Day 165: Saturday 30 August – Bulgaria to Serbia, by Ken

We woke feeling cold in spite of the bedroom roof hatch and window being closed. It was beginning to feel autumnal, the feeling being reinforced by the sun being noticeably lower in the sky. The days of sleeping under just a sheet were over. In just two weeks we have moved from it being too hot to sleep indoors to needing a duvet for warmth indoors. It was just 9° outside and it didn’t feel a lot warmer inside. We closed all the windows and hatches in the living area and turned the heating on.

Mabel Decked Out With Turkish Flags

The facilities at Sakar Hills Camping were some of the best we had come across in our travels with self-contained bathrooms each with a toilet, hand basin and shower. The only downside was the shower didn’t have an enclosure and we both managed to flood our bathrooms. I mopped up mine, Jane left hers for Martin.

The camping ground looked a picture in the early morning sunlight. It’s a pity the peace and quiet will be spoilt when a new railway being constructed on a high embankment at the bottom of the site is completed. As it was, the noise of an excavator spreading topsoil on embankment slopes eroded by the wet summer in Bulgaria was enough to spoil the tranquility of a Saturday morning.

Smarty and Mabel At Sakar Hills Camping (Note new railway embankment in background)

We were packed up and ready to go by 9:00. By then the sun was up in yet another clear blue sky and bringing some warmth to the day. We visited Martin and Shirley to pay and buy a dozen bottles of the Merlot we had sampled last night. At €4 a bottle, it was a good buy.

Martin gave us directions to the shop in the village where we bought two blocks of cheese, salami bread and a bottle of tonic water for 10.5 Lev (~NZ$9). As Shirley said last night, living in Bulgaria is cheap.

The Man That Kept Chickens Next To Sakar Hills Camping Also Had Goats

We were on our way soon after 10:00 with about 350km to travel to get us over the border and into Serbia. We set off on a two lane road that took us to the town of Narmanli where satnav showed there to be plenty of filling stations. First task of the day was to buy vignettes for Mabel and Smarty. We adopted the tactic of parking Mabel and Smarty in view of the filling station cashier in the hope that pointing at them would overcome any language difficulties. The first two stations we stopped at we were right out of vignettes despite having posters advertising their prices. The next station we stopped at was a Gazprom (which I think is Russian). There ‘Vignettes?” got a nod from the cashier. I pointed at Mabel and she produced a one day sticker with the symbol of a small truck on it. Unfortunately, Smarty was out of sight so I pointed to a car parked outside. She didn’t have any one day vignettes for cars so I opted for 5 days. Then confusion set in, she not understanding why I wanted two vignettes. A man standing nearby came to the rescue with “Parlais vous Francais?”. With the use of some Franglais I explained what I wanted, but even he was confused by two vignettes. Then a pump attendant joined in speaking in Bulgarian. I took the two of them outside where they could see Smarty “Oh le Smart” said the French speaking Bulgarian. Back inside even he had a problem convincing the cashier I needed two vignettes, but eventually I got what I wanted for 30 Lev (NZ$24) and emerged with the two stickers. I checked out a few parked cars to see where to place the vignettes on our windscreens, it seemed anywhere you liked would do, so I did.

Ken Pleased He Finally Hd Vignettes For Bulgaria

We were expecting to join the motorway we had left yesterday but instead found ourselves on a two lane road in awful condition. It was badly rutted and cracked, in some areas the pavement had failed completely. It all made for another stern test of Mabel and Smarty’s build quality, not to mention the A-Frame connecting the two. We passed fields of very sad looking sunflowers, brown with their heads bowed awaiting the imminent arrival of the combine harvester. 

Sunflowers Awaiting The Combine

Storks On A Power Pole

It appeared we were now in cheese country. As we passed through villages the roadside was dotted with signs reading ‘Kasar’ alongside crude representations of cheeses by way of yellow circles with a red dot. Close to the signs were commercial sized glass fronted refrigerators loaded with circular cheeses. We must have passed dozens of signs before deciding to stop and buy one from a couple standing outside a house next to a ‘Kasar’ sign. The woman offered me a cheese not much smaller than one of Smarty’s wheels, I settled for something smaller at €15 that would nevertheless keep us in cheese for some time to come.

Roadside Cheese Stall

The rough road seemed endless, we passed a pair of stalks standing in their nest on top of a power pole. The driving seemed little better than that we thought we had left behind in Turkey. While the cars that passed us, usually at speed, bore northern European plates, drivers and passengers were dressed in typical Turkish garb. We realised we were on the migratory route of Turks living in northern Europe heading home for the winter. It would make a great David Attenborough documentary, we could hear his distinctive voice giving the commentary along the lines of “Here we see their cars, usually travelling in pairs, speeding northwards after spending the summer in their birthplaces in Turkey” and “Here are their feeding places” – virtually all the roadside restaurants were Turkish. Also, he would find traces of them having stopped to rest on their journey, laybys were disgustingly full of litter – the Turks really are a messy lot. And, he would see evidence that some fall by the wayside as we nearly did. An Audi going very fast shot passed us (it seems Audis have to be driven flat out) it continued on the wrong side of the road to pass a car ahead of us. It appeared the Audi driver hadn’t seen a large truck pulling out of a side road coming in his direction. The gap between the car about to be overtaken and the truck was far too narrow for the Audi and it was going much too fast to stop although we could see from the nose down attitude it was breaking hard. Fortunately for the Audi, both the truck and the car swerved to their right allowing the Audi to shoot through the gap. Then the Audi accelerated away as if nothing had happened.

North of Plovdiv we finally joined the E80 motorway that would take to Sofia and then northwards to the Serbian border. The motorway was in an equally bad state, if not worse, than the road we had just left. The surfacing was rutted, cracked and even potholed in places. Our rough ride continued. We stopped at a service area (with a Turkish restaurant) for lunch that we ate inside Mabel.

E80 Motorway In Bulgaria

On the southern outskirts of Sofia we joined a ring road that took us anti-clockwise around the city. The road was an absolute disgrace with ruts so deep we were worried that Smarty could ground on the peaks in between. The surfacing had shoved so far that there was a veritable wall of black stuff against the verge. As if that wasn’t bad enough the road was incredibly rough. We followed a truck that swayed violently from side to side as it progressed slowly around the ring road.

The E80 north of Sofia was in slightly better condition, but not a lot. It seemed the Bulgarians have an enormous problem on their hands as far as their roads were concerned. Every kilometre we had travelled was in need of reconstruction, it had gone well past resurfacing being a cure.

Seen Walking Down The Fast Lane!

We reached the border between Bulgaria and Serbia at 16:15. The two lanes between customs booths on the Bulgarian side were very tight with a customs officer standing on either side of the road. We were in the right lane which was clear ahead of us, but were stymied by a car stopped in front of us to our left leaving insufficient room for us to pass. The driver had clearly upset the customs officer with whom he was speaking – contritely by the look of it. The man was brought back to a multi-lingual sign where part of the Turkish version was pointed out to him. There was a lot more dialogue and much shuffling of paper before the man was allowed to get back into his car and drive on. While all this was going on the customs officer on our side sat down and smoked a cigarette. She took her time finishing it even though the car blocking our way had moved on. After all the trouble we had gone to get our vignettes she didn’t even give Mabel’s windscreen a glance!

Smarty Draws A Crowd At The border

The queues of traffic waiting to get into Serbia were massive. I took the opportunity to visit a roadside money exchange and converted our remaining Lev back to Euro. It was some time before we reached the front of the queue. There, we were waved through after a perfunctory look at our passports. It had taken an hour to cross the border.

The Border Crossing Proved Too Much For These Two!

On the Serbian side of the border I changed €200 and received a thick wad of nearly 24,000 dinar in exchange. I wondered how many thousand I would need for a beer?

There was a noticeable improvement in the condition of the road we drove for approximately 25 kilometres to reach our overnight stop at Camping Caski Drum. We parked in an area by the roadside full of trucks while Jane went to find the entrance to the camping ground. We used a gravelled area opposite the entrance to wait for traffic to clear so we could cross the road. Jane told me that on her way back to Mabel she witnessed another very near miss as a car pulled out of the entrance, apparently without looking, and straight into the path of an oncoming car travelling very fast. Fortunately the oncoming car was able to swerve across the road, through the gravelled area and back onto the road to avoid the car. If he hadn’t Jane thought the crash would almost certainly have been fatal. And if it had happened while we were waiting there the car would have run head on into Mabel.

It turned out not to be much of a camping ground, just a narrow strip of grass by the side of a track behind a restaurant (Turkish, of course). A woman pointed to a covered table with two benches and gestured us to park there, then she walked off. Not a very warm welcome. We parked as told. Nearby there were a few cars and a large group dressed in typical Turkish dress. Some were sleeping on the grass.

Our Table Next To Mabel - Camping Caski Drum 

Jane needed a twosie and went off in search of our taciturn host. She returned a while later with the key to a nearby chalet that contained a bathroom we could use. Jane was asked to lock it behind her, presumably to stop others using it.

Later, we walked over to the restaurant to get dinner. All the tables outside were taken and inside was full of smoke. We decided to give it a miss and went back to Mabel and prepared jacket potatoes with baked beans which we ate sitting at the table alongside Mabel. The sun was going down as we ate and most of the people nearby produced prayer mats, faced Mecca and went about their business. Later on a young woman came over speaking to us in German, she had been badly bitten by insects and asked if we had any insect repellant. We dug ours out and said it was fine if she wanted to share it with the others in her group. She was very grateful (in German).

Just as we were thinking of turning in for the night our host knocked on the door. She wanted paying for our pitch in Euro. She also wanted the chalet key back.

Today's Trip (356km)
(Our route took us anti-clockwise around Sofia's ring road)