BULGARIA MAY 2026

 

We – John and Ali, Anthony and Magda and I – arrived in Sofia after a very early start from Stansted and were met by our guide Kamen with Ian and Allan Kerr.

We set off immediately on a 2-hr drive to the old town of Koprovshtitsa. On the way, the many statues of Vasil Levski allowed Kamen to start educating us on the universally revered passage of Bulgarian history: the failed revolution of 1876 and the successful expulsion of the Ottoman empire by the Bulgarians and the Russians in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8. Levski (“the Lion”) was captured and hanged in 1874, but his inspiration, and the revolutionary cells that he set up, gave a serious footing to this last revolution (of many!), which in turn triggered the war.

Koprovshtitsa contains a number of houses associated with heroes of the revolution, such as Todor Kableshkov and the writer Lyuben Karavelov. The houses are interesting in themselves as part of the Nationalist Revival – inspired by the Romantic movement – which started to create a Bulgarian national imaginary from the 1820s and 30s. (There is an interesting parallel with the nationalist movements in the Baltic States at about the same time.) Although the Turks had kept Bulgarians in poverty and underdevelopment since they conquered the Second Bulgarian Kingdon in the late 1300s, in the early 19^th century some successful Bulgarian merchants and traders could acquire significant wealth.

 Many built beautiful modern houses of a basically Turkish design but with Bulgarian stylistic elements. Koprovshtitsa has several which are now museums, and we saw more later in Plovdiv.

We also entered the church of the Dormition (Assumption of the Virgin) of 1816, where a wedding was going on! The Turks allowed Orthodox Christianity to continue under their rule (although conversion to Islam was encouraged, not least by the fact that Muslims paid lower taxes!) Churches had to be small – smaller than mosques and no higher than a man on horseback. The Bulgarians got round the law by digging down to build their church floors below ground level, and one frequently descends steps to enter old churches. 

The next day we went on to Plovdiv.

 The second-biggest and the oldest city in Bulgaria, it claims 8,000 years of continuous habitation. The original agricultural settlers would have spoken what is termed “pre-Greek substrate” and (according to Wikipedia) produced some of the earliest gold and pottery artifacts in the world. The earliest named people were the Indo-European Thracians, after whom Bulgaria’s central valley, the Vale of Thrace, is named. Arriving in around 1,500 BC, they were neighbours of – and perhaps related to – the Macedonians. A Thracian wall survives on the top of the hill where the city first existed. Plovdiv’s first recorded name is Philippopolis, for Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father. This historical period is highly complex, with Celtic and other incursions and a period of Persian domination (ended by Alexander in 335); the country was then conquered by the emperor Claudius in 46 BC. Trimontium was an important Roman city, with a large stadium

 (partly excavated - here seen against the background of the Ottoman mosque built with stones from the Roman city wall), baths, a beautiful theatre discovered quite recently, and a large, well-preserved forum, on which the communist government built a hideous “brutalist” post office in the 1970s! Despite its Roman name, Plovdiv claims to be built on 7 hills, one of which is topped by a contentious monument of a WWII Russian soldier.

Our next stop was the C11^th Bachkovo monastery, with magnificent frescoes in the main church (19^th century – the original C11^th church was closed for repairs). Bulgaria was converted to Christianity in 869 AD at the establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. Tasked by Constantinople with evangelisation in the area of Bohemia and Moravia, two monks from Thessaloniki, Kiril and Methodius, developed an alphabet in order to present the scriptures in written form to their converts. This is known as the Glagolitic alphabet (and is used for example for some Russian “Old Church Slavonic” writings). A disciple of St Kiril, one Kliment, refined the alphabet for use in Bulgaria to produce what is now known as the Cyrillic alphabet, used – with some variations – throughout most of the Slav-speaking world today.

That night we slept in the tiny mountain village of Kosovo, with a resident population of 10, and some houses maintained as summer or weekend houses.

 Our hostess and her two sons turned out to be fluent Spanish speakers, having lived for many years in Venezuela!

The next day we went deeper into the Rhodope mountains

 to the typical little village of Shiroka Luka (Broad Curve) with the National Folklore School. Passing through Devin, where mineral water is bottled, we set off on a 3 km walk up a gorge

 to a waterfall in the national park. Very pretty, with oak, Ostrya carpinifolia, and lots of wild flowers which tested our botanical expert, although he was generally quite convincing! We arrived in the evening at Lyaskovo – the village was rather run down but Ruman’s guest-house was impeccable and the home-made rakias unforgettable.

Lyaskovo contained a number of soviet-era vehicles,

 including one truck (made in Gorky, in Russia) which we thought was probably WWII (no photo, sadly).

An early start brought us to the Devil's Throat cave in the magnificent Trigrad Gorge at 9 a.m.

 One enters a huge cavern, possibly traversed by Orpheus on his way to the Underworld. There is a charming little carving of the legend halfway through the tour – the electric light-bulb enables moss to grow in the otherwise pitch-dark of the cave!

The underground river which formed the cave now flows by a different route.
 

We then drove on to our hotel in Trigrad. Leaving our kit, we set out on a 17 km walk through the beech and pine forest down to the Greek border (the cairn in the photo).

 This was a frontier between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, and the rusting barbed wire and tall gates were a sinister reminder of that time.

 There were also ruined bases for patrolling Bulgarian units.

The next day’s walk was similar, but with more open landscape and longer views. We saw a red-backed shrike (no photo!) at our picnic lunch stop, which thrilled everyone. 

Leaving Trigrad for the last time,

 we walked 9 km to the Yagodska cave – nearly losing Ian and Allan on the way! A long limestone passage, once the course of an underground river, it presents no less than 7 types of cave formations: stalactites, stalacmites, stalactones, leopard-skin, curtains, dendrites and cave pearls. We ate our picnic in a bar by the river, then drove down to our last hotel at Govedartsi in the Rila mountains, stopping to buy fresh strawberries on the way!

Our last day was beastly! We went to climb to see the seven Rila lakes, but we started in rain and climbed up into the cloud.

 Thank goodness the top station of the ski lift was open (although the lift wasn’t!) for hot chocolate.

 Some crocuses were the wildlife highlight of the day!

 We gave up soon after and returned to Govedartsi soaked to the skin! Ali’s birthday made our last night a special event. 

The next day the party split up in Sofia, with Allan and Ian leaving early, and John, Ali and Anthony after lunch. Photographs thanks to various members of the group. 

Magda and I remained to explore Sofia for the afternoon and following day. We did a walking tour and of course saw the Alexander Nevski cathedral (started 1882).

 Here for contrast is a modern church interior.

 We also visited the Red Flat – a flat recreating middle-class life in the 1980s, not very different from life in the UK a decade earlier. 

Outside the National Theatre

 we saw a bit of folk-dancing but couldn’t do any… Sunday was the celebration of the Cyrillic alphabet and Bulgarian literature and culture. The whole city was on the streets.