Shipka Pass and more

Today was a pretty relaxed day, although the stage took over 330 km. And with the road conditions here, that's a lot. I accidentally hit two big potholes. The tires and rims are intact, even though I had feared the worst with the way they hit. The potholes here can't be compared to ours. You could sink half a house in them, or something else you want to get rid of.🫣

Then I drove through the mountains to Shipka Pass, it's supposed to be a beautiful route and there are two monuments at the top. They're probably there, and the route is probably beautiful too, there were certainly enough curves.

However, the clouds decided against me. At around 500m, the cloud cover started and it wasn't over at 1509m, so visibility was sometimes less than 10m. You don't need to look for monuments there.😉

On the south side, it went back down with lovely sunshine. Then the bad roads started, Bulgaria's east seems to be annexed. Many empty houses, abandoned to decay, in all villages. Rural exodus is not a foreign word here. On the way to the pass, I passed a large settlement, more like a slum, I suspect the Roma people were crammed together here. Terrible conditions, as far as I could judge while passing by.

The landscape changed massively, no more mountains, flatter than East Frisia, lots of agriculture and little settlement.

Just before the Turkish border, I found a very good campground and it's even affordable.

There are also Dutch bicycle tourists here, they have had the same experiences as me, very few campgrounds and if there were any, they were usually much more expensive than fixed accommodations.