After a long day of driving to and from Plovdiv on my second day in Bulgaria, I decided to stay more local visit the Ropotamo Forest for some hiking, with a new friend, Jenny, one of the residents of the hostel where I was staying.
We drove to the area on the map where Waze showed us was supposed to be the start of the hiking trail but passed it the first time, but on the way back we found the entrance.
There was a marked trail off the side of the road (which we didn’t see at first), that led down to the river…
But once we got to the river the trail ended. It was beautiful there, and it was clear that during the busier tourist season there were things happening there, but there was nothing there where we were, so we decided to head back to where we parked the car. We then found a rough trail made by jeeps which we followed into the woods, then then we ended up just making our own trail but staying parallel enough to the road so we wouldn’t get lost, since we didn’t want to end our hiking trip that early.
I took the opportunity to notice the nature all around me, trying to learn about what was growing, and especially trying to find edible mushrooms that I knew how to identify. I was especially hoping to find chicken of the woods mushrooms…
I saw crocuses growing everywhere.
There was curly dock growing everywhere, which I foraged and ate as a trail nibble.
I admired this cool lichen…
I spotted this mushroom which looked like an ink cap mushroom. Chatgpt told me it was an inedible one. Chat gpt shouldn’t be used to identify mushrooms if you plan on eating them, but just as an idea of a basic ID it’s ok as long as you are just using it as that and not relying on it for safety purposes because it can be wrong.
This mushroom is apparently an immature parasol mushroom.
There were so many parasol mushrooms and apparently they are edible. But as I mentioned, I wasn’t going to rely on chatgpt for identification of edible mushrooms so I didn’t pick any, just admired them. They were gigantic, larger than my head many times.
When I saw the color of these mushrooms from far at first I was hopeful it would be chicken of the woods but then I saw them closer up and they were nothing like that; they’re probably inedible rust cap mushrooms.
I ended up finding two small puffball mushrooms which I knew how to identify- perfectly white inside, no stems, no gills, nothing but white fluff anywhere when you cut it open, which I ended up cooking when I got back to the hostel…
After a time, we decided we had enough of the woods and went back to the car.
We decided to drive to Primorsko, a town that was in the middle of where the map showed the Ropotamo forest was, along the shore, and see the water there.
There were stairs going down to the water… Kinda bad stairs…
But then we saw beautiful water…
Jenny wasn’t afraid of the cold water and decided to go for a dip. I ate a sandwich while she did that.
Afterwards, we walked along the boardwalk, noticing that there were paintings of people with their names written every couple of meters.
This continued for at least a kilometer or two that we walked until we decided to move on to the next thing.
Beglik Tash is a prehistoric rock sanctuary that was reused by the Thracians during the Iron age.
It involved driving through more of the Ropotomo forest, where we found actual, official hiking trails that we should have gone on instead of the jeep trail we actually followed, but oh well…
We then came to a little ticket booth that charged 10 BGN ($5.92) for entrance to the place and didn’t provide any brochures or anything with information. I got to come in free because of my disability card (they accepted my one from abroad).
We wandered around reading the sparse signs there were sharing what they thought the place was used for.
Since the rocks didn’t naturally form in that way, it was fascinating to try to imagine how these prehistoric people moved such huge rocks without any modern machinery…
We climbed on the rocks… Not sure if we were allowed to do that, but there were no signs prohibiting it…
There was a sign here saying that people who crawled through were said to become warriors, so of course we crawled through…
And then it was getting a bit boring, to be honest, we saw everything, and thought that maybe it would be more interesting if we checked out the Primorsko museum, which had artifacts that they found at Beglik Tash, and the website that I found said that it was open until 7… but we got there at 5:15 and it was closed… Then we found another website that said it closed at 5… so if you want to check it out, I’d recommend going before 5, but I have no idea how much it costs.
All in all, it was a very pleasant day, full of nature and beauty, trees, plants, water, and rocks, not to mention good company. And it cost Jenny 10 BGN and it was free for me other than the gas it cost to drive from Burgas.
Definitely a worthwhile way to spend a day, though in retrospect I would have appreciated knowing where we should have hiked, so hopefully if you go to Bulgaria, you’ll know to hike near Beglik Tash and not where Waze directs you to if you put in Ropotomo Forest.
Are you a hiker? Would you have enjoyed a day like this? Would you dare hiking off the trail, if you could hear the road nearby?
