Breakfast was good this morning, French Toast with jam and cheese, three slices! Also a yoghurt type drink, coffee and chai. A gave a healthy tip when leaving as although the drain in the bathroom was blocked, the food was plentiful and everything was clean.
While putting on my boots outside the hut, two dogs came up for a sniff. Evidently I smelt good enough for them to follow me as I walked back up to the trail. The hut keeper came after them, calling them back. They looked at her for a few seconds, then headed off up the path. I walked back down the hill to try and persuade them to return, but they were not going to fall for that trick. Seeing it was useless the hut keeper gave up and indicated I should continue on my way. Several times I thought I had lost the dogs but they just kept appearing at my side. One was a bitch of indeterminate breeding, her tit's elongated by feeding many puppies. The other looked half German Shepherd. I dislike dogs following me, trying to impose some responsibility for themselves on me.
As I climbed, an open cast copper mine came into view to my right. A great pit with terraces spiralling around the sides and the hum of machinery in its distant depths. I had read that a tunnel goes under the mountain with a conveyor belt carrying ore to be processed in the valley to my left. I wondered if the artificial lakes I could see were associated with treating the ore, and maybe the chimneys releasing plumes of steam were smelting it.
Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, was to the west of me and I could see the mountain of Vitosha that rises behind it. Of the city itself, it was hidden beneath a blanket of haze covering the lowland plains. Between myself and the plains were the angular, tree covered foothills of the mountain range I was walking along.
I viewed these things while sitting on a rock covered in lichen, mostly grey with lessor amounts of yellow and pale green. My resting place was set amongst grass with patches of low juniper intermingled with blueberry bushes dying back for the winter. Small pines were scattered across the hillside. Behind me was a boarded up building claiming to have video surveillance, which I doubted. On the next spur of the mountain a white horse stood out among a herd of black and chestnut animals. While sitting there, thinking such thoughts, the dogs finally disappeared, off to find some other distraction, sitting still was just no fun!
Today the trail was easy following a rough vehicle track. Bulldozed into the side of the mountain to create a flat surface it exposed stones and the underlying bedrock. When I looked closely I saw it was a quartzite, with some trace fossils of seabed burrows still visible. a little later the roadway revealed purple slate and then wavy fragments of green schist. It seemed an example of the many different rock types I had crossed when walking over this Balkan range.
In an area of grass, a stone memorial was surrounded by a green and yellow metal fence. A few trees grew in the enclosure. The monument was to commemorate the 841 soldiers and 18 officers, Russian and Bulgarian, who died in a snowstorm in 1877 attempting the cross the ridge.
As I continued on my way, small brown grasshoppers jumped out of my path. I descended down the hillside, re-entering the beech woods to reach Chavdar Hut. Unusually the hut keeper speaks some English, and provided me with bread and soup for lunch. I spent the afternoon reading my kindle. Dinner was four fried eggs served in the pan they were cooked in and reheated potatoes and carrots in another pan. I was hungry and ate them eagerly.
13.3 kilometres walked today.
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