It was dusty highway from the border to the city of Edirne 30km away where we were going to finish early for the day and take a look around. As the old capital of the Ottoman Empire it warranted a stop.

Approaching Edirne with the Selimiye

The ride to Edirne was pretty uninteresting but the city itself was amazing. I don’t doubt part of the appeal for us was it being the first Turkish city we had visited. Edirne was the old capital of the Ottoman Empire before they captured Istanbul and has some impressive buildings. We only spent a couple of hours there and got to walk around the old town but what was really impressive was the Selimiye Mosque built by architect Mimar Sinan who seems to be a national hero. As the first mosque we visited on the trip it was really something special.

the interior of the dome

in the courtyard

sunset over Edirne as we left the mosque

It was getting dark as we left Edirne. Early when we arrived we had looked up Warmshowers to see if anyone was around to host and came across a post by the staff of Shell Gas Station Edirne. They had set up what they called the first bike-touring station where tourers could camp in a small lot out back and make use of the facilities offered by the station. It was only 20km outside the city on the Istanbul side so was perfect for our needs.
We arrived and knew we had found the right place thanks to the kids bikes placed on poles all outside the station, around the area where the tall board displaying the prices was. Then as we wheeled up to the shop we saw a touring bike propped up outside it. We knew we had found the right place, but who to talk to about staying here? Almost immediately a smiley, portly Turkish guy came out with a huge grin in a red She’ll shirt (unbuttoned to the chest) and introduced himself as Erdem.

these photos were taken in the morning, it was dark by the time we arrived

Erdem led us around back where there was a small grassy area with a couple of short trees where we could put our tent up. He then brought us back around front where he showed the staff kitchen and shower we could use. His English wasn’t great but we communicated just fine and he was so smiley and friendly it was hard not to get along with the guy.

the spot out back where we camped

us with Edrem

After a very welcome shower we shared photos and talked as best we could with Erdem. He was a bike tourer himself and enamoured with the new service his workplace now provided. He even, when we were about to cook dinner, sat us back down and brought out a delicious impromptu spread: bread, rice, yogurt and Kofte (a kind of sausage). We had never camped at a petrol station before but this was a great introduction to the practice and wouldn’t be our last time either.

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 52: Leshtak to Popovets

Today’s ride was one of two distinctive parts: Our final morning cycling in the Rhodope Mountains (the name of the range we were cycling through in southern Bulgaria) culminating in a long descent out of the range and then the second part of our ride along the arable foothills that fringed the Rhodopes.
So it was more beautiful mountain riding in the morining, we were told by Bibor yesterday that where we were cycling now was the region of Turkish majority, but there wasn’t that much difference to be noticed, although the settlements that we passed through featured more mosques than churches.

We finished one last switchback filled climb and then it was one of the longest downhill runs we had so far, coming out of the mountains and back down to the lowlands. For an hour we coasted along without pedalling enjoying the exercise-free cycling.

Reaching the bottom we found ourselves in the city of Kardzali, the most sizeable place we’d passed through since leaving Sofia. We stopped for lunch and then did perhaps our final Lidl shop of the trip, it was a momentous occasion, the chain had fuelled our progress over most of Europe.
Following a lengthy lunch break we set off in a golden and very warm late afternoon sun. This was the second and decidedly very different half of today’s ride, with the mountains behind us we found ourselves cycling between the rolling foothills by farms and through small hamlets.

At one of these hamlets we pulled up to fill our bottles at the water fountains. On the opposite side of the road stood the sole shop/eatery whose patrons sitting outside were all busy watching us roll in with curiosity. As we filled up our bottles one dude came over to chat. Once he gleaned we were cycling to Istanbul he gave us directions to the border via what I think he had sussed was the shortest route between the various towns between here and Turkey. He kept repeating it and it was only later we figured out he thought we didn’t understand as we kept nodding our heads – which means ‘no’ in Bulgaria.

Before we left Finn ran over to the shop to grab bread for the morning and ran into a Turkish guy visiting who had a bit of English. Himself and shopkeeper invite us over for some sausage they were cooking and a beer. The Turkish dude was the only person with any English so he did a bit of translating while we sat at a table in the shop waiting for the food. Our friend who had been giving us directions before came over and sat with us while we ate this surprise dinner.

the little shop where we ate

Eating something that isn’t pasta for dinner is always welcome and even though it took a bit of time to cook and it was getting dark when we left it was well worth the stop. Leaving this little town of Popvets we were looking out for somewhere to camp right away. Most of the land near the road was farmland or pasture, in fact we passed a number of shepherds herding their flocks as we cycle through. Before too long we found a little hill just of the road with some scrubby bushes we could set up behind.

From here there was a great view of road ahead of us that wound out to the horizon. It was a completely clear night and as the sun went down above was one of the most star filled skies I’ve seen with that big swath of across it of the Milky Way you only really see when it’s properly dark.

camp the next moring at dawn

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 51: Borino to Leshtak

In the morning we got to continue riding downhill along the gorge through the narrow alley of rock that the river had carved. The fast flowing water and towering rock face combined to keep us nice and cool until we arrived at the bottom.
We knew that after this first descent we would be climbing up again, and this time up to the highest point of our whole mountain passage across Bulgaria. The climb followed a winding river up most of the way. It was a really pleasant ride beside the water and shaded by the tall trees that grew on the sides of the slopes.

a bridge at one of the towns we passed through on the way up

As we began to reach the summit we started noticing more and more hotel and holiday home development. It seemed like every kilometre or so we passed a new building site. Ski resorts were being developed on a wide scale all through the mountains.

Out here, up in the highlands the trees that lined the road further down were more dispersed and we could see out across the the tops of the mountains. We stopped in a newly finished hotel for a lunch where we were the only people aside from the staff.
After lunch we started on a nice long descent. It began with a lot of switchbacks cutting across the mountain face and then evened off to a gradual downward slope as the road picked up the course of a river. We had a short stop during this descent while Finn repaired a picture after a huge piece of shrapnel lodged itself in his tyre.

We were once again riding beside one of the numerous rivers that course through the mountains in Bulgaria. These streams and rivers have led to a feature where every couple of kilometres a tap has been hooked up to some of the water courses that flow underground and fresh spring water flows out by the side of the road. We were therefore never thirsty during the cycle across Bulgaria.

Towards the end of the evening ride after we had followed the winding river for a while we had stopped outside beside a house which had irritated the owners dog. A young guy came out to it and after hearing us speaking English started talking to us.
This was Bibor, a young Bulgarian guy who was back in his parents house in the countryside for the summer. We talked to him for a while by the gate until his mother invited us over for some tea and coffee. We very graciously accepted and sat outside on their house porch. Bibors parents gave us coffee and water and even some chocolate. They were all out of the porch seeding and coring a load of peppers.

“We grow the peppers and now we are making Bulgarian Ketchup!” Said Bibor.

We found out from them later that this was Ljutenica, a Bulgarian relish/sauce that’s made out of Peppers, tomatoes and carrots mostly.

“You want to try some?”

Of course we said yes, and Bibors mother brought us out two slices of bread with the home made Ljutenica spread over and it was delicious. Once we finished that she brought out more again, and then his father brought over a bowl of fresh watermelon gown on their farm. It was a fantastic little break and we stayed a while and chatted to the family.
After this great pit stop with Bibor and his family it was time to go and find somewhere to camp. Before we finished we had to pick up some bread for the morning and stopped into a little hole in the wall shop in the next small village we arrived at.
A coupe of curious guys who had been hanging around outside the shop and one of them had some good English (he had spent a couple of years in Aberdeen). We picked up the bread and then the shopkeeper chuckled and told us he had seen us yesterday when he was driving a bus.

crossing the river on the way out of the village

Leaving the village bread in hand we rode out along the banks of the river until we came to a wide sandy meander where we could set up for the night. We did some laundry in the river and slept soundly under a clear sky.

if you squint hard you might be able to spot Finn

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 50: Gospodintsi to Borino

The day started with us finishing the descent from yesterday down into the outskirts of the city Gotse Delchev. We were very near the the border with Greece now and infant a lot of people we had come across (the fisherman from yesterday, the shopkeeper we bought our bread from this morning) had been asking us if that’s where we were headed to Greece, it was only 50km away from Gotse Delchev.
We weren’t heading for Greece though, we were heading for Istanbul so we took the turn off East instead of South and started climbing again. We rode up some hills, through small villages and passed by horse drawn carts and the back into the mountains.

Here the road was lined for a couple of kilometres with numerous masons breaking up sandstone into tiles of somewhat equal dimension and then packed them onto pallets in perfect cubes. Loads of pallets lined the road, waiting to be picked up, and most of the masons gave us a friendly wave as we passed by.

At lunch we came into the town of Satovcha, a nice sleepy little place with a busy square. We went up to one of the cafes to get some food. Of course we had a bit of trouble communicating with our waitress but a gregarious Bulgarian with a big grin on his face came over and helped us out with translating.
When it came time to pay our friendly translator had left, but another guy came by and helped us out, and even left a little note saying the waitress had his number if we needed any help. What a guy.

There was a lot of climbing after lunch but it was really nice, now that we were up in the mountains we were riding along the peaks and through the shallow valleys that separated them. Sometimes the trees had been cleared for agriculture giving as a great view, other times we rode through thick forest on either side. We rode along, going up and down most of the rest of the day until we finally made the last steep descent into a gorge.

The gorge was narrow and deep with sheer rock faces on either side. We found a grassy and sandy bank just off the road where we set up for the night.

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 49: Blagoevgrad to Gospodintsi

As mentioned in yesterday’s post our planned route through Bulgaria involved heading southwest from Sofia towards the Greek border to get access to the eastward-bound mountain route through the southern mountain range, which we had been told was one of the most beautiful areas in Bulgaria.
We continued solute west on the Route 1 out of Blagoevgrad for 20km and then finally got to the turn off that got us onto the east-west road that ran through the mountains which would take us almost to the border with Turkey.

taking a break on the climb

We had a long climb up into the mountains now and the first ascent up into a range, we’ve found so far anyway, is always a bit underwhelming. The road tends to be bust, which this was, and the views you get aren’t all that impressive. It’s like you have to climb over a garden wall, and once your in you get to see the beauty.

this golden eagle adorned the summit

This climb took most of the morning then, and while it wasn’t that great it was at least an easy climb stretched out over a long distance.

Once we stared to descend though, the whole range opened us. A wide plain stretched off to the north with some peaks in the distance and to the south, right close to the road, a long ridge line of towering mountains ran off to the horizon. We road along, admiring this vista until we came to the ski resort town of Bansko.
At Bansko there was much development going on, new hotels were being built and the roads in the process of resurfacing so the Main Street to the centre was completely torn up. We stopped for a snack and a coffee and Banako and spent some time looking for Warmshowers or Couchsurfing host for when we got to Istanbul, a city we felt it would be great to stay with a local at.
The afternoon/evening ride out of Bansko was a lovely long downhill along the plains and then in through the mountains following a river as it carved a deep gorge between them. The sun was starting to set which lit up the walls of the gorge as we rode along them, and the rocky walls provided some welcome shade after the warm day when the sun sunk behind them.

We found a nice camp spot by the river near a bridge, a strip of grassy bank where we could set the Bivvys up. As we waited for it to get dark unwinding after the day two Bulgarian guys arrived to go fishing. One of them came up and had a conversation with us in Bulgarian while we smiled and nodded and said “da” now and then. Friendly guy, but they didn’t stay very long. His friend caught a small fish and I suppose they were happy with that haul as they left soon after.

We cooked dinner and fell asleep.

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour

Day 48: Sofia to Blagoevgrad

We woke up to a bright and sunny day at our spot overlooking Sofia. Since this was the day we started off on our run across Bulgaria properly, I should probably outline what our general route was going to be.

We weren’t taking the straight shot across from Sofia to Istanbul. While it was certainly the fastest and the flattest, we had heard (as far back as from Tom way back in Gent) that the mountains in the south of Bulgaria had some of the best scenery the country had to offer. The issue was that we couldn’t ride directly South from Sofia to get into the mountains properly, so the course we decided on took us back west a bit, then South for a day or two before finally heading east again towards Istanbul.

the route we picked out through the mountains. the app we use to find out how high some climbs are is Topo Profiler, its very good

We climbed in the morning out of the valley that Sofia was situated in and down into another valley. We were on nice quiet roads most of the morning. Around lunchtime as we were coming up a hill we started to hear music off in the distance. It was a very rural area, there were no towns nearby, the last place we passed that could be called a town was over an hour ago so we were naturally curious as to what the source of the music was.

We crested the hill and saw a small house/cafe bar establishment by the side of the road. There was one full table outside of five guys, old and young, enjoying their Sunday with a big bottle of Vodka and a huge speaker, more like an amp, blaring the Bulgarian gypsie-pop Chalga that Dani had told us in Sofia. We had to stop there.

We went inside and tried to order some food from a tired looking woman, who we eventually got our message across to. While waiting for the for the food we had a very stilted conversation with her young son, maybe five or six, over the incredibly loud music.

nice shot of the mountains we were trying to get into

After our bizarre lunch we made for the town of Dupnica where we could get on the route 1 South to the city of Blagoevgrad which stood just before the entrance to the mountains. The riding was flat and, once we had joined with the 1 really busy with traffic. This road was the main artery between Bulgaria and Greece.

the route 1 during a rare lull in traffic

Reaching Blagoevgrad in the early evening we found the city to be alive with people out to enjoy the sunny Sunday evening. After an ice cream in the square to cool off from the hot day we rode out along a path that followed a mountain stream and turned into a really nice park. The park, too, was packed with people and, I have to get this across, really nice. Probably once of the nicest I’ve been too, it had a load of play areas for kids, a natural mountain stream running through it, a zip line park, bbq and picnic areas, a pound filled with ducks and swans, bike paths and a few cafes all against the backdrop of the mountains.
We didn’t camp in the park, though we did look for an inconspicuous spot. Instead we followed the stream out of the park until we were able to get our bikes down into some flat land.

they seem to like the EU here

We found a small wooded area and a clearing therein and set up for the night. Later on in the evening a bar nearby brought in their live Chalga musicians which echoed over our campsite most of the night. So far Bulgaria has had a very distinctive soundtrack.