Our journey from the UK and through the Balkans was a long one: 14 countries, 13 languages, 3 alphabets, 7,500 miles of road and experiences enough to challenge us and our 27 ft Four Winds motorhome. And none were more intriguing than Bulgaria!
We entered Bulgaria from Turkey, one of the sharpest transitions motorhoming has to offer. From Asia to Europe, Islam to Orthodox Christianity, Latin alphabet to Cyrillic, Turkic people to Slav, rolling steppes to steep mountains and valleys.
The border crossing, between Kapikule and Kapitan-Andreevo, took 2½ hours of patience, coffee and a ready supply of euros; 3 weeks later a friend took 11 hours. He had not realised that every summer hundreds of thousands of Turks return home from Germany (where they are Gastarbeiter or 'guest workers') and, a month or so later, flock back to work in their unloaded Mercedes and BMW's.
Too wide to leave Turkey as a motorhome, we pretended to be a bus. In the confusion that followed, we had to walk back for the essential passport stamp, but somehow we missed the customs inspection.
Across the no-man's land in Bulgaria, all was chaos. The lane labelled 'BUS' was closed, the 'EU' lane was for buses and the other two for whoever could fight their way into them. Trying to be an 'EU BUS', we finally managed to confuse our tormentor, an unofficial official without badge, uniform, language or courtesy, by entering the country twice. The bank had no money to exchange; we bought our small motorbike 14 days' worth of Green Card for a reassuring €19; the Disinfection Tax was a sterile €5; the Road Tax a rough €18 (total €42 = £30). Shouldering our way through for a fill of duty-free, euros-only diesel at 21p a litre, we were finally free to go.
Heading west, we drove through countryside and villages as poor as Turkey. The crops included tobacco, sunflowers, vines, cotton and ever-present watermelons on sale at the roadside. We saw plums being gleaned, storks in their nests on electricity pylons and many donkeys and donkey-carts, immediately distinguishing Bulgaria from its horse-drawn neighbours.
Beginning what was to become a pattern, we eventually found Camping Istok, down a side road next to the Motel Klokotniza, completely overgrown and empty. A low concrete arch over the entrance made negotiation with its elderly Guardian pointless. A few miles before Plovdiv, we passed another semi-derelict site with an even lower entrance - camping in Bulgaria still means tents or on-site huts.
West of Plovdiv we located the 'Camping Motel Deveti' listed in our Caravan Club Guide, discovering that Deveti means '9' - the 9th km from town. We also discovered that there was no camping, so we settled for a 'bungalow' at £7.40 a night. For this, we got parking space, a wooden hut, soap, towels, sheets, toilet with hot shower, an unofficial hook-up and a bed we were thankful not to use.
In Plovdiv, the country's second city, we climbed cobbled lanes between the brightly painted façades of restored Bulgarian Baroque houses and churches. Below lay a large Roman Theatre, still in use. On the hilltop were the scant ruins of Eumolpias, a prehistoric Thracian settlement, from where the panorama over the old city contrasts sharply with the view across the Maritsa River, to a scattering of Communist-era tower block workers' flats.
Heading north after Plovdiv, we passed through Stara Zagora and then Kazanlak at the eastern end of the Valley of Roses. Here 80% of the world's attar of roses (for perfume, rosewater or Turkish delight) is produced, by a 300-year-old labour-intensive method requiring 2,000 dewy petals to be picked at dawn to make 1 gram of the oil. Anyone looking for seasonal work?
The five golden onion-domes of the colourful Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity shine among the fir trees, high on the hillside above the village of Shipka. With church bells cast from spent cartridges, it commemorates the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, which finally liberated Bulgaria. The crypt is filled with solemn music and the tombs of Russian soldiers.
After Shipka, the road climbed for 9 miles, zigzagging through the forest to the summit of the Shipka Pass at 4,310 ft, as the air cooled and freshened. We first climbed the pass from the northern side in the summer of 1989, on a bicycle ride from the UK to Istanbul, crossing the ridge of the Balkan Mountains which form the backbone of the country.
At the summit, the large empty car park of the Shipka Hotel became our home for three free nights while we explored the high ridges and climbed 1,057 steps to the top of the Shipka Monument Tower. After months in the dry Mediterranean heat, it was delightful to walk in the magnificent shady beech forest, opening out onto green fells among elder bushes, wild strawberries and harebells with the scent of catmint underfoot. Butterflies, grasshoppers and dragonflies filled the air, bees roamed the clover and martins circled their nests under the eaves of the hotel. This was the height of summer with not a tourist in sight.
The hamlet of Etâr was a wonderful surprise: about fifty 18th and 19thC houses and water-powered workshops (watermill, sawmill, fullingmill, walnut oil press, etc) had been moved from around Gabrovo and rebuilt in a steep-sided river valley as an open-air museum. Craftspeople were working as furriers, silversmiths, cobblers, cartwrights, hatters, potters, weavers, icon-painters, woodcarvers and bakers, with many selling their wares.
Nearby, another deep gorge held a monastery, a museum and the Bacho Kiro Caves where a self-guided tour of 'Bulgaria's only electrically-lit show caves' cost £1 each, search and rescue extra. Best of all, for £4 a night, was a campsite of 20 wooden huts and a small area of hard standing - at the bottom of a steep cobbled road! The kind Guardian hooked us up through the reception cabin window and showed us the ablutions with touching but misplaced pride.
Using our motorbike, we followed the Yantra River through wooded countryside to Veliko Târnovo where the river loops through a gorge. This was Bulgaria's capital from 1185 to 1393, the City of the Tsars, its history long and turbulent. We paid £1.50 each to visit the imposing Tsarevets Fortress on a hill once occupied by Thracians, then Romans (Emperor Justinian built a 4thC AD fortress here), followed by Slavs, Byzantines and, finally, the Ottomans in 1393. Now, Veliko is occupied by its many lively university students.
About 3 miles before the frontier town of Ruse, the dilapidated wooded campsite gave us walking access through the pine forest to the dry bed of a wide river, a tributary of the mighty Danube, which was itself reduced to a low muddy crawl in the summer drought.
At the border with Romania, we paid a €13 toll for the bridge and had passport and customs checks before joining a queue to cross the Danube. The iron (and ironically named) Friendship Bridge carries the road above a railway: it was used in the film of John le Carré's 'Spy who Came in from the Cold' and we could easily imagine Michael Caine lurking there, collar turned up, on a dark wet night. However, this time, he was helping people to get into Bulgaria!
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Republic of Bulgaria is bordered by Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and 230 miles of Black Sea coast. With an area about half that of the UK and a population of only 8 million, it has rolling farmland, forests, some of Europe's finest sandy beaches and mountains which are popular with skiers and naturalists alike.
Camping: The German ADAC Guide puts it well: 'Very few places are prepared for foreign tourists with motorhomes. Any trouble taken is concentrated on the many bungalows or huts available, while investment in actual camping facilities, such as sanitary buildings, is a rare exception. Bulgarian campsites are officially divided into 3 categories for quality, but if you plan your camping holiday around these assessments you will get many surprises – and seldom nice ones!'
We used motel and hotel car parks (usually free), TIR lorry parks for a small charge (particularly on the main transit route to Turkey), or took a cheap hut with parking alongside.
Currency: The Bulgarian lev (lv) was stable at 2.7 to the pound; the currency should not be brought out of the country. Credit cards are of little use except to get cash from ATM's, which are easy to find in the towns. The euro is now the preferred second currency.
Costs: Bulgaria remains pleasantly inexpensive despite a 'dual pricing' system which ensures that Bulgarians often pay less than we do for tourist facilities, sometimes considerably less!
Food: We filled our lockers before leaving Greece, so we did not miss the supermarkets we could not find. Small grocery shops hold a limited range of food. Good local beer, wine and cigarettes are very inexpensive in this hop, vine and tobacco-growing country! Tea is made with fruits and flowers and coffee served strong, black and sweet.
A typical meal of shopska salad (chopped tomatoes, cucumber, onions, grated cheese), kebabche (kebabs), rice or chips and excellent beer, cost about £5 for 2 in a good restaurant.
Fuel: LPG is freely available and diesel cost 40p per litre. Since Turkey was 65p, we knew where to fill up!
Internet: Even small towns have good facilities for emailing for as little as 1 lv (37p) an hour.
German is spoken in tourist areas but English is now the first foreign language in schools. Young people were keen to talk to us about life in Bulgaria today and their hopes for a better future when they join the EU in 2007.
Maps and Guides: For overall planning, we used a 1:800,000 map of Romania and Bulgaria in the Kummerley and Frey series, bought in advance. The Lonely Planet Guide to Eastern Europe gives excellent value for money with its coverage of 19 countries!
Roads: Bulgarian roads, quiet even in summer, are often narrow, rutted and potholed; sometimes made of rough concrete sections and sometimes cobbled. However, EU money is transforming some of the through routes into wider carriageways, with a good coating of bitumen. Motorways have a toll. Alcohol tolerance is 0.05%.
Safety: Our experience was that Bulgaria is safe for motorhomers. It is quieter, cheaper and less developed than other nearby former communist countries and the people are warm and friendly.
We saw only one other camper in Bulgaria - a small Dutch van near Plovdiv. The country's reputation as a place where even the police run scams with fake speeding fines (we once got pulled over riding our bicycles) is now outdated and we had no hassle at all, once we got through the border!
Telephones: Public telephones work on cards and can be used for national and international calls. UK mobile phone companies have good but expensive roaming agreements with the extensive local networks. The international code for Bulgaria is +359.
TV: The standard is PAL B/G (common throughout Europe but not the UK) and many old US and British films and documentaries are shown with subtitles.
Visas & Insurance: Bulgaria gives a free 30-day tourist visa to EU citizens at the border. For £12.50, Comfort Insurance extended our usual 12-month full motorhome insurance cover for 26 countries (including RAC Continental Breakdown Cover) to a further 11 countries, including Bulgaria, for up to 120 days in any given insurance year. We bought the motorbike its 'Green Card' cheaply at the border.
Weather: Bulgaria has a continental climate - hot, dry summers and cold, damp winters. The Black Sea coast is crowded between mid-July and late August, so spring (April to mid-June) and September are the best times to visit.
Where Else? With more time, you could extend your journey further east to visit the Black Sea coast or further west to Sofia, Europe's highest capital, and then south to the Rila Mountains.
For tourist information, write to the Bulgarian Embassy, 186-188 Queen's Gate, London SW7 5HL or visit and email through www.bulgarianembassy.org.uk/tourism. For general information, visit www.tourism-bulgaria.com or www.bulgaria.com.
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