Negotin to Edirne, roughly 880 km
It’s difficult to find the time (or headspace) to write — so I’m skimming over details and skipping ahead. For anyone invested in the spare parts saga: they never arrive.
From Negotin, our route takes us south towards the mountains that separate Serbia from Bulgaria. We cycle through the Stara Planina National Park and enter Bulgaria at the Kalotina border crossing. An old cobblestoned road alongside the new motorway carries us most of the way into the capital.
In Sofia our Warmshowers host, Stefan, plots a route for us through the Bulgarian mountains. “This is what I would do — if you don’t care about elevation,” he tells us. We want quiet roads and dramatic scenery. Scrapping our plan to cut across the middle of the country, we take his advice and go south.
After the usual three-lane roundabouts and fast traffic, the route leads us out of the city on a dirt track alongside a train line. We’re heading east in the direction of Panagyurishte. From there, we’ll turn south towards the village of Debrashtitsa — at the base of the tallest mountain we’ve come to so far.
We pass over flat farmland, hills crowning the horizon. It doesn’t take long to cover the distance and we soon start climbing. The sun is shining but storm clouds cover half the sky. Somehow we miss the rain — but the ground is wet when we stop for lunch at a reservoir. More clouds are gathering, so we don’t stop for long. As we pedal uphill, a stray dog joins our group. She follows alongside us for a few kilometres — rushing in and out of the undergrowth, tracing a scent we cannot smell. We lose her on the descent, her paws unable to keep pace with our bikes.
Originally we were going to give ourselves an easy day to get out of the city. But at around six o’clock in the evening (in keeping with our usual lack of planning) we decide to press on for another thirty kilometres. This end-of-day push will allow us to camp at the top of the mountain the following day. I struggle to force my legs to keep moving. Two hours later we set up camp in a sloping field behind a line of low trees as darkness bleeds into the landscape, fumbling for tent pole loops in the half light.
The following morning we wake early. We will have to ride for around seventy kilometres before reaching the base of the climb. From there, it’s one thousand metres of elevation to the peak. I’m worried about timing, unsure if we’ll be able to make it to the top in one day. It’s already mid-afternoon when we reach Debrashtitsa, and the hardest part is still ahead.
It’s a long, slow, arduous climb — but it isn’t as hard as we expect. A thick canopy of leaves shades us from the heat of the day. Cold, fresh water pours out of the mountainside. There are springs every few hundred metres — so we’re spared the weight of carrying extra water. We stop just before the peak to refuel on coffee and flapjacks. After four hours of solid uphill, we reach the top.
We freewheel downhill for a short stretch, then follow the edge of Batak Reservoir. A field runs down to the water’s edge — the most picturesque camping spot we could hope for. We swim in the reservoir as the sun goes down. Icy water washes the salt and grime from my body and I emerge shivering, reborn.
Our bodies ache when we wake the next morning. We were too tired to stretch the night before. A sharp tightness in my chest (from pulling against the handlebars on the ascent) snatches my breath. It takes a few minutes of cat-cows and baby cobras for the pain to subside. The muscles in our legs burn when we get back on the bikes. We’re in desperate need of a rest day.
We book a two-night stay at a guesthouse in Breze, high in the Rhodope Mountains. The village is carved out of a steep hillside. Traditional timber-frame houses line the streets, their rooftops covered in slates half a metre wide. Three grey-haired women sit on the front steps to one of these houses. All three are dressed in woven red skirts, embroidered blouses, and knitted vests — floral scarves knotted under their chins. They pause their chatting to nod a greeting as we pass.
Halfway through the village, I stop to check the guesthouse address on my phone. An elderly man comes over and asks a question in Bulgarian. His speech becomes increasingly frustrated as we mumble apologies in English, unable to understand. When words fail, he grabs my handlebars and gestures for us to follow. Unsure what he is trying to communicate, we wheel the bikes behind him as he jogs ahead.
At a garage, he waves his hands towards the corrugated metal to indicate we should lean the bikes. He enters a house and returns with four women — one of whom starts shouting at the open window of the building opposite. A man around our age emerges from the front door and comes over. “Hello,” he says. “Is there anything you need help with?”
After all this effort, it seems rude to say we’re fine, in fact. So we allow him to explain the directions I have open on my phone, wave our thanks to the old man, and continue uphill to our destination.
It’s late, once again, when we arrive. We arranged to have dinner at the guesthouse, and the owner, Katya, has prepared an incredible meal: fresh salad, potatoes cooked with herbs in the oven, homemade sausage and fried pork. Nettle leaves and primrose are drying on the table beside us.
Katya sits with us as we eat. We learn that she and her husband lived in Copenhagen for ten years to save enough money to renovate the house we’re staying in. She tells us that she worked fifteen-hour days doing three different jobs: as a carer, a cleaner, and in a nursery school. We ask when she returned to Bulgaria, and she tells us she left Denmark at the beginning of the pandemic. “Or plandemic,” she adds with a knowing look.
When we tell her we’re both from London she responds: “Lots of immigrants? Very multi-culti?” I nod enthusiastically, my mouth full of food. Katya fills this silence with “yes… very bad.”
I’m always surprised by the ease with which people reveal their bigotry — as if there is no other way to think, no room for disagreement. The ‘multi-culti’ nature of my native city is one of the reasons I love it so much. In conversations like this, my emotions flare and I find myself unable to respond — but Peter is good at challenging these beliefs in a non-confrontational way.
She is interested in what we think of eastern Europe, if we see any differences between east and west. We tell her that in the east the landscape is more wild, and the people more friendly. She waves her hands - she doesn’t want to hear about the people. “People are the same everywhere,” she says.
When we ask if she enjoyed living in Denmark, she replies: “Yes and no. They hated us there. Hated us.”
I find it strange how someone can stand against immigration in one breath, and relate the experience of discrimination as a migrant in the next. Whiteness, I suppose. I don’t want to continue this thread of conversation — but if I were to ask, I doubt Katya’s definition of a migrant would include London’s pale-skinned Bulgarian diaspora.
Casual racism is something we’ve encountered depressingly often: from the young Serbian man sitting across from us on a bus, who said he only began to care about politics when the Syrian war saw increasing numbers of refugees seeking asylum in Europe; to the wildly antisemitic comments Katya’s husband comes out with; and the Turkish personal trainer who invited us to his home for dinner and explained his family left Istanbul because too many Arabs had moved there.
“Is there something about us that makes people feel comfortable saying this shit?” Peter asks. Whiteness, once again. At least I hope I bear no other features that might signal solidarity with these views.
Our bodies could do with another day of rest, but we’re eager to continue (or at least to leave Breze). We ride up and down switchbacks through empty ski resort towns, the roads lined with half-completed hotel complexes. It’s slow going. We hope to get at least eighty kilometres in, but as afternoon turns to evening we have covered less than forty.
This is travel in the oldest sense of the word: travail — hard work, laborious. Every kilometre of distance we cover comes at the cost of our bodies’ labour. Each morning we set out and travel only as far as our legs can carry us. The term journey comes from the French, journee, meaning a day. A journey then is a day’s work.
Yet travel is also a privilege, a luxury. I have a passport that allows me to visit every corner of the world (often without a visa). I have the financial means to take a year off work, the security of a home to return to, and the right to live in a country where I can access government support. If this social security net fails me, I have family who can catch me. I’m white, cisgender, able-bodied. My privilege is visible; something I carry with me into every situation. But the further eastward we travel, the more I feel this privilege. And I’m becoming aware of nuances I hadn’t given much consideration to before — like the hierarchy of European whiteness.
Unable to make it over another peak, we stop to camp near the top of a mountain. I check the forecast: a small chance of rain at midnight, temperatures above zero. We set up the tent in the shelter of thick pines to protect it from the wind.
Katya told us there are bears in this territory. I Google how to camp safely in bear country. The first link is to a Bulgarian national parks webpage, which tells me that a sixty-five year old man was killed last year in a village near Smolyan, less than twenty kilometres from where we are. I try to put this information out of my mind as we pack our remaining food into one pannier and hang it from a branch with a bungee cord. The bag droops around a metre from the floor.
In the end it wasn’t bears we needed to worry about. The forecast was optimistic. Thunder and lightning and heavy rain keeps me awake at night. Our tent poles bend and the fabric shudders in high winds. When we step outside in the morning, snow covers the ground.
Dropping down from the high mountains, we follow the river Arda over the hills towards the border with Greece. We cross from Bulgaria into northeastern Greece and enter Turkey near Edirne. Passing through this region, I think of all the people on a far more difficult, often deadly, journey: travelling in the opposite direction to the route we follow. We have the luxury of choosing to ride east (hungry for experience, for newness, a sense of adventure) while so many are forced to follow the same roads west. People seeking the safety and security I take as given.