Although chilly a fantastic nights sleep is had and I wake up and dance around my cornfield with the sun coming up like it's 1989. By placing your phone in a small coffee saucepan with the speaker facing down into said pan you can double the volume. The first song that comes on shuffle is The Guillemots: Annie, Let's Not Wait. In the first verse of this song comes the line..I woke up in a field of corn. Things like this can't help but set you up for a good day can they. The stove is too choked up with soot from using petrol to make coffee and so I down a can of red bull courtesy of the Hotel fiasco yesterday. Add some early 90's raving tunes courtesy of the telepathic shuffle on the iphone and all I'm missing is a few thousand other people. When the tiny/tinny DJ inside the garage tent starts to mix it up with some more peculiar choices I lay on my back with sun warming the day and I realise that I'm raving in a field on my own to a phone less than 50 miles away from having cycled to Turkey, fooking hell, what a laugh. Not wanting to lose the vibe man, I put the phone on its litle holder on the handlebars and leave the tunes pumping (minus coffee pot) and bump my way out of the field, down through the dried up but muddy stream and back onto the E80 towards Istanbul. When I pull up in the next town with the fat beats pumping out like a wasp in a baked bean tin the local ladies who are fitting a new pavement outside their house give me a warm reception but with a roll of the eyes thrown in for good measure. The anthems keep me rolling well today and I hit Haskovo for Lunchtime. The road here is littered with shops displaying three gold coins outside. When I drove this way three years ago I thought it was some kind of lottery. Now blessed with the perfect speed of the bicycle I realise its the sign for cheese. Doh!
I change up my 50 lev note from the hotel and get 63 turkish lira in return. I have a gigantic although only officialy medium kebab and a small savory doughnut covered in garlic sauce. I go to the local square and have a rest on a bench whilst the sun does its worst and remark on the majority of old men sat in the square. 9 out of 10 sport the Haskovo gentlemans uniform of: Baseball cap or Beret, an acrylic knitted jumper or suit jacket, suit trousers and most important of all, a pair of slip on deck type shoe of a knitted cord type material so you can see the socks through them. These shoes are usually in cream but I did see blue and white and a blue pair too.
Refreshed fed and watered I rejoin the E80 towards Svelingrad: the final town before the Turkish border. Half way and 40km from Svelingrad I reach Harmanli where I set about spending the last of my Bulgarian Levs. I still have a few coins left and instruct the lady behind the prepared food counter to dish me out some pork and rice. I pour the contents of my purse onto the counter and say that much worth please. The lady points at some of my coins laughing and says super! Then another lady points at them and says these and these pointing out the 1c and 2c coins and just says No! Soemone else had mentioned 1c and 2c coins are no longer valid but otherwise everyone is taking them. Whatever the situation I get my pork and rice and I'm a happy bunny. The signs out of Harmanli are a little confusing as two roads both point to Svelingrad. One is the motorway the other the road I have been on. Then the sign for the local road is crossed out and the motorway sign has both colour roads on it. I'm not worried about the motorway so head that way. The motorway has been built to a higher standard than most of the roads in Bulgaria and is nice and smooth with a nice wide shoulder for cyclists. The last motorway I went on had little roads and escape routes quite regularly for me to disappear on. Typically now the sun is starting to go down I can't find a way of getting off. A fence about 6 feet high runs the entire length keeping the animals off the road. After 5km I spy a small gate and wade through the undergrowth to see where it goes. It is welded shut along with all the other gates I try. Sticky buds like synthetic cycling clothes and I look like I have been paintballing, covered in little green and yellow splats. I'm resigning myself to staying on the motorway 'til Svelingrad and having a bit of a ride in the dark, when lo and behold an open gate, off I pop and meet a shepherd on the way home with his sheep and goats. I drop down from the raised motorway and into the field below. Its just scrub in between crops of squash and I here I stay.
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