19 April 2025 – Frog Chorus

Miles driven today = 0

Total Miles to date = 3,757

We haven’t done a great deal today if the truth be told.  When I was planning this section of the trip I considered spending the night in the car park at Koprivshtitsa before moving on again today, but I had no idea at that stage that it would be coinciding with the Easter Weekend and so we followed the recommendations of Eva, our hostess at Sunny Paradise, and headed here to Camping Kalvacha for a 2 night stopover.  The campsite appears to be part of a larger complex which includes a water park and a hotel/spa which prides itself on the medicinal properties of the local thermal mineral waters.  Certainly the water supply on the campsite has a noticeable eggy aroma.

There’s not a lot else around here.  The land in the broad valley is flat and the roads are straight.  The town of Kazanluk is 6km away, so too far to walk really.  It’s the centre of the local rose oil industry and, depending on which book you read, supplies between 2/3rds and 85% of the global rose oil production.  There is a Rose Museum and some 6,000 year old Thracian Tombs to look at among other things, but we would have had to have got the bikes out to do that.  There was the possibility of a rain shower over the lunchtime period and in all honesty we just fancied a day off and couldn’t be bothered.

The rain never materialised, so after lunch we took ourselves off for a walk and found our way to the banks of the River Tundja.

There was plenty of wildlife around.  We disturbed a large male hare, which shot across the field in front of us.  There were several birds of prey and a couple of herons, one of which, we are fairly certain, was a Purple Heron.  It was similar in size and shape to the Grey Herons which are common in the UK but with a distinctly different colouring to its plumage.

There were several of these rather ominous looking razor-wire protected enclosures.  No idea what their purpose was.  There was a sign saying no photos.  Whoops!

We eventually found our way to a quarried area where a fishing lake has been created.

The overflow drainage channel from the lake was an absolute cacophony of frogs.  Lisa recorded the racket for a while and when it all quietened down she replayed it and they all started up again in response.

We saw lots of people out today with ponies and traps and assumed that the local Roma community must have been having some sort of meet up.

There is a small airfield just across the road from the campsite and a few microlites and light aircraft have been coming and going.  I don’t think this particular piece of hardware has flown anywhere in a good while.  I’m no expert in such matters so I’m not sure if it an old communist era MiG or not.

We were treated with some glorious sunshine this afternoon and the weather is set fair here for the next few days, so we did what everybody does when the Sun comes out to play on a Bank Holiday.  We got the barbie out and sank a few cold beers.  

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