Despite the name, nobody here is thinking about Big Sky country. Montana takes its name from a Roman fort, Castra ad Montanesium, that stood on the hill above the Ogosta river, and the town wore several other names before that one came back in the 1990s; under communism it was Mihaylovgrad, after a local party hero. It lies in the far north-west of Bulgaria, where the Danube plain begins to crinkle into foothills, and it is the northern doorway to the Petrohan pass, the old road over the Balkan range to Sofia.
The town is a plain provincial centre of concrete blocks, a long pedestrian street, a park and some decent cafes, and it will not keep you long. The Roman fort's walls are still traceable on the hill if you want a short walk. South of town the Ogosta has been dammed into a long reservoir that fills the valley, popular with anglers and with families in summer. The whole north-west is one of the emptiest corners of the European Union, villages thinned out by decades of departures, and the countryside has a quiet, slightly wistful air that grows on you.
The point of coming is the road south. It rolls through farmland and small villages to Berkovitsa, a little town at the mountain foot with an Ottoman-era clock tower and a tradition of pottery, and then the climb begins in earnest. The Petrohan road winds up through deep beech forest to the pass at roughly fourteen hundred metres, with a long series of linked bends, some open sweepers and a few tighter turns where the gradient bites. Near the top the trees thin and the view opens over the green ridges of the western Balkan range. The southern descent heads toward Sofia through more forest and pasture. Patches, broken edges and the occasional pothole come with the territory, and cloud sitting on the ridge can drop visibility to a few metres in minutes.
Montana is the place to fill the tank and eat before the climb: stations line the approach roads and there are supermarkets and grill restaurants in town. Berkovitsa is a nicer spot for a coffee on the way. Be ready for a real temperature drop at the pass, even in summer, and in winter the road can be closed or chain-only after snow.