Greece to Bulgaria via Bansko
From Greece we were on the home run back to our place in central Bulgaria. It is around a ten hour straight drive without stops. Usually we follow the motorway straight across northern Greece towards Turkey and then at Alexandropolis take the road along side the Turkish border to Svilengrad on the Bulgarian border. From there it is a 2 hour drive to our house.
However, this time we decided to turn north at Thessoloniki and enter Bulgaria at the border crossing near Sandanski. Our original plan was to find a campsite in Greece somewhere close to the Bulgarian border but there were non listed in the guide books we had and by around 5pm we were entering Bulgaria. Our next stopping point was to be a campsite close to Bansko, however that was another couple of hours drive, so we decided to try and find a cheap hotel for the night.
Just on the northern outskirts of Sandanski we saw a motel on the edge of the road. so we stopped to ask about rooms. There appeared to be no other guests in the hotel and a double room was 30 levs. I did attempt to ask if it was ok to bring our dogs in and even resorted to making ‘woof woof’ sounds but to no avail – except rather strange looks.
As the access to the rooms was through a separate door we took the dogs for a walk close by and then managed to sneak the dogs in. It wasn’t the cleanest of hotels but it gave us a bed for the night and meant we could get a good start the next morning.
So by 8.30am the next day we were back on the road and heading towards Bansko. I had looked to invest in an apartment in Bansko back in 2004 so I always find it interesting to go back and see if the development is still continuing on a massive scale or if there are now hundreds of abandoned building projects like elsewhere in Bulgaria. We observed massive developments around a supposed golf course miles from anywhere and that there was now little distinction between Bansko, Ravda and Razlog – these once separate villages now all merged into one through one development after another along the road. Bansko was pretty deserted and we had a quick drive around, grabbed a coffee and headed off in the direction of Velingrad.
I have always wanted to visit the Bear Sanctuary at Belitsa, where the bears once used as Dancing bears on the streets of Bulgaria for cruel entertainment are now allowed to roam around a large compound in the mountains. We had been warned that the last bit of the road to the sanctuary was in bad condition, however we did not realise that this mean over 11km of barely passable track. After 40 minutes of edging along we had done maybe 4km and were extremely worried about the van and so gave up and turned round.
Back on the road we headed through the mountains and some fairly stunning scenery to Velingrad and from there to the motorway at Pazardjhik and to Stara Zagora and home.
