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Published: September 10th 2023
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A pretty easy distance of approximately 50kms into Sofia today. No need to leave too early and we've lost the hour by changing time zones so we settle on an 8:30am leaving time. It's nice and cool and a clear sky, perfect riding conditions.
We head off from the hotel around the soccer ground and we're already on a crushed rock road (1), following our route, we're led onto a single track dirt track (2) before being directed onto nice newly laid bitumen (3) which lasts for about 150m before turning into cobblestones (4) and we're less than a kilometer from the hotel. This road is right up against the motorway and a car pulls up and a guy gets out and tells us we can't use the road we're on because it's blocked for road works up ahead. He is, in fact, the guy in charge of roads for the area and he tells us we should use the motorway until we get to the next town (and that there are no police patrols between the towns). So we double back to where we started and enter the motorway (5). It has a wide emergency lane and is super
Pool at our Restaurant last night
Unfortunately for Tom, it was closed for the summer smooth. We travel quite quickly, 12kms of coasting making up the time we lost and then some.
We reluctantly turned off the motorway back onto our course and were straight back onto crushed rock (1), then alternatively cobblestones (4) and badly cracked and broken bitumen (6) for about 10kms making it extremely slow going.
About half way to Sofia we were being routed back on to the main road, only now there was no emergency lane and the road was quite busy. I studied the map and found an alternate route that took us west and then turned back south towards Sofia which kept us off the main road. Our Mapping App had a hard time accepting our new route as it continually tried to route us back to the main road. The ride into Sofia was flat and enjoyable until we hit the outer city. Here we got to ride on a dedicated cycle path. Great you might think, but no. The red painted surface had mostly worn away exposing the concrete underneath which looked like it had acid poured on it because it had worn away to rough exposed stone and cement (7) making for a
very uncomfortable ride.
Despite our back tracking, and finding a new route into town we still managed to get to Sofia by 12:15pm. We have a lovely apartment with 3 bedrooms and all the conveniences which will make a great base for our rest day. Sofia is the 3rd oldest capital city in Europe behind Rome and Athens so there is plenty of history to explore tomorrow. We are also considering a route change to Istanbul but more on that later if it materialises.
In case it wasn't obvious, the hook to the title of the blog today (Licorice Allsorts) was a reference to the number of different road surfaces we had today.
(it was a little tougher today coming up with something in an otherwise uneventful day).
Distance travelled today: 51kms
Distance travelled so far: 3,847kms
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