A Bug and some Kilometres

9 June 2019, kilometres today: 80
Kilometres since the start: 6009

A day of hardship that ends well.
I had planned to do a small stage today to compensate for yesterday’s big stage. Last night when I was preparing my itinerary, I was looking for the GPS coordinates on the Airbnb site and the coordinates it sent me back are 40km from where I thought they would be, in Pleven instead of Krushovene. So 80 km to go instead of 40, I complain, wonder how I didn’t check, but start booking other rooms according to this new stage (although it’s very hot the weather is still not clear for the coming week).

Starting a little late from Oryahovo, breakfast was not served until 9am.
Arrived in Krushovene a little before 1pm I try to ask if there is a restaurant, they say no. So I buy some fruit to complete what I have to eat and I eat in the shade of a wall.

The road is quite pretty and becomes a bit rolling only in the early afternoon but when I get to Pleven I start to have a big doubt: Pleven is a city that is very big how could it depend on Krushovene (the address indicated Krushovene/Pleven)? When I arrive in Pleven I am more and more worried and before reaching my theoretical goal I launch my app airbnb, "route" which there sends me to Krushovene (Google maps announces me 7h50 of walk because for them there is no bike in the east!!).
Before doing the 40km in the other direction I call my host who offers to pick me up: I have to go to the station and wait for him. Great! Great! I didn’t feel like doing 40km more, I almost ran out of water and started to get tired.
Open Street Map can’t find me a station within 100km so I launch google maps that find one 3km from my position. I’m going to go. When I arrived I found a closed, lifeless place around it: the opposite of what is expected from the station of a city like Pleven.
I relaunch the search on Google Maps and I see that there are two active stations in Pleven! The other one is called "Central Railway Station". Central, that’s more like it... Still 2 km to go and I find my hosts who were already waiting for me. In fact, they were coming back from Sofia and passing through Pleven. Lucky move!
Martin loads my bike into the truck. All along the way we talk with Martin and Rita his partner about my trip, about their trip to France... and we arrive in their beautiful house: an old school transformed into a house. Beautiful! Beautiful!


  • A tributary of the Danube in the forest
  • A hay cart
  • The Danube in the background
  • The Danube in the background
  • Cardons?
  • Cardons?
  • Iskra, a tributary of the Danube
  • Stork
  • Village
  • A welcome shadow
  • Countryside
  • Countryside
  • Martin loads my bike into his truck
  • With my hosts Martin & Rita
     

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