When I have been reading other people’s blogs I have often seen photos of weird and wonderful “alternative” motorhomes. Last night one came and parked right next to us. It was a monster 4×4 truck complete with snorkel to allow it to drive through deep water, dozens of spare petrol/water cans and special tracks to allow them to cross soft sand. The living quarters appeared to be a sort of half size container, which was so high off the ground the owners needed a ladder to get in and out! This kind of vehicle would be great for crossing the Gobi Desert, but for Greece overkill I think.

I know Greek roads are bad but this is overkill!

So today we set off for Bulgaria. We said goodbye to Alan and Carol, whose grand daughter had gone in to labour over night, but still no news.

The road to Bulgaria was all motorway and only a minor toll was involved, but Sat Nav played a blinder all day. First we decided we wanted to top up with Euros before we reached Bulgaria, so we asked Sat Nav to guide us to various ATMs. Each time we exited the motorway in search of one of the retched machines it was only to find that the location of the ATM was in the sort of place there could not possibly ever have been a cash machine.

Finally we approached the Bulgarian border and found a queue of lorries several kilometres long. We skipped the queue with all the cars and soon found our self going through Greek border control with no problems, just a look at the passport.

I had expected a thorough search at the Bulgarian border post, given the problems with immigrants crossing the border last year, so I pulled up as indicated next to various border guards, with trepidation. One policeman stuck his head in the window, looked at our passports and said “you’ve not got any Syrians or Afghanis in there have you?” I was a bit surprised to say the least and of course said we hadn’t and with a big grin he just waved us through!

The next problem was getting a vignette. To travel on Bulgarian roads you must have a vignette, which are sold at the border and elsewhere in the country. We needed a one month visa, because although we are probably only going to be 10 days or so, a one month visa was cheaper than two one week visas. Also because we are over 3.5 tonnes, our one month vignette is relatively expensive at €41.

I pulled Basil over at the first place advertising vignettes and it was immediately obvious it was a rip off merchant. He was selling vignettes at well over the proper price. It was a good job I had checked what the rates were. We pulled over at a petrol station to fill up with Bulgaria’s ultra cheap diesel, but they had run out of vignettes. Finally third time lucky. We stopped at another petrol station and Basil was in proud possession of another vignette for his collection. It’s a good job he has a large windscreen.

We then tried to find a cashpoint machine, aware that we had no Bulgarian Levs. Sat Nav did his worst again. He directed us off the motorway and back onto the carriage heading back to Greece. The problem was that the exit Sat Nav recommended no longer existed and with no other exits we embarrassingly ended up back at the Greek border. A quick illegal Uturn soon put things right and we headed for our first stop, Melnik.

Sarah in Melnik

Lonely Planet paints an appealing picture of the tiny, wine producing town of Melnik. It describes it as quaint, with people selling wine from jugs on the corners of mud roads. We parked up in Melnik and after a quick lunch went for a wander. For me it was a disappointment. I didn’t find it particularly quaint and the roads are now lined with hotels, and the people selling wine from jugs have opened little shops selling wine in plastic bottles along side all manner of tourist tat. There didn’t appear to be any way to taste the wine from these shops and so although it was undoubtedly cheap I was not going to buy on spec. I suspect the Lonely Planet haven’t visited Melnik for several years, or alternatively their writer had such good night on the local wine he ran away with his prose.

Wine and Tat Store Melnik

This is about as picturesque as Melnik gets!

We finally headed to a campsite which I had spotted on Google maps, near Melnik and called Kamping Kromidovo (41.454605, 23,362892). When we arrived we found that it was run by a couple of Brits, called John and Sara. They bought a large house with some land several years ago and for the past couple of years have run a small campsite on the land. It had room for about 10 motorhomes and has electricity, fast wifi etc. It is very cheap at €10 for camper and two people without electricity and an extra €3 for electricity. It’s a lovely little site and very convenient for travelling from Greece to Bulgaria and vice versa and also well placed for visiting the wineries in this region.