Weather chasing in Eastern Europe — staying dry in 3 easy…countries.
From Greece through Bulgaria to Turkey — or how to keep dry.
We’ve got some balls now! And self-esteem is a source of powerful motivation and self-belief, at least that’s what psychologists say. What they don’t tell you is that if you believe in yourself too much you could end up on your bike soaking wet, fiercely shivering downhill (still with a stupid smile on your face). That’s what happened to us on our bike trip tryout in Northern Greece.
We wanted to hit a two-day ride at the western Rhodope Mountains in Greece. And boy, were we pumped up! Our previously planned bike tour on the Danube river ended up in a spectacular fashion — Ned got injured 2 days before departure (a piece of advice from him — “f**k running marathon trainings”) and Ivan, eventually,was left on his own but his dog got poisoned back home and he had to return urgently). Long story short, we haven’t been able to ride in a few months time and we just wanted to pedal it to the wild…our cravings were maaaybe a little over the top… here is what happened.
We headed west on a Friday night. Ivan’s all-roader was out of the pit-stop so we could finally carry our gear around easily.
It is the end of May here in the Balkans — in our part of the world people call it spring time. And spring is (usually) characterized with high weather volatility (if an accountant was in charge of the weather news that is precisely how he would name the cyclicality of good and bad weather.). In simple terms, the forecast was dreadful — over 40 mm of rain everywhere but we wanted to go. Badly. Surely, we had our gear on and mostly our high self-esteem — a little rain can’t hurt nobody, right?
On our way to the Greek border we had some serious doubts — it was pouring and the temperature was averaging 10 °C. Shitty weather, no doubt. Nevertheless, we had so much gear as if there were 17 people moving to a foreign country, so maybe we could be protected from the elements and not be miserable all the time. Eventually, just before the Greek border (around 11 p.m. with fog and rain) we saw a wooden sign with the comforting transcription “Chapel” on it. Chapel means a roof over our heads! What a treasure!
The place was a miracle — we had a roof over heads (it was leaking here and there, but hey), a table and a fireplace with a sack full of wood! My eyes watered…
The next day we hit the road. However, it was still raining but who cared. “We have breathable clothes. Soft shells, technology and blah-blah” one of us said. The other nodded in assonance. We were miserable by the first downhill. It just ain’t funny biking through a thick wall of water. Surely, we could have kept up if we had to but we did not need to.
We started out from a village called Mikroklisoura just by the Bulgarian border and the initial plan was to cycle for two days in the area. However, after 30 km of hitting the wet wall we had to stop and rethink our strategy.
We did our 30 km of stubbornness and had enough. We decided to change the course of action. Our smartphones were indicating some chance of not raining by the Bulgarian-Turkish border on the Black sea side. Some 7 hours of car ride. Life is to short to put up with mediocrity, right? And off we went!
We were driving for a few hours again — our bikes in the back of the car. Not quite sure if that was a bike trip or a road one but it was fun. What was even better is that we ended up on an empty beach. Just for us, boom!
We had a great campfire that night (Ned had his guitar on, so jamming by the seaside fire — cute!) and managed to ride some 80 kilometers that day. We started from camping Coral , through Lozenetz , Tsarevo, Varvara, Ahtopol, Sinemoretz to reach Rezovo — just by the Turkish border. A nice 80 km ride to remember.
This was probably one of the most randomly planned trips we’ve had, but the lessons were learned. We calculated that there were 1100 km of car ride in opposition to 110 km of bike ride, but chasing the weather was not such a bad call after all. Looking forward to our next trip around the Balkans! Much love!
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