Turkey to Bulgaria. What an amazing day of kindness and mountains.

The first photo was taken at a restaurant in the town of Derokoy about 10kms from the Bulgarian border.  These 2 ladies looked after the starving cyclists with bread, salad, beans, rice and yep, washed down with coke.   Now back to the story for today.

Our day started off nice and early leaving hotel onder at 8.15am.  Peter was feeling better, but how good would be determined when he hit the mountains once we leave Kirklareli.  We rolled out of town into yet another day of intense headwind.  We made good time to our morning tea stop over rolling hills, passing small villages, barking dogs, military barracks and sheep.

We're now in the area where sun flowers are grown in the millions.  It's interesting to see how the yellow part of the plant faces east in the morning and will face west in the afternoon.  Why, because it follows the sun's rays.

The next big town for the day was Kirklareli.  This is at the 30km mark and we intended to stop for bite at this town but I took the group on a by pass road which by passed everything.  That wasn't a clever thing to do.  We rolled over a couple of more hills and came to a small shop.  The owner invited us in and boiled the billy for us. He also had all the sweets we love, Turkish delight, a sweet he calls Viagra and chocolate biscuits.  This man was incredible.  He sat down with us, never charged us for our tea, although we did buy some basics from him.  We all had our photo taken inside and outside the shop and he waved us on our way.  Now where on earth are you going to get that type of treatment from a shop owner?  Unless you're in Turkey.

This photo was taken inside Suleiman's shop outside of Kirklareli.

And that's a photo of Suleiman outside the shop with Maurice.

We still had 40kms to reach the Bulgarian border and it was now around 1pm.  I thought at the pace we were making we could get there by 6pm.  The time wasn't a problem it's whether everyone had the energy to get over the impending mountain ranges before dark.

From the moment we left Suleiman the road went up and up.  We climbed for over 30 minutes, would then drop down into the valley and climb even  higher.  We climbed and climbed all afternoon.  The reward was the beautiful scenery behind us.  With the green fields and rolling hills in the distance, one does get a feeling of satisfaction on doing it on bike and not in a car.

By 3pm we were getting hungry.  All this climbing was burning up all our energy and we still had 20kms to go.  We turned off the highway and rode down a bumpy back road to the town of Derokoy.  This is the place were we had the beans and rice meal.  It was so nice.  I took some more photos of the ladies and they are below on this update.

With time against us we pushed on out of town and rejoined the E85 highway to the Bulgarian border.  Now we had 10kms to go and we were told it was all up hill.  Now we had some serious climbing ahead of us.  We had a dual highway with no traffic to ride on to the border.  Some of the mountain range was at 10% and it went for kilometres.  We would come around one bend and it would climb again and up higher.  We were so glad to see the border crossing.  We arrived at 6pm on the dot.  The border crossing was a non event, just a stamp and you went through. 

This photo was taken after we left Turkey and we just about to enter Bulgaria.  The next 10kms into Bulgaria was a complete contrast to Turkish roads.  The roads we were now riding on were absolute rubbish.  Potholes, and more potholes as we roared down the mountain range and into the town of Malko Tarnovo.

After asking a couple of locals where the hotel was, we found our way to the old hospital which had been converted into a hotel.  The rooms are nice and clean, it has WiFi, but no breakfast.  There was no way we were going to sleep in our tents after that enormous day of riding.  We climbed over 1600metres in about 40kms.  That gives you an idea of the mountains we climbed at the end of the day.  I do have to say the Peter went really well, considering how ill he was feeling yesterday.

After a quick shower we headed off to a little restaurant down the road.  It was nice to sit and chat about our great day the people we met along the way.  There was one thing I should have mentioned earlier.  As we were climbing one of the mountains outside of Kirklareli, Suleiman came out to greet us in his car.  He was there cheering us and waving to us as we climbed one of many mountains in the afternoon. 

That's Maurice on a long climb towards the border. 

That's Peter coming up the same climb.

This is the mother and daughter who own the shop we had afternoon dinner at in Derokoy. 

And of course, they insisted that I take another photo inside their shop at Derokoy.

That's Mary climbing one of the mountains today.

And finally, that's momma outside the shop in Derokoy.  They waved us on our journey.  Yet another special encounter on the road to Eastern Europe.

Now it's getting late, everyone is in bed and I need my sleep. Tomorrow we try and reach the Black Sea.

Until tomorrow, safe riding.