Bulgaria

We’re now back in Bulgaria having taken an excellent few days in Romania and have time to do a proper update. Bit of a long one, but hopefully interesting.

We left Nikolovo in Bulgaria a week ago in a bit of a hurry...correction! One hell of a hurry! We’d been staying with Garry at Tree Pigs Farm for 2 ½ weeks and let him know that we’d decided to leave a couple of weeks early, making it a 3 ½ week stay instead of the 5-6 weeks that we’d loosely talked about originally.

The reaction to news of us leaving was cataclysmic.

Garry (who we’re now convinced has serious p***********l and d***k problems) blew up and became extremely threatening and vebally abusive. He refused to listen, and at one point took a step towards me with fists clenched shouting ‘Have you got a f***in’ problem with me?’. Erm, what?

No logic, no reason. It was like trying to talk to an ape.

He almost immediately locked up our bikes, shouting that we had an agreement, and that he wasn’t going to release the bikes until we’d payed him an extra 592 Leva (around £280).

We hid in our room and stayed awake all night, knowing that he’d gone to his bedroom with a large container of red wine, then at first light, (bearing in mind that he had a rifle, a pistol, a lethal hunting bow, a machete, several large knives and a p*******c nature at his disposal) we got him to let us take one bike to the nearby bank, and paid the a***hole off.

I often wondered what his sullen nature was hiding. Now we know. May he live through interesting times.

He did us a favour actually. Much as we loved the people in Nikolovo, we had a biker’s meeting to go to and other coutries were calling. We took off, shaking our heads with disbelief that it had happened to us and headed up to near Gabrovo, still in Bulgaria. This is where there was to be a motorcycle traveller’s meeting in a week’s time.

We needed a friendly face, and found it there in the forms of Doug Wouthke and Polly - 2 of the sweetest and most laidback people that you could wish to meet. Doug runs MotoCamp Bulgaria - a biker’s meeting place - and hails from Alabama. We felt that we knew him already as we’d watched him talking on the HU (www.horizons unlimited.com) videos about world travel. Name a place, and he’ll not only have been there, but on an unlikely bike, like a 1930’s Indian or a Harley chopper.

The route up around Gabrovo was stunning, with twisty mountain roads and views of old communist monuments on the mountain tops. After a night of catching up on sleep, we headed off into Romania on Doug’s recommendation. A few people shook their heads and drew in breath when we told them. What the hell, we’ll do it anyway. We’ve got a few days to kill, and a trundle around another country would help shake off memories of what we’d gone through.

To get from Bulgaria to Romania entails crossing the Danube, and we crossed at the Ruse bridge crossing instead of taking the closer ferry because of flooding. Bulgaria and Romania have both been having a lot more rain than normal - along with Mexico from what we’ve seen on the news.


This shot might not look like much, but I took it facing behind me while riding over the bridge. I crossed my fingers that there were no security cameras on the bridge watching me....

We expected the worst in Romania and the first miles confirmed it. The roads were unbelievable. At such a major international border the truck traffic must be heavy, and the roads had lost the battle with them. It did improve after a few miles, and we were soon zooming up towards Bucharest without worrying too much about potholes.

We decided to take a shortcut across country to avoid Bucharest. It was a good idea in itself, but we (I) chose the wrong road. They all looked the same on the small scale map that we’d borrowed, but our road soon went from tarmac to huge potholes to an exciting tarmac/pebble mix and eventually to mud. The route was fascinating despite the state of the road.

Unexpectedly, the locals kept the weeds down around their houses (unlike rural Bulgarians) and if it wasn’t for the horses, cows, chickens, dogs and kids on the road, it could have been England. The style of house gave it away, as well as the smell of horse that was everywhere. The houses seemed to use corrugated iron or zinc for roofing, and a lot of them had strange peaks on them decorated with ironwork - a little like a castle.

At one point we went past a young bloke who stepped out towards me waving his finger with a stern look on his face. What? No bike zone? No foreigner zone? I ignored it but it puzzled me. 5 miles of difficult dirt road later, we found out what he was trying to say.

The floods had taken down the bridge.

Mr helpful on his scooter kindly and patiently directed us back to a different route over the river. 5 more miles of bad road later was when Anita started screaming. Even with earplugs and a crash helmet on, I could hear her clearly from 30 yards away.


This is one of the better bits of road when I wasn't laughing too hard at Anita's screaming and could see to take a photo.

Riding on slippery muddy lanes is easy, fun even on a light dirt bike with knobbly tyres. We’d done it dozens of times. On a heavily laden 650 road bike with road tyres it was really hard work and an accident waiting to happen. A broken leg, or even worse, a broken bike in the middle of rural Romania could have been a problem so we turned around, waving to all the same kids that we’d already waved to and looking back at all the adults who were giving us the ‘good grief, it’s those alien monsters again’ slack jawed looks and we hit the road to Bucharest again.

Knackered, we dropped into a cheap hotel and looked forward to a good night’s sleep. We’d failed to notice the ‘non-stop’ bit of the sign outside though, which not only referred to the café hours under our room, but also to the loud pop music thumping up into our room. I think the rooms were actually meant to be rented by the hour....

The overnight thunderstorm cleared, and amazingly the next day we found a much easier route through beautiful coutryside up to Cuerta de Arges. The town seems to benefit from being near to beautiful mountainous scenery and the castles of Vlad the Impaler, as it has a very prosperous feel to it. It’s still cheap though, with rooms and food/drink very affordable.

Perona castle on top of the mountain - where Vlad did most of his impaling.

We’d met 3 Polish overlanders on the way. A guy on an Africa twin, and a couple on a 650 Transalp. They were very young and new to biking, and showed us their tattered clothes where they’d come off a couple of days ago. We wished them good luck - especially considering that their planned route was across Afghanistan.

Setting off early in the morning heading towards the Transfagarasan ‘highway’, we came across a lot of groups of locals carrying shovels, rakes and other farming tools. We assume that they were peasants heading out to work either their fields or for other people. There were also a lot of horse and carts out, carrying not only the hay that you’d expect, but everything from telegraph poles to one with at least 40 huge oil drums on it. It must be a cheap form of haulage for the locals.

The Transfagarasan is a mountain pass over - strangely - the Fagaras mountain range. The road is around 115km long and rivals anything else in Europe for spectacular scenery. The road surface is pretty dreadful on the southside, but north of the tunnel at the top, it improves dramatically. The north side was in cloud when we came through, but the scenery that side is different to the south - the pics don’t do it justice, but you can see the northern plains laid out way out in the distance. Quite breathtaking.


We pushed on through Fagaras and Brasnov to Rasnov and stopped there in a fantastic hotel - again very cheap but beautifully finished inside with large rooms. We were too tired to do much so after a beer and some grub we took a walk then hit the sack. The weather was still ok the next day and we headed on down back towards the Bulgarian border. We’d thought of stoping in the border town of Giurgiu in Romania but it was an absolute s***hole of the first order. What is it about border towns? Over the bridge, and the Danube was even more swollen than a few days ago. The border town on the Bulgarian side - Ruse - is also a s***hole, so we pushed on again all the way down to a truckstop near Byala. The hotel looked like nothing, but for very little we had a huge apartment with sitting room, bathroom, bedroom, balcony. What luxury.

Sitting in the restaurant, a bloke of our age popped his head round the corner and said ‘are they your bikes in the garage?’. It turned out that he and his wife - Peter and Liz - were cycling from the UK to Istanbul, then taking the train part the way back and cycling the rest. And you thought that we were crazy!

I’m sure that Peter and Liz won’t mind us posting a link to their blog - www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/lizandpeter

They’re a lovely couple and after eating with them in the evening and at breakfast, we headed off down a very wet road to Gabrovo and the 2010 Bulgarian HorizonsUnlimited meeting. For an explanation as to who/what the HU is, see www.horizonsunlimited.com.

The HU world bike traveller meet has been great fun and a strange mix of nationalities. If I can remember right, there were Belgians, Greeks, Australians, Americans, English (yay!), Swedes, Germans, Bulgarians, Canadians, Serbians, Hungarians, Romanians and Icelanders. I think that's it...


We had a ride out on the Saturday with 25 bikes in the mountains, stopping at a fascinating rural craft centre all driven by the mountain stream. Speaking to the silversmith, he asked via his son what we were doing in Bulgaria. When we explained, he said 'then you must have a gift for luck', and gave Anita a tiny silver key pendant. It was very touching and kind.

We had a slight hiccup today when looking at Anita's bike. The slight weeping of petrol on a carburettor manifold had got a lot worse without us noticing. After panics of trying to find one locally, I stripped it down and found that it was just a little deformed, so reassembled it another way round in the hope that it'll stop leaking. As long as it's not perished it's ok. A serious tear could hole a piston.

Rear left are Jan and Eva (Sw), at the front are Mark and Bronwyn (Aus) and Doug and Polly are on the right (US/Bg). Mark and Bronwyn are heading back to Oz on the same route as us but have less time so will be ahead. We wish them fair weather.

We've decided where to go next. Turkey - where we were going anyway (we had considered Jordan and Stria). Having chatted to some people who'd toured around Turkey, we're really looking forward to it. There's a huge amount to see, and apart from the petrol being £1.50 a litre, it's said to be quite affordable. So Turkey it is, and it'll be our first experience of both Asia and of applying for visas (for Iran and India).

Will post again when we can.