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.

campsite

Make it about 200 metres over the border and stopping for some food

First trip to the supermarket gave us a pretty good idea what Bosnia is about

This road very quickly turned ….

to this road, which very quickly turned…

to this road

Relaxing at camp, a lake 1000 m above sea level

Setting up our little camp tap on my bike

We’ve really become camp pasta connoisseurs, adding pancetta and parmesan can really take it to the next level

Our fist night to make a camp fire

Riding the next morning was pretty remote…

for quite some time

We passed some ski resorts

We then crossed into a national park. After passing through this gate we had an amazing descent which seemed more like Cambodia then Bosnia

This photo sums up bosnia pretty well, old mercs,freshly built houses and mountains

Taking special note to stear clear from the mines

Graves covered the Bosnian country side these tall white gravestones are typical of muslim graves

Descent through the national Park

Bosnian Game of Thrones

Sarajevo

Old Square

View from our hostel of the Old square sarajevo

We stole the guy taking that couples photo to take ours, they don’t look too happy.

Too hot to cycle

A lot of abondoned building is rural Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dublin to Nepal, Finnian's Galleries, On Tour

Bosnia and Herzegonvina

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal

East meets West in Sofia

It was still raining in the morning, and everything was damp. We had a host lined up in Sofia though, a guy from Couchsurfing named Dani so we knew we would be able to get everything dry once we reached the city, which was a little over 30km away.
The route to the city was a straight shot along the same road we had been following yesterday, so once we were packed up we rode happily right along through rain, safe in the knowledge we would be inside soon.
We had originally planned to meet Dani at 7 that evening, but given the rain we decided to take him up on the earlier time he was available at 12:30. We pulled into a petrol station to use the wifi to contact Dani, it was into then we realised that we had passed into a new timezone, we were an hour ahead of where we were yesterday.
So we peddled a bit faster in order to get into Sofia on time. There was a short delay as we navigated a complex situation of roadworks, diversions and off ramps to get into the city, but (with the rain still pouring) we made it to Danis address just in time.

the main road through the centre of Sophia

Dani was a great host, a really friendly dude who worked as a developer in a start up based out of the city. It was midweek (Thursday) so he had to get back to work after meeting us but very generously let us stay in his place while he was out, which gave us the chance to hang our gear out to dry.
Sofia is a very unique city, it has the East meets west feel at any city under Ottoman control and that close to Turkey would, but also the contrast of old Soviet style architecture and city planning and the new western shops, malls and cafes. It’s a great place to visit, and it’s also cheap!

old turkish baths, now a museum

We got a good look around the city and ran a few errand that had to be done too. All of the maps we’d used so far were posted back to Ireland by Finn along with some other items that weren’t being used and just dead weight at this stage. We also finally managed to find camping gas for the stoves, all though we had gotten pretty proficient with using petrol as a fuel.

Main Orthodox Cathedral

We spent some time hanging out with Dani too, who gave us some great insight into the more esoteric aspects of Bulgarian culture, including a crash corse in Bulgarian gypsy pop music Chaugra (not sure if I’m spelling that right.) He was also kind enough to take us around the city after work one day, his hospitality really made the time in Sofia memorable, thanks Dani!

Dani with our flag

The day we left we were cycling up out of the city and into the mountains that surrounded it when I started having trouble with my bike. The chain was slipping over the teeth of the chainring, the whole drivetrain was completely worn out – but we didn’t realise this at the time, the symptoms were similar to what Finn experienced with his loose hub.
Incredibly fortunately we were passing a bike shop so decided to go and get the mechanic to have a look over it. His diagnosis initially that it was just the chain and maybe the cassette worn out.

thank you serendipidous bike shop!

He was a really helpful guy and changed both out to see if that would fix the problem. It didn’t and I was sure no it was the hub but again I was lucky, it still wasn’t the hub that was broken, it was my chainring that was pretty badly worn out. I had planned to get the whole drive train replaced in Istanbul, but I guess it didn’t last as long as I hoped. Either way the it was going to be replaced at some point on the trip and here in Sophia was as good a place as any to get it all swapped out, and cheap too.

ready to ride, lets go cross some Bulgarian mountains

So a couple of hours later than we would have wanted, but still with enough daylight to get out of the city proper we left Sophia and starred climbing. We found a great spot in a field that overlooked the city we had just left, the last city we would stay in in Europe and the jumping off point for our ride into Turkey.

our fantastic spot overlooking Sofia

Post Script:

I haven’t been able to update the blog much, but expect a glut of posts to follow in the next few days. Our run to Istanbul was the longest between city stops we’ve done so far but we’re here (in Istanbul) now with a backlog of photos and posts to get through so keep your eyes on the blog over the next few days.

Bulgaria, Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Serbia

Day 47: Donja Kamenica to near Dragoman/outside Sofia (Into Bulgaria)

It’s always an exciting prospect when there’s a border crossing coming up. Today we would be crossing into Bulgaria, back into the EU, but also the last European country of the trip – after Bulgaria would come Turkey and a whole different part of the trip, but that’s future. Today, the last bit of Serbia and the start of Bulgaria.
The morning consisted of riding down out of the mountains and into the flat land that ran between the last big town in Serbia before the border of Pirot. The ride down was similar to the previous days, narrow roads that ran along the hills. But today was overcast, and with a blustery headwind which slowed us a bit (but not much)

looking down the descent into Pirot

Finn attacking the corner

Pirot wasn’t all that much to look at once we arrived. It bore all the marks of being s border town, lots of place changing money and selling cartons of cigarettes. We arrived a bit before lunch we stopped for a break. While we were sat outside a cafe a big tall Serbian guy came over to us and started chatting in English with us.
He had seen our bikes and heard is talking and wanted to find out a bit more. Never got his name, but he was an interesting guy. From Serbia originally he now lived most of the time in Sweden with his family and was back in Pirot visiting. He was very interested in the trip and after talking a while was suddenly struck with an idea!
He had friends who worked for a Serbian TV station not five minutes down the road, they would be very interested to talk to two Irish guys cycling to Nepal who had just crossed their country and he raced off to find them.
It would be great to be able to say we made it onto Serbian television, but unfortunately his friends weren’t available at the time and we had to move on.
The road from Pirot to the border was flat, straight into a headwind and boring enough not want further description.
We crossed the border a bit before three with no difficulty. The border was surprisingly quiet, I would have expect more people to be crossing over, maybe if we arrived in August there would be queues of people heading into Bulgaria to get to the seaside.

first road sign for Istanbul!

After the crossing we climbed for a bit over an hour across the highland that separate the two countries geographically. The wind was starting to pick up and the sky beginning to darken. The fist Bulgarian town over the border was a place called Dragoman. We picked up some stuff for dinner at a market there and then checked the weather forecast and saw this:

The wind was blowing stronger and we figured we should start trying to find somewhere to camp before the storm stated to cross us. We rode out of Dragoman for a while, intending to stop as soon as possible but there were no suitable camping spot up here on the exposed highlands. As a result we ended up hauling our bikes through some bushes, across a train track and into a field where we took shelter from the wind in a little dip in the field at the corner, covered by trees on two sides.
That night just before the rain came we were chased into our tents by the most vicious mosquitoes we had encountered. It started raining early on and continued non stop, but our spot was thankfully sheltered from the worst of the wind.

camp spot the next morning

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Serbia

Day 46: Boljevac to Donja Kamenica

Once again our morning stared with a climb, and today it was a climb with some of the best views we’ve had in Serbia. It was a bright, clear day and unlike yesterday we were riding up hill on a nice, smooth, sealed Tarmac road. It was a really fun ascent, the gradient changed drastically every couple of meters so you could be riding along on a relaxed gradual climb and then be sweating it up some 13% kick, which could then smooth out to flat and so on.

Finn loves a good climb

The road was quiet, we were passed only by a few tractors and passed ourselves a couple of horse drawn carts. From the top we rolled downhill almost 20km, through the odd farming hamlet with some old people milling around, into the surprisingly pleasant river town of Knjazevac.

coming into Knajevac

It was lunchtime by the time we reached Knjazevac so we stopped here for a while and spent some time on cafe wifi looking for hosts in the next city we would visits: Sofia, updating the blog – just the general sort of admin stuff you need to mooch of cafe wifi for an hour or two to do.
Out of Knjazevac was a lovely long and very, very gradual climb up a wide valley back into the mountains (or the foothills, whatever they are they’d be considered mountains in Ireland).

Riding along up this quiet valley for ninety minutes brought us to the town of Štrbac where, once again, there was a public fountain of drinking water. We filled our bottles and started off again to ride for another ninety minutes or so and then camp.
About thirty minutes outside the town we passed a waterfall with a large flat grassy bank beside, perfect for camping. You don’t always pass such nice spot to stay at so we decided to call it a day a bit early and set up by the waterfall.

The waterfall served as a great shower, we hadn’t washed since Belgrade so this was a welcome bonus of our campsite for the night. It started to get dark at about 7:30 and then it got cold a bit after that. Yes, our fist somewhat chilly night of the trip so far! Autumn seems to be moving along a lot faster than we expected.

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Serbia

Day 45: Resavica to Boljevac

Out of the camp this morning we continued on the climb we had begun out of Resavica the evening before. For much of the morning the road was similar to yesterday, a quiet country course that went up over the hills, scarred and pockmarked from the multitudinous potholes that were either forming or had been filed in.

no photography sign before the army barracks

At the bottom of the descent after the morning climb (during which time we passed by first an army barracks and then what appeared to be a holiday resort) the road forked. On our map both roads would eventually hit a larger secondary road that ran perpendicular to the two, and this larger road would take us out to the next town where we could find the next road south to the border (that wasn’t a busy road anyway).
So it was left or right, both would take us to the same location. Left seemed to be a smaller road still than the one we were on, so we figured that would be the more interesting route to take.
Interesting was one way to describe it, challenging probably another. We cycled along for a couple of kilometres, and the road then turned to a gravel track, which turned into a rocky strip and then finally a rocky and muddy trail, all going uphill. It was a fun ride, looking back on it, and it was utterly quiet the whole way, we passed only a smattering of dwellings and no tractors or motorbikes (the only motor vehicles that could probably navigate this track).

before the road really degraded

Finns bike takes a break from the rocky road

At the time though, it was tough. There was a lot of getting off and pushing when the rocks got to big, or the mud to thick. We spent about two hours making this climb, and at the top the road got better. Once we started descending we found ourselves back on sealed Tarmac again. We followed the descent into a river valley and stopped at the bottom for lunch.

the descent just before we rejoined a proper road

After lunch we got onto the secondary road we had been trying to reach and in comparison to what we had been riding before this was the best road in Europe. We crested a climb out of valley and found ourselves up on a plateau with a big mountain stretching up out of it and it w as under this vista that we rode out east to Boljevac, a town where we could get on another tertiary route south to the border.

At Bojlevac, another one of these country towns with high rise apartment blocks, we picked up some supplies in the supermarket and filled up our water at the public tap in the square. A little bit of searching and we found the right road out of town that would take us south over the hills. We rode for thirty more minutes, but it was starting to get dark earlier and earlier so it wasn’t long before we were looking for spots to camp.

the road out of Boljevac

We ended up down by a stream next to an old stone bridge, one of our more picturesque camping spots, it’s always nice to find somewhere to sleep that isn’t the corner of a field.

approaching the camp spot, we stayed over to the left

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Serbia

Day 44: Kaliste to Resavica

The road from our campsite under the bridge to the next town over of Petrovac was a 15 km straight shot that undulated gently but never turned into a proper climb or descent. The weather today was much cooler than it had been for the past month. Ever since we crossed into Slovenia it was balmy and hot every day. Now it was a bit overcast and there was a slight chill in the breeze. As we rode along the road we started to notice the leaves on the trees were beginning to turn into the gold and red colours of Autumn. It seemed as though the season had changed overnight.

first sight of Autmn colours in the trees

Out of Petrovac we rode on the flat, but soon we rounded a corner and saw mountains looming up to our left in a long continuous ridge save for a deep grove, a gorge, that looked like a gateway in some massive wall.

Our path actually took is through the gorge, along the course of the river that ran through it. Climbing up higher into the mountains we realised how much we actually enjoyed the uphill struggle, not only was the riding more interesting but it also often led to more interesting places.

entering the gorge, we got chased by some stray dogs shortly after this photo

This wasn’t some pass to be crossed, panting up switchbacks though. This was a nice long, winding route to through relatively small (highest peak only went up to 1500m) mountains. We passed by small towns, farms, barns, little orthodox churches. We were passed by all sorts of trucks, tractors, soviet-era motorbikes and horse drawn carts – and cars, too.

At the end of the day we came upon the strange town of Resavica, one of these places out in the middle of nowhere that someone had decided to drop a couple of high rise apartment blocks around. The town itself served as the terminus for what seemed to be an industrial freight only railway.
We decided to see if we could find somewhere for dinner here. The firs place we tried told us to go to the hotel.

“Where is the Hotel?”

“It’s big red building”

The hotel was, indeed, a big red building. I’d say it hadn’t been red when it was built, but somewhere along the line someone decided that it would be a good idea to spruce it up a bit by painting the whole thing red with a bright blue trim. In this drab Serbian town it stood out like a sore thumb. We were the only people in the whole establishment, we ordered “something good”(the whole menu being in Cyrillic) and got a plate of two big pieces of pork and a side of veg and fries each (€5).
Well fed we left Resavica behind and rode uphill for about ten minutes until we found somewhere to turn off the road and camp in amongst the trees.

Dublin to Nepal, On Tour, Serbia

Day 43: Belgrade to Kaliste

Waking up we found we hadn’t made it as far out of the city as we though we had. I fact we were still pretty much right in the city. We wanted to follow the EuroVelo route along the Danube for a bit, but it wasn’t really feasible as it took us too far out of the way on the wrong side of the river.
So we followed the main road out of town, towards Smederevo the next city over. The route out was a bit hectic. High street shops turned into low rise stores and then side of the road stalls as the road got more and more narrow – but the traffic didn’t disperse. We had to ride sandwiched between a tram track in the right and the flow of traffic on our left, but it was exciting in its own way.
After we had reached the final outskirts of the city the traffic calmed a lot. We rode along undulating hills near the Danube, while in the other side of the river flat land stretched out for miles. Ill take the hills any day, riding for miles and miles on the flat isn’t half as interesting.

lookong down on the Danube

We arrived in Smederevo, which exists as a city because of the simple fact that it is the last bridge over the Danube before the border of Romania. We had lunch here and then put the Danube to our backs and struck out towards Požervac, a town where we could get on a road south towards the Bulgarian border that avoided the motorway.
Not much to say about the ride between Smederevo and Požervac except that it was flat and on a main road. We had been getting a lot. More friendly beeps than angry beeps though since we left Belgrade. In fact, after we had gotten on to our southward-bound route after Požervac, I’d say every third or forth car was giving us a wave. One Turkish family in a German registered Mercedes even pulled up alongside while we road and had a wee chat.

It was starting to get dark so we were on the lookout for campsites. Crossing a small bridge we saw that the stream in crossed had long dried up. It had been threatening to rain all day, so the prospect of some solid shelter sealed the deal and we wheeled down under the bridge. That night it did rain hard, and the solid concrete held up very well.

Arriving Croatia

Our first sight of the sea Hugo was very extited

Too hot to cycle but perfect for a nap

Always nice when you find a good camping spot

A nice view of Cres

View from the camping spot

Breakie

The ferry to Cres we would be getting later

The climb off the ferry and onto the spine of the island was really lovely

I don’t know if the main activity of this trip has been cycling or producing salt

Some french guys on a tour of their own took this picture of us

Great views from the top of the Island

And great descending

The view of the main town on Cres

After a long break in the heat of the day we were trying to make up miles in the evening but the sight of two pigs on a spit stopped us in our tracks

Well worth the stop

Evening ferry from Mali Losinj to Zadar

More ferry shots

A lake After our stop for dinner

Little bays like this dotted the coast from Zadar to Split

However nice a bay is you always have to climb out

Split way of in the distance but first there was alot of roadworks and suburbs to pass through a struggle in the heat of the day and after our night ride