18 April 2025 – Koprivshtitsa

Miles driven today = 150

Total Miles to date = 3,757

You’d have thought that with less than 3 weeks left on this tour we would be heading roughly back in the general direction of Calais by now.  But nope!  Once we had found our way round the remainder of Sofia’s southern ring road we got ourselves onto Route 6 and blasted due east for several hours, right into the very heart of Bulgaria.  We had heard some horror stories about the state of the roads once you got away from the motorways but today’s journey was very smooth and in fact for long stretches the smell of freshly laid tarmac and the lack of any white lines indicated that the surface is actually very new indeed.  The scenery was very green and lovely too, with only a handful of smallish towns to negotiate along the way.

At round about the half way point of the journey we diverted 12km off the main road to have a look around the village of Koprivshtitsa.

In 1876 this outwardly sleepy little backwater of a place became pivotal in the struggle for Bulgarian independence from the Ottoman Empire and several of the leading figures behind the revolution came from here.

Most of the buildings date from the early to mid 19^th Century and have been faithfully restored to look how they may have done then.

6 of the houses have been turned into Museums for which you can buy a combined ticket if you want to visit all of them.

The first one we visited belonged to the Karavelov family.  There were actually 3 buildings to look around here.  The yellow structure was labelled as a farm building whereas the black one on the right was the Winter House constructed in 1810.

The Karavelovs had two famous sons.  This is Lyuben who was a revolutionary writer.  His younger brother Petko became a Statesman in the nascent Bulgarian Parliament.

Reconstruction of how the Winter House may have looked when the Karavelovs lived here. 

Lyuben bought this L.Kaiser printing press in 1871 in order to produce revolutionary literature.  It has a colourful history and at one point the L.Kaiser company tried to buy it back as an example of one of their earliest machines.  It also survived being buried under rubble whilst being stored in Sofia during World War II.

The Summer House was a later addition built in 1835 with a trough made from a hollowed out tree trunk bottom right.

One of the rooms inside with a typically colourful carpet.

We moved on and walked into this place where we waved our tickets only to be told it is a separate private museum, but we were allowed to take pictures of the attractively decorated frontage before we left.

The second place our tickets did allow into was Dimcho Debelyanov’s House.

Debelyanov was a famous writer and poet, born into a wealthy tailoring family.  There were a number of exhibits about his life and work but unfortunately very little in English.

But they had some nice pots and pans to look at for the cyrrilically challenged.

The Dormition of the Mother of God Church was built in 1817 from the donations of local residents.  “Dormition” is just one of numerous examples we find in information boards where the English translation seems to use the weirdest words plucked from the very depths of a thesaurus.

Museum House number 3 was where Todor Kableshkov lived.  He was another revolutionary and one of the leaders of the April Uprising which led to Bulgarian Independence.

Kableshckov was born in this room in 1851.

This room was labelled as a “Working-Bee Room for Women”

A huge amount of space was taken up on the first floor by this oval landing area.

A display of medals and crosses of valour awarded to local volunteers.

Koprivshtitsa stands at the confluence of several streams which are crossed by numerous humpbacked bridges.  Not as old or impressive as the packhorse bridge back home in Hebden Bridge I’d have to say though.

Number 4 is Lyutov’s House.  There is no connection to the Revolution here but architecturally it is the most impressive.  It was built in 1854 by a bloke called Stefan Topalov. Petko Lyutov was a local merchant who bought the house in 1906.

Inside there is an amazing display of traditional felted rugs, throws and wall hangings created by a local artesan.

A weaving loom used to make all those colourful carpets.

The Summer Guest Room with some period costumery.

Some intricate local lacework.  My Mum is going to love these when I show them to her after I get home.

The house’s most remarkable feature is this elliptical ceiling which includes painted scenes from Egypt and Istanbul.

Museums 5 and 6 were a bit of a walk out from the centre of the village and it was already 1 O’Clock so we thought we had already probably got our money’s worth and looked around for somewhere to grab a spot of lunch.

And yet again we managed to spectacularly over-order.  This was my “combination” dish of pork, chicken, veg and cheese, while Lisa had grilled trout.  We also had a “Shepherds Salad”, chips, garnish and garlic bread and the whole lot still came to barely £30.

Back on the road it was another 2 hours drive along the broad valley which runs East to West across Central Bulgaria until we reached the Rose Oil production centre of the World at Kazanluk.  We’ve ended up just a few miles away at Camping Calvacha, a nice grassy site with mature trees and a healthy population of woodpeckers by the sound of it.  We thought me might struggle to get a pitch given it’s Good Friday but that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

19 April 2025 - Frog Chorus