Medni Rid

Worth a detour

Medni Rid means Copper Ridge, and it has been mined since the second millennium BC — one of the older metal landscapes in Europe, lying between Sozopol and Primorsko with resorts on either side of it. There is no visitor centre, no marked route to the Thracian sites, and almost no signage. Come for the oak forest and the view down over the bay, and treat the archaeology as a bonus.

Story

Background

The ridge runs north-west to south-east for eighteen or twenty kilometres and is three to five across, with Bakarlaka at 376 metres as its high point — the old Turkish name for the peak, and the one Bulgarian sources often use for the whole ridge. It is built of andesite and tuff with copper ore concentrated in the northern half. The Rosen mine worked that ore until it closed in 1995, the last in a sequence reaching back three and a half thousand years.

Four Thracian fortified sites sit on the heights — Atia, Bakarlaka, Lobodovo Kale and Malkoto Kale — of which only Malkoto Kale has had systematic excavation, between 1973 and 1977. A small protected site of a little over seven hectares covers Bakarlaka itself.

The forest is oak, hornbeam and lime, and the ridge is a recognised ornithological site with around 172 bird species. Its south-eastern end runs into the Ropotamo reserve. Access is from the villages on its flanks — Rosen, Ravadinovo, Atia, Veselie — on forest tracks. Take a map and expect to make your own decisions at junctions; this is the quiet hinterland of a very loud coast, and almost nobody comes up here in August.