Ruth: We are both surprised that there are still so few foreign tourists in Romania and Bulgaria, especially if you venture a kilometre from the tourist spots. Perhaps the tourists are all on the Black Sea, one of the areas we have not yet explored. Romania and Bulgaria are excellent for cycle touring and yet we encountered only 16 others in our two month trip ...
Gordon: We spent three days cycling from Velingrad to Sofia. The first day was a pleasant surprise, with a 20 km descent through an attractive canyon. We were accompanied by a small river and a narrow gauge railway that passed through innumerable tunnels beside the road.The second day saw us regain our altitude and more, climbing to 1350 metres at the Borovets ski area. We ...
Gordon: After a little internet research I am able to pose the rhetorical question: in what way can I be distinguished from George Patton, Carrie Fisher, Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, Paul Klee, the Shah of Iran, and Leon Trotsky? While clearly they are all famous and I am known only to my blog audience of a dozen, and a handful of others, the distinguishing ...
Gordon: This morning we climbed 300 metres above Dospat and then spent most of the remainder of the day on an undulating plateau at around 1500 metres. It was quite reminiscent of Canada, with a mature conifer forest, a number of lakes, and no towns in the 50 km ride. We did meet about a dozen Bulgarian cyclists, out for tours of four days to ...
Ruth: We have spent the last three nights in towns within about 10 kms of each other, but each is located up a different valley and hidden behind deep gorges. The road up the Buinovo Gorge, that we have been exploring for the past two days, might even rival the Trigrad Gorge that I earlier proclaimed as my best ride ever. I am not travelling ...
Gordon: Ruth thinks that today’s blog should be titled “The Best Ride Ever” because neither of us can recall a more beautiful single day of cycling. Perhaps it’s just the recency effect.We only covered 40 kms, descending 300 vertical metres, and then climbing 500. The descent followed a river for 17 kms of gentle downhill. The human infrastructure was limited to a few minute villages, ...
Gordon: Today we climbed almost 900 metres to pass the ski resorts of Chepelare and Pamporovo, before coasting down to the traditional village of Shiroka Laka. The ski resorts were unappealing out of season, but Shiroka Laka is delightful. The village rises on the valley walls along irregular, cobblestone streets. Many traditional homes have been preserved and restored. It has become a modest tourist destination, ...
Gordon: Years ago I was looking at a map of this part of the world and I was struck by the Rhodope mountains. Here was a large sweep of rugged country with few roads and towns, separating Bulgaria and Greece. It seemed like the kind of region that would have an end of the world feel, where old ways would continue to live. Based on ...
Ruth: Plovdiv won the competition for the European Capital of Culture for 2019 and as a result much activity is in process fixing sidewalks and making last minute repairs to the centre of town. Like Istanbul or Rome the layers of history are deep here. Plovdiv even brags that it is older than Rome, with continuous settlement reaching back 8,000 years. It always warms my heart ...
Gordon: To break up the ride from Kazanlak to Plovdiv we spent a night in the town of Karlovo. This turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Karlovo is located at the base of the Stara Planina Mountains, so close that an hour’s walk from downtown would find you scaling a steep mountainside. Indeed, there is a street that is being pedestrianized that leads straight ...