Iskar Gorge Travel Video Guide

Iskar Gorge Travel Itinerary

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The Iskar Gorge is the most scenically impressive of the routes north. It's also within easy enough reach of Sofia to be a popular day-trip destination, although only the slow patnicheski , or "local", trains (most of which run early in the morning and late in the afternoon) stop at the smaller settlements along the gorge. Beware too that the gorge is almost totally devoid of tourist accommodation - Sofia and Vratsa are the most convenient places to stay, although the monasteries of Cherepish and Sedemte Prestola both offer basic rooms. The most breathtaking stretches of the gorge, where the river is squeezed beneath soaring crags, lie between Gara Lakatnik and Mezdra ; it's feasible to stop off at one of the halts between these places, indulge in a spot of walking, and pick up another train later in the day.

Things begin to get interesting just beyond the town of Novi Iskar , 10km north of the capital, where the gorge burrows northwards into the Balkan massif, gradually becoming narrower and deeper, the road and railway competing for space above the river. Strewn with boulders and scored by gullies, it's archetypal partisan country. There's a monument near Batuliya village commemorating the 24 partisans who clashed with local police in May

1944, and a train halt called Tompsan after Major Frank Thompson (brother of left-wing English historian and veteran CND campaigner E P Thompson) who fought and died with them. A member of the British mission sent to observe the effectiveness of Bulgaria's anti-fascist fighters (and evaluate their suitability to receive Allied aid), Thompson was fondly remembered by the postwar Bulgarian regime, and his uniform used to be exhibited in Sofia's now defunct Museum of the Revolution.

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