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The Balkan Range cuts right across the country, a forbidding swathe of rock known to the Bulgarians as the Stara planina - the "Old Mountains". To the ancients they were the Haemus, lair of brigands and supposed home of the North Wind. In the seventh and eighth centuries, the Balkan Mountains were the birthplace of the Bulgarian nation-state. It was here, first at Pliska, and later at Preslav, that the Bulgar khans established and ruled over a feudal realm - known to historians as the "First Bulgarian Kingdom". Here too, after a period of Byzantine control, the Bulgarian nobility (the bolyari) proclaimed the "Second Kingdom" and established a new and magnificent capital at Veliko Tarnovo. During the Ottoman occupation, the villages and monasteries of the Stara planina helped to preserve Bulgarian traditions, preparing the ground for the re-emergence of native culture during the nineteenth-century National Revival. Given the mountainous topography and the vagaries of the road and train network, routes through the Balkan Range are many and complex. The main northbound route from Sofia to the Danubian citadel town of Vidin provides access to a range of off-the-beaten-track destinations in the rural northwest, with settlements like Vratsa, Berkovitsa, Chiprovtsi and Belogradchik giving access to the stupendous - and very varied - mountainscapes of the western Balkan Range. Attractions are by no means limited to the great outdoors: Vratsa's historical museum contains the best collection of Thracian treasures in this part of Bulgaria; while Chiprovtsi is a carpet-weaving centre of long standing. For those heading for the central and eastern Balkan Range, east-west routes between Sofia and the sea skirt the highest peaks, and tend to be much quicker than north-south routes across the backbone of the Range. Hence many people approach the area by train from either the Sofia-Burgas line through the Valley of the Roses, or the Sofia-Varna line which arcs round the mountains to the north. The latter gives access to three potential urban bases from which to explore the area: Pleven , whose numerous museums commemorate a celebrated episode from the War of Liberation, when Bulgarian independence was wrested with the aid of Russian arms; the aforementioned medieval capital of Veliko Tarnovo, one of Bulgaria's most visually impressive cities and a convenient base for visiting a string of nearby medieval monasteries and a yet more brilliant ensemble of craftworking towns; and Shumen , close to the First Kingdom capitals of Pliska and Preslav, as well as the enigmatic cliff-face sculpture of the Madara Horseman . However it's in the countryside that the real rewards of travel in this region lie. There's an increasing range of accommodation both in heritage villages like Arbanasi and in more traditional rural settlements such as Cherni Osam and Apriltsi , the latter two being important trail heads for hiking routes south into the mountains. A different kind of rural environment reigns in the rolling hills of the Ludogorie north of Shumen, an enticingly undeveloped area in which the Thracian tomb at Sveshtari and the Muslim holy site of Demir Baba Tekke - both near Isperih - are the most worthwhile destinations.
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