🗁Added 78 photos to album Bulgaria, Nov 2019.
My hosts kindly dropped me in Byala, the next town over, at the top of the track that leads to Kara Dere beach. Kara Dere is wild. There's only a dirt track from the outskirts of town, and there's no infrastructure of any kind. Not even phone signal. It's backed by dunes and behind those are vinyards and other farmland. As soon as I set off I felt the tranquility. There were a few locals fishing from the beach, but nobody else for miles. I found an empty spot, and sat in the sun to write for an hour.
Then I started to walk south. My hosts had told me that it was possible to walk all the way back to Obzor along the beaches.. maybe I'd have to get my feet wet, they said, but definitely doable. Most of the route was easy actually. The tide was far enough out that there were a lot of beaches. Along the base of the great white cliffs that give Byala its name (probably) were beautiful stretches of different kinds of rocks, pebbles, sand. Some places had epic slanting stretches of stone. In only a few places did I need to squeeze between the sea and the cliff.
Until I reached the headland south of Byala with the fort Sveti Atanas. It seemed like it might be possible to get around, and I waded into the sea to reach the next rocks. But they were pretty slippery. The kicker was not knowing what was around the other side. If I knew for sure I'd reach accessible land again soon I would have gone for it, but I had no idea. So I backed up, and climbed approximately ten million steps to reach the top of the cliff. Then I passed through a suburb of Byala, stopping at the Information Center to use the wifi to tell my host I would not in fact be back in time for the internet-fixing people. There is a fort on the headland but it was gated; worth investigating another time.
I descended back to the seafront as soon as possible, through a small district called Chaika, and found a pier and a fishing port. I carried on along the beach, then, all the way to Obzor. There were some truly beautiful deserted spots there too. By this point I just wanted to get back before dark, otherwise I would have hung around for longer.
On the outskirts of Obzor is a large resort hotel. They paved over a chunk of the beach in front of that, but it was kind of a relief after miles of walking on sand. They'd also unearthed an ancient kiln, and put it in a glass room with some signs about the history of the area, so that was cool.
It took three hours from Kara Dere to Obzor.
