Why this ride
Sustained elevation change, linked bends and open summit views. It also links naturally to Eastern Balkan Mountains.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Varbitsa Pass
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 89 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 1 h 54
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Access context
Verify pass condition, surface quality and local closures. Specific flag: surface review; weather.
Seasonal context
May-Oct
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Shumen
From almost anywhere in Shumen you can see it: a massive concrete monument on the plateau above town, a cluster of angular figures and slabs that looks like something left behind by a passing alien civilisation. It is the Founders of the Bulgarian State monument, built in 1981 to mark thirteen hundred years since the founding of the First Bulgarian Empire, and its giant figures of the early khans and tsars, with mosaics inside, are a startling piece of late-communist art. The view from up there, over the town and the plain, is worth the ride on its own.
Read the complete Shumen write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Shumen sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Varbitsa.
2. Varbitsa
Byzantine chroniclers had good reason to fear the passes of the eastern Balkan range, and the one above Varbitsa may be the worst memory of all. In 811 the emperor Nikephoros I invaded Bulgaria, burned the capital Pliska and then marched his army into a mountain pass, where the Bulgarian khan Krum trapped it behind wooden barricades and destroyed it. The emperor was killed, and Krum, the story goes, had his skull lined with silver and used it as a drinking cup. Historians argue about exactly where the ambush happened, but the Varbitsa pass is one of the places most often named.
Read the complete Varbitsa write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Varbitsa comes up 29 km in. Next is Kotel.
3. Kotel
Kotel is a mountain town in the eastern Balkan range, set in a hollow between forested ridges, and it has produced more famous Bulgarians than a place of its size has any right to. During the National Revival, its merchants and sheep breeders grew rich trading across the Ottoman Empire, and their sons became writers, teachers and revolutionaries. Sofroniy Vrachanski, one of the first great Bulgarian writers, was born here, and so was Georgi Rakovski, the founder of the organised revolutionary movement, whose name the town's museum carries. The old Galata quarter, with its dark wooden houses and narrow lanes, survived a great fire in the nineteenth century and gives a sense of how the town once looked.
Read the complete Kotel write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
89 km in you reach Kotel.