I woke up after 5 hours rest, did this and that and then fulfilled another task: going to a normal shop in Russe to by nuts. Soon I found one where the owner fills up a bag from a drawer. I wanted to have a mixture of different nuts and so first I ordered peanuts and then some other that where dark red/brown. The owner gave me a strange look but was ok with selling what I ordered. Later I found out that the second choice indeed deserved this name, because it also was peanuts, just with their skin and I didn’t know this skin colour. But at home I really mixed those 2 variants of peanuts.
Then I left Russe, which meant nearly 10km to go until I finally was outside. At a gas station a friendly guy helped me to inflate my front wheel and then I had to go for further 25km only straight on that fast road that had begun in Russe. Only variation were 3 women, every ~10km one of them, waiting for “someone”. And after 37km in total there was a nice lake on the left. But as I had made a break shortly before I didn’t stop. 3km later was “my” first village after Russe, Tsar Kaloyan, and I tried my proven combination of cheese and bread, this time spiced up by a paprika that I had got for free.
The next shop stop was after the city Rasgrad, where I didn’t find a nice place, in the second village of that day, Ushintsi. All my bottles were near to empty and I wanted to do some wild camping, so I was happy about that shop, in fact the first, last and only for my purpose. My decision was to divide those 240km to Burgas in 3 parts and thus after km 80 I wanted to start looking for a place for the night. Exactly at km80 there was a little road leading to a hill with some forest. To my big surprise on foot of that hill was a water tap. After some exploration I decided to get my bike on top of the hill and set up the tent in the forest. It was hard work, but I was motivated by a nice place with shadow and near enough to the water.
I started with preparing the place for the tent as I saw a brown animal running, not sure if it was a deer and the I heard a dog barking. Fast I felt less comfortable with my place…. Later I brought nearly 10l of that delicious tap water to my new camp site, as I wanted to wash myself with all the equipment I had carried along for that purpose. One is a foldable bowl, originally for dogs. The rest is a cotton glove and soap. Clean and refreshed I went into the tent, feeling so much safer by that thin cloth, wrote this text and before 8 I was ready for sleep.
Friday, 3.8.2018
Not permanent, but good and long sleep, dreaming of being lost in a Chinese city and found by an Austrian pupil two times, what reminds me on Ruth & Gordon meeting in Russe, but is this the way (my) brain works at night? Slowly I prepared everything for leaving, had a little breakfast at the water tap, but even at 8 it was too hot for staying longer.
I filled up the camel pack with 3l tasty water and took it on my back so I could get a sip by the hose whenever I want, but after a kilometre I gave it back in my top bag, it was too uncomfortable. The route began as yesterday, a big road, no villages, only the quite big city Schumen after a while. But another 20km later the route turned off from the big road. At that point I met a Belgian family with their Bulgarian tour guide. They made little tours around that area. In Yankovo I bought the bread and cheese combination, this time spiced up with tomatoes and carrots from a farm. The village surprisingly opened to a big square where I set down in the shadow.
Three boys were at the playground and sometimes I heard words sounding German. The harder I tried to find out, the more words I could catch. So, I asked them why they are talking in German. They are living in different German cities since years and only in their holidays come back and one of them speaks only German and Turkish, the other German and Bulgarian. They were around 8-10, but their German was really poor. But we all found it funny to find other German speakers here. I should have some video of them, as they wanted to try my camera, maybe I will post a clip later – they asked me for my youtube channel 🙂 . When I was about to leave, the Belgian Family came. They already had had similar experiences but for the boys it was the next surprise as they also could speak German and off I went.
So far 77km had been done and I wanted to wait for 80km (2/3 of the complete way to Burgas). But the hilly area with woods looked promising and I could see that it was about to change, and the next mountain was a bit far and here an interesting path was going up at the left. So, I made a short exploration and decided to stay there, at only 2p.m.! But when I started to settle down I could see that this decision was right and only 5min after everything being done it started to rain and didn’t stop for 1,5 hours. It wouldn’t have been a problem to cycle on, but as for the night in the tent, it was far better so.
