Come to think of it, more than one of my Birthday Weekends has
involved buggering off to a random campsite, armed with fancy dress and as much
booze as would fit in the car. One memorable year, we celebrated my birthday at
the Spirit of Burgas festival, even though we’d only arrived in Bulgaria the
day before. (Who needs unpacking or renovating when you can bugger off to a
festival on the other side of the country?)
But I’m older now, and my Birthday Weekends are decidedly more
sedate. Last year we went to Melnik and enjoyed a dawn hike through the
majestic pyramids followed by (lots of) wine tasting at Melnik Winery.
This year, being both old and skint, we stayed closer to
home and did a pizza-in-the-garden evening with friends on the Friday, followed
by a couple of local hikes on the Saturday.
For the hikes, we started with an ‘eco trail’ that runs
from behind Hotel Everest in Etropole up to a peak called Sveti Atanas . ‘Eco
trail’ turned out to be a bit of a euphemism as, although it was well marked with
blazes, it was really overgrown and we had to fight our way through head-height
brambles most of the way. It was also really
uphill, reminding us (again) how we’ve lost a lot of the fitness we built up
for the Rhodope walking holiday last year.
Still, the view from the top was grand. From the peak you
can see the main ridge of the Central Stara Planina (Balkan) mountain range. My
hips were proper tingling near the edge up there. (Does anyone else have hips
that are extremely sensitive to heights??) We had a very sedate,
very English picnic of quiche – homemade by Rob – and biscuits on the peak, then tottered down and took
another trail, this one much gentler and better maintained, from the
hotel over to Etropole monastery.
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| View from Sveti Atanas. |
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| Hiking back down. Etropole visible between the trees. |
And after all that walking, Birthday Sunday was spent mainly
complaining about my poor old hips and colouring in evil psychedelic cats. Yeah,
that’s right, colouring in evil psychedelic cats in my cat colouring book. My
cat colouring book for adults. I still know how to get freaky.
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| Keeping busy in the garden while Rob kept a constant supply of prosecco flowing. |
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| Hey, man, come check out my groovy commune. I promise not to murder you in your sleep. |
