Delicious traditional Bulgarian breakfast of homemade square pastries that we filled with cheese, yoghurt, pine honey, and jam and some French toast that was meltingly good.
We then cycled a little way to Devil’s Throat cave. I kept getting the name wrong and embarrassing myself. The cave is where Orpheus went to meet Hades and beg for his beautiful wife to be returned to him. Orpheus played his music to Hades who relented but gave one condition. As Orpheus walks out of the underworld, he mustn’t look back to look at his wife. Silly man forgot the instruction and turned round to see Eurydice disappear into thin air. There is a fountain that springs out of the side of the cave about one-third from the bottom which is his tears. You drink from the fountain, chuck a coin in and make a wish. Neil and I shared 10p’s worth of wish as we couldn’t find any other coins. It did feel like we were descending into The Underworld – it was lowly lit and the waterfall was gushing. They can’t trace where the waterfall goes and where the river starts – they have tried putting paint in the water and it takes two hours for it to appear in the river… I like a mystery.
So having descended into hell and returned full of wishes, we set off down a lovely long hill in the sunshine following a river. And that’s really where the day peaked. For the next 5 hours it was a long, slow, slog uphill for miles and miles and miles. I started going through the alphabet naming countries (Kilimanjaro remembered). I sang 10 green bottles. I sang One Man Went to Mow. But best of all I stopped every 10 minutes and just stood still. It was very, very hot. Even the passing Bulgaruan motorists parped their horns in mockery.
However, we had the best lunch yet! The Shopska salad remains a firm favourite. Neil went for the pork and chicken skewers. We ummed and ahhhed over an egg dish but didn’t order it. It came anyway and was one of the tastiest dishes so far 🙂 poached eggs on top of cheesy, buttery, peppery yoghurt. Sounds very weird but it was very good.
Replete (or should that be topped up from breakfast) we walked round the town which had a lot of traditionally built houses. We then got back on our bikes and descended back into hell. It was tough. I dug deep. The problem with stopping was that I attracted all the local flies. Not sure why they chose me. No flies on Neil! Just as we hit the sign that indicated a 10% hill up, we saw the Penguin van charging like a white horse down the hill to our rescue. Ok, so we cheated a few kilometres but we got out at the top and free-wheeled 12km into town.
A swim, sauna, beer, wine and more salad and yoghurt and it was time for bed.
Snoo's kitchen 