Balkan borders
Sofia to Dimitrovgrad, 13th - 14th June
Sofia is surrounded by mountains. Quite useful historically, and nice for hiking, but a bit annoying for me: after two weeks of not riding much, I'd have to start with some hills. I had spent the last five days in Bulgaria with a friend visiting from London, and prior to that I'd spent ten days in Athens and two in Thessaloniki before taking the bus to Sofia. It was a wonderful time: I saw a ' train cemetery' outside Thessaloniki, went to Bulgaria for the first time and hung out with my friend around Sofia and Plovdiv including a bit of hiking. After all that, though, I had definitely fallen out of the practice of living as a bike nomad. When I got back on the road, though, the habits returned easily - it's just like... well, like something you don't forget once you've learned it.
I eased myself back in with a short first day on Friday afternoon, reaching a lovely Warmshowers host couple in Bankya after some predictably awful kilometres through the outskirts of Sofia. I was very thankful to my hosts for having me, considering I'd messaged them just one day prior and that they were leaving on holiday with their two young children the next morning. The community is really special and I always try to contribute something when I am given such open hospitality. Often I'll bring a gift, but what feels much more meaningful is contributing work - cooking, making masala chai (my favourite), or helping with household tasks. Probably the most important thing is to have the right attitude - being thankful but not obsequious, polite but not distant. The best experiences are when you have enough openness and energy to form a friendship during your time there, which can happen to some extent even if you only stay for one night.
I'd been looking forward to seeing the Bulgarian countryside, having only seen the cities so far, and my hosts' house was far enough from Sofia that it was beginning to feel truly quiet and green, with beautiful views. Bulgarian landscapes are far greener than the arid Greek plains I had become used to, perhaps because the mountains bring more rain. Whatever the reason, it was a welcome change, as were the temperatures peaking a few degrees lower in the daytime - 34 in Athens might be 31 in Sofia. The night temperatures were even lower: in Bankya, I was surprised to step outside into an eleven-degree morning. Being in warm climes for so long, I'd become used to constant t-shirt weather and I was strangely pleased to feel cold again.
I took a very roundabout route towards the Serbian border, happy to add some distance to avoid big roads and bigger hills. My routing app made some questionable decisions as it considered a busy dual carriageway a minor road and happily took me on tracks through fields, but it's all part of the fun. Even the occasional territorial dog is an essential Balkan bike touring experience, with my preferred approach being to dismount, talk calmly, and slowly walk past. I was quite happy to be back in nature, and dogs are the price you pay for taking the back roads. In one tiny village, an old couple in a big yellow van waved me down to give me a cold lemonade ('Turkish!', they proudly told me) and we managed to have a conversation despite having no language in common, with me explaining my route so far and them warning me of the hills ahead. The most common question people have in this kind of conversation is 'how did you cross the water?', for some reason. To me, it seems pretty straightforward that you would of course take a ferry, but I suppose for mainland Europeans that's a rarer thing than for island dwelling Brits.
I made more progress than I had expected on Saturday, realising in the afternoon that I could make it all the way to the Serbian border if I pushed on. There would be mountains, but I'd save one day from my Schengen area 90-day allowance (I'd already used eighty, and Bulgaria has been in Schengen since January 2025). Plus, it would be quite satisfying to get all the way through the mountainous border in a single long day after two weeks off. I absolutely made the right decision - the views were beautiful, the roads empty, and the downhill truly glorious. It's nice to have some motivation to push myself a bit, even if it's quite artificial - nine remaining Schengen days would be much the same as ten. The border was a bit of a novel experience for me, too: leaving the EU, this would be my first land border by bike! I was fully expecting some bag checks (I moved my Swiss army knife out of easy access), and perhaps some questions about my plans, but I was disappointed by the lack of scrutiny - the border guards stamped a random page in my passport and waved me through.
Serbia, already! I felt quite ahead of schedule. A friend would be meeting me in Belgrade, about 350km away, and I had a week until I had to be there. Plenty of time to take it slow and get distracted. I had, at the last moment, bought myself a local eSIM so I could use the Internet at non-extortionate prices, and I faced the challenge of imminently needing to find a wild camping spot in a brand new country. It would be best to get away from the border, to avoid any confusion with border police, but in theory it would be legal to camp on any public land in Serbia.
When I reached the first village after the border, Dimitrovgrad, this was seemingly confirmed as normal practice. I asked two old women if I could camp in a particular quiet green spot and they pointed me instead at a very visible patch in the middle of the village, on a small island in the river. Although it would probably have been fine, I was a little nervous about being so exposed - especially on a Saturday night. I eventually found a spot up a hill overlooking the village. First night in Serbia, wild camping success! On a call with my family, I belatedly realised that I didn't actually know what timezone I was in, and it turned out I'd gone back an hour (a similar thing happened to me on the ferry to Greece, too). I suppose that shows that I've embraced the relaxed, low-preparation approach to travel, at least. I'm not sure what I'll do after Belgrade yet - it's quite hot around here and I'm nearly out of Schengen days, so I might go back to the UK and spend some time seeing my own country in the short summer period where it's actually nice. I have some time to figure it out though, and I'm enjoying not having concrete plans yet.
