CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. 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.
540 km from Sofia to Sofia, about 10 h 49 of riding. The stops in between: \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex, Orlitsa Convent Complex, \Pchelino Convent\ Complex and Pirin National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,700 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Boyana is a village on the southern edge of Sofia, tucked against the lower slopes of Mount Vitosha, and it holds a small church that changed the history of European painting, or at least its footnotes. The church is made of three parts built over several centuries, but the middle part, a tiny two-storey chapel, was decorated in 1259 for Sebastokrator Kaloyan, a local ruler, and his wife Desislava, who are painted in the narthex as donors. The frescoes show eighty-nine scenes with more than two hundred and forty human figures, and they are astonishing for their realism. The faces have individual expressions, the saints look like real people, and they predate the Italian Renaissance by generations.
Read the complete Boyana Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Boyana Church is where the day begins. Next is \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex, 43 km on.
Ivan of Rila was a hermit who, in the tenth century, withdrew into the forests of the Rila mountains to live in a cave and a hollow tree, and the monastery that grew up around his grave became the spiritual heart of Bulgaria. Rila Monastery sits in a valley at about 1,150 metres, surrounded by steep forested slopes, and the Rilska river runs beside it. The buildings you see today date mostly from the nineteenth century, after a great fire in 1833 destroyed the older ones, but within the courtyard stands a medieval tower, Hrelyo's Tower, from 1335, and the main church is covered in vivid murals.
Read the complete \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
\Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex comes up about 119 km into the recorded legs. Next is Orlitsa Convent Complex.
The town of Rila is a small place at the foot of the mountains that bear its name, and the Orlitsa convent stands just a short way outside it, in the valley of the Rila river. It is a quiet complex, a working community of nuns, with a small church and gardens, and it gets a tiny fraction of the visitors that go to the great monastery further up the valley. For that reason alone it is worth a stop, since you can sit in the courtyard and hear the river instead of a crowd.
Read the complete Orlitsa Convent Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 147 km into the recorded legs you reach Orlitsa Convent Complex. Next is \Pchelino Convent\ Complex.
The mountains of southwestern Bulgaria are among the wildest in the Balkans, and the area between Rila and Pirin holds a string of small monasteries tucked into forested valleys. During centuries of Ottoman rule these monasteries kept the Bulgarian language, the Orthodox faith and the art of icon painting alive, and the great Rila Monastery, founded in the tenth century around the hermitage of Saint Ivan of Rila, became the national symbol.
Read the complete \Pchelino Convent\ Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
\Pchelino Convent\ Complex, about halfway. Next is Pirin National Park.
Vihren, at 2,914 metres the highest peak of the Pirin mountains and the third highest in the Balkans, rises above the town of Bansko in south-western Bulgaria in a sharp, pale pyramid of marble. The Pirin National Park protects the high country around it, a landscape of granite and marble peaks, glacial cirques, more than a hundred lakes and ancient forests of pine and fir, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1983.
Read the complete Pirin National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pirin National Park sits at 172 km, about halfway. Next is back through \Pchelino Convent\ Complex.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete \Pchelino Convent\ Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through \Pchelino Convent\ Complex comes up about 377 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Orlitsa Convent Complex.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Orlitsa Convent Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 391 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Orlitsa Convent Complex. Next is back through \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex, 43 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex, late in the day. Next is Boyana Church.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Boyana Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 540 km.
Boyana Church → \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex is 119 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
\Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex → Orlitsa Convent Complex is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Orlitsa Convent Complex → \Pchelino Convent\ Complex is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
\Pchelino Convent\ Complex → Pirin National Park is 107 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pirin National Park → back through \Pchelino Convent\ Complex is 107 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through \Pchelino Convent\ Complex → back through Orlitsa Convent Complex is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Orlitsa Convent Complex → back through \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through \Grave of St. Ivan Rilski\ Complex → Boyana Church is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.