BorealHiker

We drove down from Veliko Taranovo to Plovdiv passing through the Balkan Mountains on our way. We entered the valleys of the Srednogorie and drove along the A1 highway to Plovdiv.

Plovdiv is a decent sized city with the modern city spreading out from the three hills that visually dominate the area around Plovdiv. In the centre is an old town, including a walled city, that was our primary destination.

It was a warm day but we walked in and around the centre of Plovdiv. It ended up that we spent the bulk of the day exploring the older history of Roman and Thracian sites that dot the city through more modern excavations. Many of these excavations have shown how generations of peoples in the area have built on the past structures. At one point we went into an H&M on a main shopping street to see the remains of a section of the Stadium of Philippopolis that has been excavated in its basement.

Another highlight was the large exhibition space of the Bishops Basilica that was dedicated to the mosaic floors and the history of the Thracian Province of Rome that was seen in part from this site. Two levels of mosaic flooring have been uncovered and are wonderfully displayed with lots of explanations about the history and art.

I am looking forward to looking at some of the more modern history of Plovdiv today before heading to Sophia.

May 30th was my last day of work. It feels odd to be unemployed yet have the funds from a deferred salary arrangement to get me through the year ahead.

Right now I am going through the process of selling my apartment and moving in with my partner. It has been a bit delayed but I have an offer and am hopeful it won’t delay my plan to fly to Romania the last week of June. This is giving me a few weeks to get things in order for the trip.

I decided to not pay for hiking companies to support the trip. My sense was that I really needed it if I was doing a lot of cross border hiking, but feel I can limit this to a few areas around North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania. I will be interested to do some multi-day hikes through the various countries in the Balkans.

I am bringing my tent with me. I debated going without and assuming I could either use huts or stop in towns along some of the routes. I may regret the extra weight but this gives me some flexibility. Plus I enjoy tenting so my choose this over the cabins as I go.

Hoping that I can get everything organized for the trip over the next three weeks. Really looking forward to this year off with the travelling!

I am planning for my gap year where I am hoping to do a lot of hiking. I have done a fair number of trips in Canada, particularly in my home province of Saskatchewan and in the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia. Over the years I have tried more overnight camping and back country excursions. The hope was to do the same in Eastern Europe.

In looking at hikes in the Balkans, I realized there doesn’t appear to be national park groups where you can book camp sites or shelter spaces on these hikes. I may need to dig into this a bit more but my initial searching hasn’t found too many in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. My searches tend to take me to groups that will support hikes, both in helping you plan and in providing guides for a fee. Some even suggest that you shouldn’t go without the guide.

The High Scardus Trail is one such trail. They have a great website that provides a lot of information at https://www.high-scardus-trail.com/en/. This includes details on trail sections, accommodations, conditions, and booking.

The site appears to offer some pre-managed tours that appear to support the challenges of a trail that crosses the borders of North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania multiple times. In reading on other hikers trips, it is apparently harder to get the passes for the border controls without some supports. This makes the option to hire for this beneficial. However, as a lone hiker, the minimum group that would be supported is two people, unless you want to go with a pre-organized group.

The booking functions take you to the Book Your Trail webpage that supports booking multiple hiking tours across Europe.

Although I haven’t followed through to actually book on this site, it does appear to a good one for linking to pre-organized hikes through select parts of the High Scardus Trail. There are a number of options that would appeal to people looking at hiking either in certain countries or considering bagging a few peaks.

Ultimately I am trying to decide whether I should go with a solo journey and take the risks associated with this independent travel, or if I should look at booking one of these deals or create my own customized travel plan. Likely if I do the individual approach—my preferred from previous travels—I may end up doing more hiking within a country, then finding a bus or train to travel across borders.

Before coming to Iceland I had researched the various hiking opportunities but decided to focus on the Laugavegur Trek. This 53 kilometre hike between Lanndmannalauger and Thorsmork.

To start I spent a couple days at Landmannalauger. I had booked a seat on the bus service from Reykjavik. This three hour drive took us from the coastal areas inland, past fields, and then turning onto gravel roads through the moon-like volcanic plains of central Iceland. Arriving just after noon I decided to do some hiking around Landmannalauger. I started with a shorter 9.02K loop up Suournamur, turning back at Vondugil, and finishing through the volcanic plain of Namskivsl.

I stayed at the cabins that can be booked through http://www.fi.is. the Ferdafelag Islands or FI website is the main place to book cabins on the Landmannalauger Trek. They were comfortable shared spaces with the door room, where I slept, being a long room with two sleeping areas where you claim your space next to the other twenty others in the upper rooms.

My only full day around Landmannalauger I did a 14.3K hike north to go around Norounamur, a small dormant volcanic hill, and the old lake inside another volcanic mound called Ljotipollur. The grey day and gusting winds caused some challenges and made taking breaks unpleasant, but the unique scenery kept driving me on.

This ended up being a relaxing introduction to Icelandic hiking. Definitely the next day on the Laugavegur Trek trail proved to be much more challenging.

After a night flight from Montreal the plane approached the Keflavik Airport. Watching the southwest coast of Iceland from above was a beautiful site. A mix of colours jump out and smoke rises from thermal fields giving the sense that I arrived at a place very different from anywhere else I had been.

Despite getting a bit delayed at the airport when my backpack was sent to the “odd sized” area of the baggage claim. I came out to a sunny day and caught the bus for my 30-minute ride to the capital. The airport is designed for a quick release into the country with very little fanfare and an efficient but polite immigration service.

Having booked on Reykjavik Excursions bus service, I got a ride to the City Hostel. About three kilometres from the downtown area the hostel was not the most convenient but was friendly and accommodating. I chose it as it had a good rating on hostels.com but also because I was looking to save some money on the trip. The accommodation prices in Iceland seemed quite a bit higher than I would typically pay. The campground filled with tents outside the City Hostel seemed to reflect a penny pinching approach to seeing Iceland was not uncommon.

Exploring Reykjavik was a fairly easy process. The majority of the capitals main tourist sites all spread out from a central road called Laugavegur which appears to have become a tourist focussed street with countless stores, restaurants, and coffee shops over a ten or twelve block stretch. Laugavegur sits down the hill from the key focal site of Hallgrimskirkja, an imposing Lutheran cathedral with a 73-metre steeple with an observation deck popular with tourists. Although I chose not to go up the tower I enjoyed sitting in the church for a Sunday service and hearing the choirs and organ filling the airy interior (the service was in Icelandic although tourists are given a guide to help follow the progress).

In the two days I had in the capital before heading to the highlands I had to organize my time as I couldn’t take in everything in the time I had. After walking by a unique looking building on my way between the Hostel and downtown I stopped in to check it out. It ended up being one of three sites for the Reykjavik Art Gallery–this one was called Asmundarsafn. It was named after one of Iceland’s most famous sculpture artists, Asmundur Sveinnson. The small museum was the artists home and workshop before his death. He donated the space and surrounding sculpture garden to the City.

You could purchase a 1600 ISK ticket that was good at the three Reykjavik Art Museum sites including the Asmundursafn, Hafnarhus–a six gallery site near the harbour downtown, and Kjarvallstador–a traditional art gallery with one area dedicated to the art of Johannes S. Kjarval. Walking between the sites was a good way to see the city and to take in a few different generations of Icelandic art.

A few other places I would recommend checking out are the National Museum of Iceland for the dose of history of the Island nation; the Reykjavik City Hall for a bit of modern facts about the city and country; Volcano House, a small volcanoexhibit next to a fun little fish and chip shop, which gives you an interesting geological introduction to the island; and , the Harpa concert hall (a picture from foursquare is below).