When camping in the woods, on dark moonless nights, you are surrounded by the sounds of creatures you cannot see. The droning, buzz of cicadas, the crash of broken branches nearby as an unknown animal makes its way through the woods, the howling of a creature sounding like a wolf, a distant barking dog or the whine of a motorbike coming down a nearby track. Last night there was also distant music in the evening, then this morning, before it was light, Arabic music, which at first I took to be the Muslim call to prayer. However it continued for too long and the cadence was dissimilar to the calling of a Muezzin.
The first part of the day was along tarmac roads, passing a few villages, their houses with red tiled roofs and usually white walls. Slightly more prosperous than those yesterday, and more compact, without the abandoned houses slowly falling apart, although still with chickens running around and side roads lacking tarmac. In Dobra Polyana the café was open for a morning coffee. I entered through plastic streamers into a smoke filled area full of men, then progressed to a smoke free room with fewer men and the bar. While enjoying a bottle of orange juice and an expresso type coffee I watched the television, tuned to CNN Turkey. The villages contained Muslim people linked with Turkey, it was little surprise such areas exist as Turkey occupied Bulgaria for centuries as part of the Ottoman empire. I had spotted a minaret among the houses in the village of Sredna Mahala and a large, domed mosque, seemingly too big for the village, was being built in Planinitsa.
Later, I bought a lunch of kebab and chips at a restaurant in Daskotna. My enjoyment was spoilt as a man who sat opposite me kept staring at me and talking in Bulgarian. I made it clear I could not understand but he kept up his one sided conversation. I noticed other people ignored him when he hailed them, one making a diversion to avoid him. He was given bread and soup by the restaurant staff. I wondered if he was a relative with what we now call "special needs". If so I was not the person to supply them.
Although half the day was on tarmac roads, the remainder was on forestry tracks, muddy and rutted in places. The trees were taller than on earlier days; oak, beech and hornbeam among others. Contouring the slope rather than following the ridge, the tracks passed many "fountains", and I was reassured to see water trickling from the pipes into the concrete troughs. Often there was an inscription on them or in one case, pictures of animals were carved into the concrete surround. At one of the fountains I washed my handkerchief which was sticky with sweat that I had wiped from my brow in an ineffective attempt to stop salty sweat and sun tan lotion trickling into my eyes and stinging them so badly I had trouble seeing. People were out enjoying Saturday with their guns and dogs hunting or picking mushrooms. There were plenty of fungi, although I would not know which were safe to eat.
As I reached the 30 kilometres I planed to walk today, I started looking for somewhere to camp. Not easy as the track was following the side of a steepish slope mainly through woods. On less steep, grass covered areas there were collections of cows and I worried they might trample on my tent with me in it. Eventually I found a small patch in the woods, reasonably flat although bumpy with buried twigs.
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