As we had been working so hard,it was time to take a break from it all, so we decided to head to Lom for the day to see Sue and Paul. They had arrived in Bulgaria a day before us and we hadn’t seen them since the day we met them in Vidin , a couple of weeks after we arrived, so we thought it would be nice to catch up.They live 10km outside of Lom and according to the sat nav it was going to take us 1 hour 20 mins to get there, wrong it took us just over 2 hours! We’ve worked out that where ever you travel in Bulgaria always add extra time on your journey because of the roads. The scenery, as always is beautiful, and we travelled through a lot of really lovely villages but oh my god the road was horrendous ! At least half the road there was quite narrow, full of potholes and to make matters worse, some of it was cobbled. Considering its a main road, full of lorries may I add, it’s pretty shocking. Having a high top, LWB van is great when your renovating a house, for picking up building material, but not for long journeys on roads like these, a 4×4 would be more suitable. It doesn’t help, I suppose, that I’m a terrible passenger, always putting my foot on the break that isn’t there or shouting at Andy to ‘slow down’, even though he’s only doing 40 Kmh, or ‘ watch out for the car,old lady wandering on the road or the stray dog’ . In my defence, it’s not much fun watching artic lorries trying to avoid the potholes and they are on our side of the road, heading towards us. It’s not as if the road was wide enough to move out the way. To top it off,as we were driving out of Lom, there is an extremely long, steep hill to climb which was cobbled all the way up! The view at the top was amazing, to be fair, but all I kept thinking about was the journey back!
It was great to finally get to our destination and see Paul and Sue again. They had settled into life in Bulgaria and loved it as much as we did. Their houses( they have 3 on their plot) were lovely and since they have been there, they had done quite a lot of work. The village was lovely too and so peaceful. After catching up for a few hours, we headed into Lom for a bite to eat. They took us to a kebab place they had found that did the most delicious food and it was so cheap. It’s so nice just to be able to sit outside, eat lovely food, relax with friends, sun beaming down and watch the world go by. Life is good.
Eventually it was time to head home but this time we went a slightly different way. We still had to go on the stretch of cobbled,narrow,potholed, heart attack road, but then we turned off towards Vidin and the road was a lot better. Even though it was supposed to be the long route home it actually only took us 1hour 25 minutes. It was a lovely day and so nice to have a break from renovating and I can honestly say that although I moan about the roads, every where we go here, it’s alway an adventure one way or another and always a memory to look back on with a smile :) ……
