Lyulin Mountain

Worth a detour

Everyone in Sofia looks south at Vitosha and forgets the ridge on the west side of the valley. Lyulin is about twenty kilometres long and tops out at Dupevitsa, 1,256 metres — a thousand metres lower than its neighbour, joined to it across the Vladaya pass, and reachable on ordinary city buses. Beech woods, a couple of small monasteries, and on a weekday almost nobody.

Story

Background

Lyulin separates the Sofia basin from the Pernik one, twenty kilometres northwest to southeast and twelve or thirteen across, with the Vladaya saddle linking it to Vitosha at its southeastern end. The Struma motorway crosses it through the Buchino pass and the old I-6 road over Vladaya, so it is ringed by traffic and still quiet inside.

Because it is lower it is a different kind of walk: broadleaf forest rather than spruce, snow-free for much more of the year, and gentle enough to do in an afternoon without planning. Two monasteries stand on its slopes, part of the ring of small foundations around Sofia that get grouped together as the city's holy mountain.

The practical appeal is that Sofia's own bus network reaches the foot of it from the western districts and from Bankya, which means no car and no early start. As a mountain it will not compete with what is across the valley. As somewhere to get out of the city for three hours on a weekday, it is better than Vitosha precisely because nobody else has thought of it.