Lunch

Two Giros filled with pork, french fries, lettuce, tomato and mustard washed down by an ice cold Amstel.

Here are some facts and figures from our time in Bulgaria:

• 638 km cycled (longest day 109 km on the day we entered Bulgaria, shortest day 20 km)
• 0 nights in campsites (there weren’t any enroute!), 6 nights free camping, 5 nights in real beds inc 1 night with tobacco farmers
• 2 broken chains on bikes – 1 for each of us
• 5 new holes in tent from trapped crickets
• 5 tomatoes given to us by strangers
• 3 days we battled swarms of flies on long slow up-hill climbs
• 3 frappes drunk (by Justin)
• 2 conversations held in languages other than English or Bulgarian (Spanish and Italian)
• 2 fresh pears given to us as gifts
• 2 swims in thermal water (thanks Emma’s old workmates for the leaving present)
• 2 ice cold cokes offered while we filled up with water
• 1 very memorable home cooked meal
• 1 cheek pinched by elderly villager (Emma’s)

Justin will remember: Meeting local people intent on giving us directions and finding yet more holes in Bessie our tent.

Emma’s best cycling moments: First uphill climb for ages to ski field stormy free camp then pure downhill the following morning.

We have space to put up the tent inside our room to fix recent grasshopper holes, bicycle maintenance is completed and we cross things off a huge list of mundane chores which we’ve been meaning to complete for months. We ask reception about washing clothes with our phrasebook in hand and they send us back to our room with a cloth filled with washing powder and a huge plastic tub. Three hot days slip by and we are back on the bicycles early with a new supply of energy for the stretch to Istanbul.

The cycling is fairly flat until we hit the village of Troyan and the 1600m Troyan pass behind it. We’re not far from the top when we spot chair lift poles for a nearby ski resort which we think might be an interesting spot for camping. We find some people sitting outside a building, where the grass looks perfect for camping and manage to bridge the language gap by showing them our phrasebook and gesturing at the flat ground.

We’ve just established that we can camp, put up the tent and pulled out our cooking gear when a thunderstorm starts. Justin braves cooking outside and every now and then I can hear him laughing as the owner of the house comes out to communicate to him. We think she may have been inviting us into the building, but we’ve just finished cooking and can think of nothing better than staying in our snug tent and enjoying the rain.

The next morning we’re invited in for coffee as we’re packing up and a sleepy 16 year old is summoned. Iliya’s family own the motel and he is here helping his grandmother out. He has been studying English and is good company– we drink coffee and eat biscuits with him while discussing skiing, cycling ambitions and Bulgaria’s relationship with neighbouring countries. Suddenly its 10am and our early start isn’t quite so early. We finish packing and are sent off with pears for breakfast and complete the last five kilometres to the top of the pass before one of the best descents since Italy – 20 wiggly kilometres with views to the next set of mountain ranges in the south.

In Bulgaria we’ve had a new language and alphabet to learn and we suspect this is why we have started to struggle to get provisions, namely fruit and vegetables. Today we can’t spot a supermarket in the reasonably big town of Karlovo and assume we’ll find one on the way out of town but it doesn’t materialise. We spend the afternoon stopping at tiny village mini-markets which don’t have any fresh produce, frustrating when we can see big fields of peppers and chillis being cultivated on the fields around us. An old lady is selling tomatoes on the roadside and we stop to buy some from her, ending up with three huge tomatoes she refuses payment for. We camp with permission from a farmer next to a newly planted cabbage patch which recedes into the far distance. He warns us to pitch early to avoid mosquitoes and we’re thankful for the advice.

With only a few days left in Bulgaria we head south towards hills again to Minerali Bani where we decide to stop to take in the thermal waters at Hotel Bulgaria. It only took three room changes before we’re in a huge space with equally large balcony for the princely sum of 35 euros including free entry into the spa complex below. We make full use of the facilities before heading out for dinner and leave late the next day – somewhat reluctantly, as we are the cleanest and most refreshed we have been for the whole trip.

With one more night of free camping before the Greek border the crops have changed again, this time to big fields of tobacco. We stop early on a minor road and Justin wanders off to investigate camping options. He’s gone for a long time, and I can hear voices coming from behind the trees he headed into. Finally he comes back with news of a sort – he thinks we can camp, but the tobacco farmers he was talking to had asked us to return at 8pm so they could take us somewhere to eat, maybe. We go back twice to talk to them and I eventually pull out our phrasebook so we can ask how far away they want to take us.

Still confused, we have a few hours to wait. We cook some food and watch shepherds bringing their herds down the hill towards us, wondering if we’ll have to camp in this spot which is starting to look quite busy. Just before 8pm Sabrina comes up the path to greet us, followed by her husband Savatine. We follow their white Lada back to the village where we filled bottles with water a few hours ago. Their son Rian comes back with supplies from the shop while Sabrina sits on a step making dinner and laughing with us as we try to communicate. She shows us the property including a shed housing three cows (all named), a hutch with rabbits and chickens, and a huge vegetable garden. It starts to make sense that vegetables aren’t available in shops here as most people grow their own. We’re fed well including cucumber soup, grilled peppers, tomato salad and freshly brought fish from the market with conversation aided by an English speaking neighbour who invites us to his house for a late evening coffee and showers. Despite our protests we’re given the parents bedroom for the night as they’ll be up again in a few hours for more tobacco leaf harvesting.

We cycle past the fields in the morning to say goodbye – both to the family and to Bulgaria as our border crossing to Greece is just ahead.

The below documents what two hungry cyclists ate in one day in Bulgaria.

Breakfast

Emergency first breakfast of greasy banitsa (local pastie) with white cheese filling (they only come with white cheese filling). Second breakfast of muesli (hidden in photo) with sort of savoury yogurt and fresh pear eaten down the road after we had found the main shopping area of the village.

Mid-morning snack

Snack shop bread roll with white cheese inside and sprinkled with some sort of vegetable salt.

Lunch

Freshly baked rolls filled with beef rissoles and a giant Bulgarian tomato. The apple below was officially declared the best apple of the trip so far.

Pre-swim snacking

Paprika Chio crisps (average) and plain biscuits eaten to ensure we had energy for swim and sauna.

Dinner

Dinner out at a mehana, from left: tomato salad, toast (!), some sort of meat stew, french fries, tarator soup made with cucumber and yogurt and served cold.  Justin’s dish of chicken in a mushroom sauce not pictured. Suffice to say we were satisfied.

The road towards Vidin is largely traffic free and the wide empty spaces seem to be filled with a light more harsh and direct than we are used to from Serbia. The fields are filled with long dry grass and few animals or people are to be seen. Reaching Vidin Justin visits a supermarket while Emma narrowly escapes being adopted by a local who speaks Italian. The outskirts of Vidin are dusty and seemingly in a permanent state of construction as horses and carts, bicycles, lorries, buses and us jostle for space on a road that alternates between dirt, potholes and occasional glorious tarmac.

Our first campsite in Bulgaria sees us battling plagues of mosquitoes not seen since our days along the Po River – ahh the pleasures of cycling near the Danube! As the sun sets we huddle in our tent and hear a strangely human and very chilling series of howls that make us huddle a little closer. Emma hesitantly asks “Wolves?”while I imagine creatures from outer space, maybe with pitchforks! A sleepless night follows but no more howling is heard.

The next day we continue towards Lom leaving any traces of the main road behind as we whizz through tiny dusty towns where the road is more pothole than sealed. The locals either stare in amazement or shout encouragement in Bulgarian to which we can only wave and smile in response. Lom is much bigger than either of us expected and we decide to find a cafe with internet to work and research for a few hours. Leaving town we stop to fill our cooker with petrol for the first time before cycling up a state highway (read: very busy) paved with macadam (cobblestones as we know them). As trucks thunder by and I try to guide my tyres around missing cobbles and various holes I wonder that if this is a state highway what do the rest of the roads in Bulgaria hold for us?

Our afternoon ride passes through a number of towns that look to have seen better days with boarded up shops, empty cafes and locals sitting quietly at the roadside with open jaws as we pass by. Stopping for water at a gas station we are offered cans of coke for free despite our protestations that water is enough. We notice that the attendant has the mannerism of “reverse head nodding” (sorry if this sounds politically incorrect) as we know it, meaning they nod to mean no, and shake their head when they mean yes. This makes our conversations in pigeon Bulgarian even more confusing and ripe for misunderstanding.

Pitching our tent beside a quiet fishing lake, we discover new holes in Bessie the tent. Under investigation, the culprits become clear – two trapped grasshoppers have chewed holes in the fly while trying to escape. In anger we squish them but calming down, the rest of our evening is spent watching our own private aerial display in the form of huge flocks of starlings swooping across the sky backlit by the setting sun.

Our first stop at a tiny cafe the next day ends with us sharing a table with the owner and most of the patrons as we peruse our map and they plan our onwards route for us. The general plan from them is “main roads are fast, direct and well surfaced so go that way”, they are not convinced by our desire for quiet winding back roads. Downing a barley based drink they kindly bought us that left me reminded of medicine I had as a child, we cycled on promising we would follow their directions faithfully. The next town holds an all important bread shop and while packing the bread away we are given three tomatoes from a passing car where the occupants shake their heads and smile in disbelief at us.

The next morning as we are packing up from our deserted hill top camp a horse and cart drives slowly by the farmer and son staring with wide eyes at us as we smile and wave back. Stopping in Cherven Brag we struggle to find a bread shop for the first time on our trip to date and are lead out of town by a local on his bicycle who proudly speaks a few words of English and points us in the right direction. The afternoon is a mix of agriculture and lightly forested hills but the one constant is the presence of flies both the regular and biting horse variety. After a few hours of battling heat, flies and hills our tempers are frayed and we are struggling to find a campsite. We settle in a slightly secluded field and eat our least gourmet meal to date – potatoes, cabbage and cheese, while listening to noise from the local bar not far from our tent.

Awaking to gunshots early the next day I immediately feel in better spirits with only 18km to Lovech. We are encouraged to quickly pack up by the presence of hunters in the field next to our tent. Their dogs sniff our tent but are called back to assist with retrieving the shot birds as the hunters wave at us. We pass the 7000km milestone after only a few kilometres and with our spirits raised we are quickly entering the town centre and marvelling at the bright flowers and modern art that fills the largely deserted square. I’m already feeling at home here and contemplating staying a few days to rest up.

Here are some facts and figures from our time in Serbia:

• 884 km cycled (longest day 115 km, shortest day 46 km)
• 2 nights in campsites (1 for free), 6 nights free camping, 7 nights with roof over head (including 2 hotel nights)
• 100+ canoeists shared hospital grounds with us overnight
• 8 days cycling along the Danube river
• 3 thunderstorms, all while we were in shelter
• 3 navigation devices broken (Garmin Dakota GPS, Map case, laptop screen)
• 2 ferry rides (one with our bikes across the Danube for free – see photo)
• 2 restaurant meals (one thanks to Aleksander and Milica)
• 1 bicycle crash – Loss of concentration by Justin saw him swerve across road and almost stack a fully loaded touring bike into a ditch
• 1 broken chain link – Emma’s bike again
• 1 town we were escorted out of by a local on a scooter (we guess Knicanin wasn’t expecting any touring cyclists)
• 1 gypsy wedding almost drove us off the road then held traffic up for a horse drawn parade

Justin will remember: Spending our first night in Serbia in a tiny farmhouse eating home made cheese and talking late into the night with Aleksander.

Emma’s best cycling day: marvelling at the view over to Romania while cycling along the Dobra National Park and catching sight of a huge face carved into the cliffs opposite.

We jumped off bikes and wheeled them through the gates of what we later discovered was a big thermal centre and hospital complex, and looked around us for a reception area or office to check in. Before we had moved too far, a tanned German man welcomed us and asked where we had come from. We had chanced upon the Tour International Danubien (TID), an annual canoeing trip which descends the length of the Danube every summer with over 100 participants. Our welcoming party suggested no-one would mind if we found a place to pitch our tent and led us to a spot next to two friendly guys from the Netherlands. 

Setting up with bikes where every other tent was complimented by a canoe, our presence didn’t go unnoticed with lots of friendly people giving our bikes and tent setup a good look over. We were told by one of the British contingent that we should really talk to a guy called Stephen Lord, who he swore was a guru on bicycle touring. We smiled at this advice, adding: ‘We know, we have his book!’ 

To our further surprise Stephen actually came over to our camp spot, asking if he could have a look inside our Hilleberg Allak. True to the rumours that he would buy any cycle tourists beers if they met him, he brought us over two cold cans before the evening was out.

We had planned a loop of the flat north of Serbia to wait out some packages which were somewhere on the way to Belgrade, so headed West on the Euro Velo 6 route to Novi Sad for a night before looping back east on the north side of the river to rejoin the cycle path. A night in Novi Sad was uneventful primarily because I ate too much and fell asleep. The next day is when a few bad things happen, we fail to find a neat riverside restaurant that Aleksander had given me directions to and are escorted out of a tiny village called Knicanin where they apparently don’t embrace random cycle tourists. Oh well. At the end of that 48 hours we arrive at a campsite just on dusk and the owners offer us our pitch for free. The next morning they give us two freshly baked muffins before we leave and we already feel a bit more positive.

The scenery on this side of the Danube reminds us of our cycling in the Po River valley, full of agricultural land and good tarmac surfaced roads which people seem happy to drive very fast on. We pull off the road to let a stream of military buses go by at one stage and later stop for a stream of tooting foreign-plated cars heading for a wedding. We’re held up later that day by the wedding procession. Its headed by several horses and carts carrying the bridal party and about 20 cars behind them.

After a memorable fish soup at Stara Palanka, we realise we’ve missed the late afternoon ferry crossing against the Danube to Ram and will have to wait until 7pm to cross the river, impeding our progress for the day as darkness falls at about 8pm here. We think we are out of options when I notice a much smaller boat pulling up to the wharf. With the aid of his departing passengers our transport is arranged, and even better he takes us for free. The south of the Danube goes back into hilly terrain, and we strike lucky on the free camping front, with a family with young kids welcoming us to stay next to them at a fishing lake just off the Danube banks. The kids creep closer and closer throughout the evening to stare at us strangers and their mother gives us some freshly fried puffed bread before we retire from the mosquitoes.

Our coffees are paid for by the owner of a cafe in Veliko Grandiste and we get a free bag of sultanas at the fruit shop. A local finds us a room within our budget in Donji Mihajlovic, the elderly couple who run it give us coca-cola and pepper us with questions about our route in Serbian. We spend a Sunday evening watching a 5-a-side football tournament and eating hamburgers in the cool air.

The cycling hugs the river and we spot canoeists from the TID group a couple of times on the water. We’re now travelling alongside the border line with Romania and I can’t help but stare over at the other side at every opportunity. It is tantalisingly close but we decide against rerouting through another country. We finish the last of 21 tunnels along this road, put our lights away and make a late afternoon dash towards a marked campsite on our map with the knowledge that Bulgaria will await us after one last sleep.

I’m writing this from our Samsung netbook which is in good shape except for the top left hand corner where the screen has developed a black oval, after an unceremonious fall between the slats of a park bench from the top of Justin’s rear panniers. As our life-line to friends and family, primary research tool, Justin’s development platform and the home of our music collection, we were relieved to discover it still works, though we have to be a bit creative to access the File and Edit menus.

Unfortunately that’s not the only thing to show travel fatigue. After almost five months on bicycles across Europe we managed 48 hours of pretty much everything to do with navigation melting down while we did a loop around the Danube river basin waiting for some late deliveries from London.

First Justin had an unexplained crash. We were cycling on the north side of the Danube river on some arrow straight agricultural roads. I was cycling in front and turned back to see where he was only to find him on the other side of the road, standing over his upright bike but with look of shock on his face. I pulled my bicycle off the road next to some watermelon sellers and ran back as fast as I could. Justin is unable to recall what caused the crash, just that his bike hit the ground on one side, then on the other before he managed to get the bike off the road. He doesn’t think he was hit by anything, the bike seems to be in reasonable shape, and his only injury is a graze on the back of his leg. I get overly concerned as I don’t know if he’s too tired or if there are more serious problems with him or the bike and with a backdrop of worry we find something stupid to argue about.

Nearing the end of the day we’ve found a public bench to cook dinner on – our strategy to avoid cooking in a field of mosquitoes at dusk. Tired from a long, hot, flat day, I turn on the GPS in the dim hope there might be a campsite nearby. The GPS is really Justin’s gadget, but I’ve turned it on hundreds of times before to look for POIs. This time it doesn’t start up, just freezing on the Garmin logo. We remove the batteries and try again but it still fails to load. We’ve hardly used it for navigation since Italy, so its not critical to our movement, but we’ve turned it on every day to mark our campsite, to check elevation and decipher inner city directions.

We’re in Kovacica the next morning, when our Ortlieb map case rips. Having been exposed to the sun for months on this trip, it was bound to disintegrate. Justin is trying to grab the map while he’s on the phone so he can take it away from a busy main road and instead of the domes giving in the plastic rips. I can’t help but laugh as its so low tech it couldn’t possibly break, but my good humour doesn’t help the situation. Justin declares that nothing ever goes right, so I set off to wander around the town’s naive art gallery while he guards bikes outside. We wait out a thunderstorm before cycling on, protecting our much less waterproof map case in a pannier.

Its the laptop breakage that happens next, but that accident was overshadowed by the the worse luck of our warm showers host Aleksander. He had cycled 30 km out from Belgrade to meet us with our overdue packages, relating that he had collided with a think piece of metal while going at 40 kph on his way. He showed us photos he took of the rod curled around his spokes which brought him to a sudden stop. Luckily him, and bike are okay though it looked like a few spokes would have to be repaired on his bicycle. We buy him a coffee and wish him better luck. The laptop falls in front of all three of us as we’re showing another group of cyclists Euro Velo 6 maps.

That evening a roadside sign indicates a campsite but unknown to us, its an eight kilometre detour away and we are stalled by a local cyclist who quizzes us on distances travelled and writes down detailed notes about our trip. After a lengthy chat, we ask him if the campsite is in the direction we’re headed, half hoping he’ll invite us to camp somewhere closer, but he just agrees that we follow the road to the end and leaves us as the sun is setting to continue cycling on our way. We’d usually be happy to talk to anyone along the way, but after the days we’ve had we wish we were a little more invisible.

As for our breakages, we will have to wait till our winter plans are firmed up before anything is fixed. After extensive discussions with Garmin, we’ve been told the GPS problem is terminal and it will have to be replaced. We should be able to find a Samsumg service centre in Istanbul where we can get a new screen sent and Justin will glue up the map holder with silicon sealer.

Some pretty cool ‘good’ things happened over these days as well, but we’ll take this string of problems as a sign that we need to take more breaks from touring.

The below documents what two over-tired cyclists ate in one-and a-bit days in Serbia.

Breakfast

Last night’s apple crumble with ice cream raided from Aleksander and Milica’s fridge. Bread that tastes like pretzels and small stick of Burek to get us back into the cycling mood.

Lunch

Yes we are mature adults but its hard to resist dinosaur shaped crisps with free temporary tattoo. This was eaten before weird squeezy cheese, tomato and capsicum (known as paprika throughout the Balkans) sandwiches. Oh, fresh peaches too.

Dinner

Shredded cabbage, carrot and grapefruit salad with the first blue cheese we’ve seen since Italy and local feta. Too much baklava for dessert meaning I fall into a food-induced coma and we both miss out on Novi Sad’s night life.