Strandzha

Worth a detour

Strandzha is not dramatic and does not try to be: rounded wooded hills well under a thousand metres, running from the Burgas plain across the Turkish frontier. What it has instead is emptiness, an oak forest with an understorey that belongs to a warmer age, and a building tradition of its own in the villages. Almost all of the Bulgarian side lies inside the nature park, and that is where the marked routes are.

Story

Background

The range covers something like ten thousand square kilometres between the Thracian plain and the sea, and most of that is in Turkey. The high point, Mahya Dağı at 1,031 metres, is on the Turkish side; the highest ground in Bulgaria is Golyamo Gradishte at 710 metres, which tells you what sort of mountain this is — a long, low, wooded swell rather than a range of peaks.

The Veleka drains it to the sea at Sinemorets after 147 kilometres; the Rezovska, 112 kilometres, is the frontier along its entire length. Between the two rivers the interior is forest and lapsed pasture with very few people in it: Malko Tarnovo is the only town of any size, and Brashlyan is preserved as an architectural reserve.

Strandzha was a closed border zone for most of the twentieth century, which is precisely why the forest is still there. It also explains what is missing: one main road in from Burgas, few places to eat, and mobile coverage that comes and goes. Treat the Rezovska as an international border rather than a riverbank, and carry more water than you think you need — there is little shade on the ridge tracks and the streams are unreliable by August.