Exploring Bulgaria By Bicycle

The Mountains

The Stara Planina is the country's spine and its passes carry old roads. Beklemeto follows the line of the Roman Via Traiana, and Roman remains still sit beside the modern surface. South of it the Rila and Pirin ranges climb into granite, pine and glacial lakes. The Rhodopes to the southeast are lower and rounder, covered in spruce and cut by gorges that narrow to a few metres. Caves run for kilometres under the ridges, and several are open to walk through. Rila Monastery stands in a valley on the western side, rebuilt in the nineteenth century with striped stone arcades and frescoes over every wall. Bachkovo, the second largest, holds seventeenth-century interiors. Both are working monasteries, not museums.

The Valleys and Villages

Beyond the mountains the land opens into farmland. The Thracian plain around Plovdiv grows vines and vegetables, and the valley at Kazanlak grows the roses that supply much of the world's rose oil. Plovdiv is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe and still stages concerts in its Roman theatre. To the north, Koprivshtitsa and Veliko Tarnovo keep whole streets of National Revival houses, timber upper floors overhanging cobbles. In the villages, horse carts still work the fields. Thracian tombs are scattered across the country, a few of them painted and open, most of them unmarked mounds in a field. Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule for close to five centuries and Soviet influence for another four decades, and both left their architecture standing.

Did you know? Bulgarians shake their head for yes and nod for no. It catches out nearly every visitor, and it's worth watching for the first time you ask a shopkeeper whether they have something.