“NEXT STOP : GREECE“
(Part 1)
The name of this journey: “THE BREAKDOWN RIDE” wasn’t taken by accident. The last days of adventurous back country riding, most of the time along the different TET routes took its toll: Two further small breakdowns happened on this riding day along our way to Greece. Here’s the first part of the write-up of this adventurous day …
When the first thing you see in the morning, after …
opening the tent door, is a beautiful adventure bike waiting for the ride, you will know the incoming day is going to be a good one! 🤘
The air in the wood belt was cool and moist this morning. After the usual morning routine, I fired the might thumper and left the camping spot in the forest for the first …
trails of this day. Still a bit tired, I decided to ride the first few miles in an unhurried manner. Чернотa and I passed some …
tiny, very isolated …
farmsteads. Live seams to be very basic into this remote areas of Bulgaria. My slow riding style was a good decision, little track obstacles/damages like …
this one, could be very dangerous when being overseen. Especially whilst riding swiftly in a motorcycle group or through the dust clouds behind! This …
huge deer stand is surely the biggest one i`ve ever see. I was wondering how the view from the high platform of this building would be, but I was way too lazy for climbing it. Maybe somebody else of the TET Group will do it o a future ride and make a few pics from the top. *I’m idle*😋
The opportunity for …
fueling up my water supplies is always a fixated stop:
Also along this day’s morning, I used a dripping water hose aside the road for filling up my bottles. That took some time, so I had a chocolate bar at the small hut aside the well. After stowing the filled up water bottle in my luggage bags I recognized the first issue of the day: The wireless charging function of my navigation bar cradle stopped working for an unknown reason. But having a proper charging cable with me, this was no serious problem, let’s say: just as not as comfortable and a clean solution like charging my navigation phone wirelessly. When everything was stowed, the ride went on for about a half hour on well maintained tarmac roads, until …
Lake “Dospat” was reached. The Lake is very big and there is a road leading around it along nearly the whole idyllic shoreline. There had been many camping people with their trailers, cars, tents and god knows what too. I followed the shoreline for a while till I found an appropriate spot for having …
a look down to the beach. Very nice here. It is easy to understand why many people spend here their rare spare time for a few days/weeks of camping in many varieties. The southern end of Lake Dospat is fortified with …
an impressive dam wall. According to the internet, this stone wall is sealed with a big clay-core. When thinking about that, it’s impressive for me, that such sealing solution, especially at the bottom of the dam wall, is holding up against the immense water pressure.
I throw a last glance over the lake…
before following the road atop the dam wall to the other side of it to the city. Чернотa and I literally …
burst into a small weekend market and had to follow it along its market huts for a few hundred meters. Luckily, it was still very early in the morning and there was less pedestrian traffic in the market area. 😅
The Tran Euro Trail led …
right through the core of the city Dospat before …
we had to climb a little mountain nearby. The view back to the shoreline, which we followed just a few minutes before, was real nice. This landscape with its lakes is pretty unique. If I didn’t know better, I`would say …
such water views combined with …
mirrored trees would be located somewhere in Northern Europe, in countries like Sweden or Finland. The ride of this day was til now a very …
satisfying one. In the meanwhile, my tiredness of the morning has vanished and I felt comfortable turning the throttle lever a bit further towards me. Braping along the TET, the road changed again …
to a gravel track and the riding surface got more rocky/bumpy. Therefore, I surely rode in standing style for about the half of an hour, along some tiny forsaken villages like the one above, till Чернотa and I were …
forced to stop in front of this obstacle. The Trans Euro Trail is always good for delivering such surprises (in spring more often than in summer/autumn). A look at my navigation device showed me, that backtracking and using another track for continuing the journey would have taken about ninety minutes. Another look at the fallen tree told me that it was time for …
some lumberjack work. With the power of my petite arm muscles …
it was a surprising easy task, cutting off a few branches of the completely dried out fallen tree. The next step was taking Чернотas luggage bags off, and dragging my black beauty through the cut hole to the other side of the obstacle. I started unloading the luggage bags and …
immediately found out, that the one eyelet of the main mounting belts from my Enduristan Monsoon Bags …
was broken. Surely a victim of the hard bumps along the last ridden kilometers. Because I’m a well-prepared adventure rider …
I had some strong para cord in my luggage. With it, I was able to restore the function of the broken metal eyelet.
After finishing this day’s second little breakdown, I made the intended pre-walk with the luggage bags to the opposite side of the obstacle and stowed it there. Than I walked back to Чернотa and …
started with dragging/pushing it through-under the fallen tree.
In hindsight, I was lucky to get the bike through, because I wasn’t right with my assessment of the wideness of the enduro handle bar. It was literally a snug fit, pushing and dragging the bike with its broad handle bar through-under the low tree and hard work overcoming this obstacle.
Afterwards, I was quite exhausted and sat down for a moment. I remembered myself about the fact, that a lighter bike would be a surely better option for such lone-rider-adventure-riding-journeys.
With regaining breath, I saddled my black pony and continued the ride, which now led us very unspectacular further through the woods of Southern Bulgaria eastwards. The only remarkable sight for a while was …
this monument, erected for a person, which face reminded me to “Al Capone”. ^_^
Always interesting in finding out more about such abandoned monuments, I searched the Internet for further information. The only related information I’d found, is about a famous Bulgarian wrestler called: “Doncho Kolev Danev“. Maybe this monument was built for his successful sport career abroad?!? I don’t know.
Just a few miles further we ran into …
the next obstacle: a bridge along the planned TET route was spilled away. Due to the steep banksides of the creek, I wasn’t able to cross it nearby. Luckily, this time I found a possibility for making a small scaled detour. The journey …
went on and brought us finally …
back to civilization. We left the woods above the city …
“Borino”. This shot of the village I took from a well-equipped public …
BBQ-Hut atop the village. Now …
Чернотa and I followed a …
gorge, leading us through a hill range further eastwards, to another very …
impressive viewpoint, providing sight over an unknown valley, equipped with a business class bench. I used the chance for a short midday power nap. 🥱
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