Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. 28th October 2024.

The clocks had gone back the day before and my watch had got very confused. So I was up an hour later than planned. Not a problem really because the riding to the border was quick and easy. A bit less easy was leaving North Macedonia. The woman there decided she wanted to search my luggage. I’m not sure what she thought I might have been smuggling out of her country. But I escaped in the end.
Bulgaria was less concerned and just checked my papers and stamped my passport. The border was up at a chilly 1,150 metres so it was an easy downhill ride to my overnight hotel in this unpronounceable town. There was a garage for my bike. An ATM that didn’t charge a fee and a nice bakery for food. I went for a walk around the town centre but there wasn’t very much to see. Welcome to Bulgaria.

On the way there I called in to see the Rila Monastery. I wasn’t impressed all that much by the inside, thinking it to be very overblown, but I did like the outside, with its striped decorations. Quite unique. The building itself was nicely different to other such places too. It dates from the 10th C, according to the info.

I had some odd things happening with the front wheel. A fair bit of shimmying. But it wasn’t there all the time. But it was happening enough for me to think it might be the wheel/tyre.  It could be the roads but they were often recently surfaced. I was heading to Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. One of the key tasks was to replace the tyres, especially as the rear one was showing canvas in places. It had lasted 15,000kms, which isn’t too bad on a fully loaded bike. I’d fitted a Tyre Pressue Monitoring System before I left home and had never used it. I planned to remove the monitors from the valves and to make sure the wheels were balanced properly.

In order to facilitate this I was in contact with a guy named Ivo, who runs, along with his wife, MotoCamp Bulgaria. This is a place that’s up in the hills and is a haven for touring bikers. It has accommodation and a campsite. A kitchen and a BBQ. There are a number of rallies that occur there each year. It’s a great place for travellers.

At my request, Ivo very kindly rang around some tyre suppliers and found a place that specialised in Dunlop tyres. I’d decided on a pair of Trailmax Mission and they had the size I wanted. So on my second day in the city I went to see them.
A bit of background information is needed here, to make sense of what comes next. Before I started the journey I decided to fit smaller wheels (better for road riding) along with tubeless rims and tyres. A tubeless tyre is much better for fixing at the roadside in the event of a puncture and would also be safer if a puncture happened.
I obtained spare hubs and a company called Staffordshire Wheel Works did a great job of building on some tubeless rims. The wheel sizes were now 19” Front and 17” rear, as against the original 21”/18” combination. Then I had the spokes sealed up to make them airtight, by Central Wheels, near Nuneaton. This job involves fitting a sealing band around the centre of the wheel, across the spoke heads.
The tyre fitter was very good and very fast. But I could see that some edging tape at the side of the sealing band had become dislodged during the tyre removal process. He cut it away and all was OK. The new tyre went on and inflated properly.
The rear one was a whole different ballgame. All of the tape on one side had become dislodged. It’s removing the tyre that does it. That got thrown away but when he put the new tyre on another bit of tape had moved and was blocking the valve. He could blow it up to pop the tyre on but couldn’t adjust the pressure down again.
He left the valve out and slowly the tyre deflated enough to be removed. He sorted that problem out then refitted the tyre and got the wheel onto the bike. There was a guy there who spoke good English and was also  knowledgeable about the spoke sealing process. He reckoned these sealing systems always fail eventually. “Cheers pal”, I thought. Only time will tell I suppose. A bridge to be crossed if/when necessary.
The front wheel felt very strange as I rode away from there, almost £300 lighter in the wallet. But it did actually feel much better.

Meanwhile I had a look around the city. The previous evening I’d walked around some of it and had and seen some attractive buildings, including the Patriarchal Cathedral of Sir Alexander Nevsky. It looked really good lit up in the dark. Probably better than it would have looked in daylight.
I went to see Boyana church, dating from the 10th C but with a 13th C addition. It was in very good condition, with mostly complete murals dating from when it was built. I suppose the darkness and cold helps to preserve the paint.

Then I went to the National Museum of History. An interesting place. The south of Bulgaria used to be Thrace. But the pre-history story was much the same as all of the Balkans, as was the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman story. There was plenty of information and artifacts to study.
Bulgaria was founded in the 7th century and is one of the oldest states in Europe. Prior to that it was part of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine empires. It escaped Ottoman rule in the late 19th century, becoming a constitutional Princedom. It seemed to have a habit of picking the wrong side in the world wars, then came within the orbit of the Soviet Union, adopting communism. Independence followed the fall of the Communists. It joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007.
Sofia had been a good place to visit, with interesting architecture. But now it was time to see more natural beauty as I rode up into the hills to Moto Camp. The best news of the day was that the front wheel felt GREAT! No wobbles, jitters or anything else. It goes around corners sweet and clean. I was very happy. But what was wrong with the other one? Wrong type of tyre? Bad moulding? Severely out of balance? The effect of the puncture repair plug? Distortion caused by going over speed bumps too fast? I guess I’ll never know. But I’m very glad it’s cured now.

But first I headed for Koprivshtitsa. It’s the home of Georgi Benkovski, a Bulgarian rebel who fought the Turks. There’s a big statue of him in the village. I had a look around the Guild House and the school. The town was a breeding ground for a new style of secular and mass education in the mid 19th century. It also has very important architectural heritage and the whole town has the status of City Museum. There’s almost four hundred notable buildings there, reflecting the development of Bugarian architecture. Its location up in the hills only adds to the appeal of the place.

I carried on from there to MotoCamp, where I was welcomed by Ivo. He set me up in a small apartment, where I stayed for a couple of days. It’s a great place, very much aimed at bikers. Ivo wasn’t around all that much and his wife was away. So I spent some time doing some small maintenance jobs on the bike. I told him how things had gone with the tyres and thanked him for his help.
A couple of Bulgarian guys arrived on the second day. One of them was riding a brand new Moto Guzzi V85T. It’s a large adventure style bike. He said he was delighted with it. He’d had a BMW GS1250 before that and described it as a ‘money pit’. I’m not very surprised as they can be very expensive to repair and they’re not always as reliable as you might expect from BMW.

I headed out to visit a couple places. The first was the Thracian Tomb at Kazanluk. It dates from the 4^th century BCE and had been discovered by some soldiers digging an air raid shelter. But what visitors could see was a copy, the original having been locked up to preserve it. The murals inside were very good, depicting assorted figures from that era. The actual tomb was quite small, with some bas relief carvings on the wall.

There was one particular place I really wanted to visit in this part of Bulgaria, which was the Buzludzha Monument. This place is quite famous among travellers. Several people I know have written about it. Its main attraction is the design and the great photo it can make. It looks just like a flying saucer which has dropped down and parked on the top of a hill.

The Buzldzha mountain itself is very important in Bulgarian history. Three major events took place there. The 1868 last fight of the Hadzhi Dimitâr’ rebels; the foundation of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party in 1891; and a WWII-era battle between fascists and partisan forces in 1944. In 1961 a design competition was launched for memorials to celebrate these events. Three of them were built quite quickly but it was 1971 before the Buzludzha monument was started, and 1981 before it was completed. It’s supposed to represent a wreath but I’m convinced that almost everybody who sees it will always say, “Look at that alien spaceship up there”.

There is no official access to the interior now, but online photos show it to have had a pretty amazing design. It was very popular with visitors, who were allowed inside in controlled numbers. But when communism fell, so did any state interest in its monuments. Maintenance stopped and thieves and vandals stripped it off anything of value, especially the copper roofing and any other metalwork. It looks sad and forlorn , sitting on its chilly mountain top . But the good news is that there is an intention to refurbish it. There’s a very good website that will tell you all about it, which can be found here. Some information on the restoration project can be found here.
For my part, late on that chilly afternoon, I was only interested in completing the 75Km ride back to my warm room at MotoCamp.
I left there next morning, planning to ride to the coastal town of Varna. Looking back, I’m not sure why I did that. I know someone who lives there but he was away. It had nothing much to offer as a destination and I would have been better off spending my time at the town I came through to get there.

That town was Tsarevets. It had a large fortress, which was very popular with visitors on a sunny Saturday. I walked up and around some of the fortress but the main aim was the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Holy Ascension. This was a very strange place, mainly due to the frescoes. Their style looked like something out of Lord Of The Rings. I was thinking they were pictures representing hell. But they weren’t. Just a very strange style. They depict scenes from Bulgarian history but in a modernist style. Because of the nature of the frescoes the church hasn’t been consecrated.

There was a tower with a lift up to the top of it, which is just a viewing platform. It gives a great view over the town. There’s nothing much to see in the fortress itself as it’s mostly ruins. But the town as a whole has lots of historical places to visit. I should have stayed there!
I moved on to visit the rock hewn churches of Ivanovo. Basically, churches cut into the cliffs above the town, and occupied by monks. There was only access to one. Dating from the 13th century, it has 14th century frescoes inside it. It’s amazing how they’ve survived all this time. It must have been an extremely challenging place for the monks to live but they seemed to thrive on those kinds of challenge.

In Varna I found the apartment I’d booked, which doubly confirmed my mistake in going there. It was extremely basic, with no sink in the bathroom and a musty smell. The lack of a common language between me and the woman I dealt with meant that she managed to over charge me too. I found a shop for some food and made the best of it.
Varna was cold when I arrived and no warmer when I left for Plovdiv. For the first time on the trip it felt like winter was-a-coming. I dressed up warmly. The ride was a mixture of motorway, a stop for fuel, coffee and biscuits, a normal road, then more motorway and coffee. The place I stayed at was a very pleasant hostel and there was a sign on the reception desk welcoming me. I’d arrived before the desk closed (at the strangely early hour of 5pm) so was booked in by some friendly people.

I went out for a walk along the cobbled streets before it got dark, snapping a few photos and enjoying the architecture and ambiance of this old town. A reasonably priced restaurant provided me with a tasty, and rather large, chicken schnitzel. A good ending to the day.
Plovdiv is reckoned to be Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city and is Bulgaria’s second largest. That meant there were Roman ruins to be visited. I was up in the old part of town and my first visit was to the Plovdiv Museum. Situated in a very attractive old house, It described the history of the city from Roman times and especially on the failed rebellion against the Ottomans in 1876. There were plenty of old artifacts to gaze at too. A good introduction to the city.

I walked down the hill to the Small Basilica, a museum covering some Roman mosaics. There were several old, Bulgarian houses to admire on the way down, in quite a unique style. I came across a Roman street, showing the layout of where the shops would have been. There were plenty of columns still standing but not much else.

The Small Basilica had some very nice mosaics on the floor, depicting animals and geometric patterns. In one corner was an early example of a Cross Font, installed when Rome converted to Christianity in the 4th century.

Further on was the Main Basilica, a much larger place with a huge area of mosaic floor. A large variety of animals and patterns. Most interesting was a section explaining how they were made and the materials used. They had up to 40 colours to choose from. Very fiddly work but with amazing results.
They’d discovered layers beneath the layers. Partly because better work had been available and partly where the original floor dropped so they covered the damaged ones with new ones. A fascinating display.

A lot of these ruins had been built over in medieval times and were only found during construction work. There’s bits of the original city wall here and there, including in the breakfast room in the hostel. Roman soldiers with my boiled eggs.
Plovdiv’s age and location made it one of the most important in Thrace, being on the Via Diagonale. That road runs from Istanbul up to the Balkans, so very busy with trade.
Further back up the hill I passed some small ruins and then I came to the Roman arena. Quite large but surrounded by shops. They hold concerts there in the summer, which is a great idea.

Plovdiv had been a great city to visit. Very interesting and very well maintained by the authorities. It was an excellent finish to my Bulgarian visit and my Balkans tour.
While I was there I dealt with some admin issues, the most important of which was to apply for my Iranian visa. I was fairly confident that my Irish passport would gain me entry, whereas my UK one would not. I contacted an agency called Tap Persia and filled in all the forms they required. As well as the visa they could arrange the compulsory health insurance too, for an extra fee, of course. Initially I put on the form that I would collect the permit letter from the Iranian office in Istanbul. But when I discovered that it could take up to ten days for it to be issued, I changed that to Ezerum, a city closer to the border.
The second task was to arrange for Base Camp to send me out some paperwork and some items I needed.These were a new front sprocket. A waterproof backpack cover to replace the useless one I had with me. And some Sealskinz socks, because my waterproof boots let the rain in. These were all going to be sent to a friend’s address in Turkey.
What did I think of the Balkans, having ridden through them? A very lovely area for riding a motorcycle and for discovering history. All the countries there had a similar history, going back as far as Roman times. Also they’d all been occupied by the Ottoman Empire. And most of them had been part of Yugoslavia.
But they all had a different medieval history and a different post Ottoman history too. WWI had affected each of them in different ways, as had post communism. All of them were beautiful and interesting places to ride through, showing off their autumn colours. I had enjoyed the region very much.