Bulgaria’s weather has been very kind to sun lovers in the last 24 hours. We had barely finished our pea and potato curry outside, when lightning filled the horizon and by the time we had gone to bed it was chucking it down. Basil’s interior echoed to the sound of raindrops falling on his head for the rest of the night, until about 8am when the sun re-emerged and has stayed there ever since.

Camping Veliko Tarnarvo is a really well organised little campsite. It has lots of suggestions for activities and attractions to fill the life of the laziest of campers, but we’ve managed to do very few of them today. Well to be honest, we’ve completed absolutely none – but not for want of trying.

Camping Veliko Tarnarvo

Team Basil have been travelling non-stop since we left Greece and Basil had asked to have a day or two’s rest from the daily beatings Bulgaria’s roads have been handing out to him. Never one to let the big fella down, we agreed a bit of a break was in order. So today was going to be for R&R, but we didn’t expect quite as much R as we achieved.

Basil puts up his feet at Camping Veliko Tarnarvo

An example of the thought that Camping Veliko Tarnarvo put into helping their lazier campers (me) get up off their fat behinds and take some exercise (like Sarah), is the planned walks they have laid out on a coloured map.

Sarah has, of course, already almost worn a groove in the road to the local village of Dragizhevo walking the dogs in an attempt to achieve 10,000 steps a day. I, on the other hand, have barely shuffled to reception and back a couple of times. So we planned to complete one of these walks in the lovely surrounding Bulgarian countryside.

Just before lunch, having gleaned more detailed information from one of our British hosts, we set off, Melek disconsolately bringing up the rear in his usual “do I have to” style. All went well for about 400 metres as we walked up a small hill on the road to where the track started. We took one look down the track and realised that however beautiful the surrounding countryside, one thing it wasn’t was free draining! Every hollow in the track was filled with puddles the size of small lakes. What we needed was that 4×4 German motorhome with snorkel we saw in Greece, not training shoes!

Being plucky Brits brought up on jolly country walks in the inclement British countryside we were not to be so easily put off. So we persevered. Within a dozen steps as second characteristic of the local soil became apparent. It is the stickiest soil I have ever come across. Every step added an extra layer of clay to our shoes until our footwear looked more like balls of mud than shoes.

We carried on for a couple of hundred metres, with each of my shoes weighing about 2 kilos and even Melek’s little legs looking as if they had small mud clogs on the end, until we reached an almost impassable object, an actual small lake. I say impassable, which is not quite true because Sarah demonstrated it could be passed by wading though the water calf deep. She returned, feet saturated and we both agreed the Bulgarian countryside had got the better of us.

Team Basil made a strategic withdrawal to base to lick our wounds. I spent the next 45 minutes removing mud from my shoes with a trusty Swiss pen knife. Sarah, whose shoes were already soaked through took the quicker approaching involving a fast running tap and a scrubbing brush.

Bulgarian Landscape from Camping Veliko Tarnarvo. It’s more unforgiving than it looks!

So, after lunch, we were forced, yes forced, to spend the afternoon with our feet up in the sun. Tough isn’t the word for it.

We think tomorrow we may go into the local town, which is supposed to be very picturesque and hope that by Tuesday the ground may be dry enough for us to attempt another assault on the Bulgarian landscape.