(Daniel) This morning the trailer tent and water tanks had frozen solid. The rooftent ladder was coated in ice, but closed up without fuss, as did the tent itself. Getting up in the freezing conditions, we moved around as quickly as possible, packing away everything and digging out snow from under the wheels so we could drive out of the woods, and back onto the track. On the tarmac, it quickly became apparent that the road was completely iced over. Every corner was potentially a situation where we could slide, even second gear had the wheels skidding on some angles. I took the road very slowly, and it took us around an hour to get back down to a safer altitude and surface condition. Once on the main roads, we picked up the pace, and I switched into long distance mode.
Over the last two weeks, I had noticed two things. Firstly, I couldn’t get enough calories, and had even resorted to sneaking food off the others, which was not popular. Secondly, that my body was physically changing, especially my left ankle, which was bulking up nicely, under the weight of the land rover clutch. This meant that I was adapting to life on the road and these long distances, such as today, driving nearly 400 miles on bad roads all the way to Bulgaria, then on the much better roads of Bulgaria to Sofia.
As we drove into Sofia, I phoned Tony, our contact who had arranged to meet us for dinner. Tony was a young guy, who was connected to local politics through his father, and was a friend of a friend. We met him within 5 minutes of arriving in Sofia, and followed his car to a restaurant around the corner. Tony ordered for us, and we enjoyed a wonderful traditional Bulgarian meal, with all sorts of meats and salad, accompanied by a bottle of Bulgarian wine, and some Raki to finish.
I must thank Christophe at this point, who arranged for us to meet Tony. Christophe is a good friend, who has a business in Bulgaria buying and selling holiday properties in the countries rising, but very affordable housing market. Anyone interested in this opportunity, should check out his website to get in touch. www.newestate.biz
After dinner we thanked Tony and headed back out onto the motorway, unsure of where we would camp. However the answer came to us, as after just a few miles we spotted a modern looking lorry park behind a large fuel station, and camped up there for the night.
Distance Driven 600km