Cape Kaliakra, Northern Black Sea Coast
This was somewhere I had been meaning to visit for a while, as I had read it was a spectacular cliff jutting out into the Black Sea and covered with the ruins of an ancient fortress.
We made the forty minute or so trip from Varna, past Balchik towards Kavarna, passing various ‘golf developments’ along the way with names like Thracian Cliffs. These appeared to be large, half finished complexes in the middle of random fields and with no sign of life anywhere near.
We turned off the main road and drove through the town of Kavarna, famous for the annual rock festival held here each summer, but appearing to have little else to offer.
A few minutes after we left Kavarna, we drove through the small, but well kept village of Balgarevo and headed out to the cape, passing numerous wind turbines and phone masts.
As we approached the headland we were stopped at a roadside kiosk and had to pay 3 levs per person to carry on. We parked in the small car park and set off to explore the ruins. There was what appeared to be the original outer wall of the fortress and then inside several ’series of small walls’ as Tony Robinson of Time Team would say. There was practically
nothing by way of explanation except for a few signs stating whether the ruins were a church or dwelling house.
The fortress is said to have been initially built in the fourth century BC and then further enlarged by the Romans and the Byzantine empires.
After a short walk we came to the ruins of a large entrance gate where a lone busker sat under the arch, trying to stay out of the rain. Walking through the arch way you follow a road to the end of the headland, where there are several small tack stalls. The main part of the cape is given over to a military base and a weather centre, both fenced off and guarded.
There is a small restaurant and bar and a tiny restaurant inside a cave. There is an interesting model of how the fortifications may have looked once upon a time but little else of interest.
At the far end of the headland there is a plaque commemorating the defeat of the Turkish fleet by the Russians in 1791 and according to legend, it was from here that forty women tied their hair together and leapt to their death rather than be raped by the Turks under the Ottoman rule.
There is a small chapel and viewing area at the far point.
I was severely disappointed by Cape Kaliakra. There was little to see and the 3 lev per person entrance fee hardly seem justified when the ruins did not appear to have been careful excavated and there was little by way of any explanation as to what you were looking at.
