UK to Sofia - by Peugeot 106

We said goodbye to the Mull of Kintyre at the end of October and drove down to England over a few days, saying 'au revoir' to various folk, before heading on our journey south to Turkey, via Bulgaria.On Monday 6th November, we left Dover by Speed Ferries and arrived in Bologne at 10 am. We pretty much drove straight through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany to the Austrian border that first day (not sure what speed, but it took us 10 hrs to travel approx 800 kms including an hour on the ferry). Those Germans really know how to drive, and vestiges of the excellent lane discipline could still be see nas far away as Croatia. Stopped at motorway services for the night - back on the road again at 6.30 am. Traveled straight through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia to Bulgaria.

From Zornica

It was motorway all the way from Dover to 70 kms from Bulgarian border crossing in Serbia (apart from a short stint through Slovenia villages). The trip was uneventful and as quick as you'd want motorway traveling to be until the Serbian border. Just a word of warning for those wishing to emulate, the RAC instructions printed out from the web do NOT match the road signs, nor do the road signs OR the RAC instructions match the motorway map you are about to buy! Makes it interesting - especially as in the small villages no one sprechenze engliski just when you need directions. After turning off the Serbian motorway for the Bulgarian border we ground to a complete halt and had to stay in the dark and cold, single file for over an hour, not able to find out why the traffic wasn't moving. Eventually we were able to head off and up this goat track for the last 70 kms until we reached Bulgaria where the goat track deteriorated to a goat track with very large pot holes. Getting out of Serbia was exciting, I wasn't sure if they were going to let us out. They had let us in ok, once we'd paid them 125 Euros for the pleasure of driving straight through without any planned stops, but at the Serbian/Bulgarian border we had problems. Firstly there were literally thousands of trucks lined up at the border (about 2 km of trucks nose to tail), secondly they seemed to want to hold onto us. Fortunately the Mercedes we were driving had been disguised as a shonky Peugeot 106 so they must have realised we had no more money to give them, so they reluctantly let us go after gesticulating in our best Serbian sign language that all we had in our suitcases were clothes. Entry into Bulgaria was the complete opposite to Serbia. While rather 3rd world in a way, it was a pleasant experience. The folk were friendly and helpful. However 10 minutes into Bulgaria we hit a very large pothole in the dark and got a puncture. It was freezing cold, the only torch we could find was the camera light on a mobile phone and the wheel nut on the Peugeot is a trick one that is on so tight we weren't able to loosen it. So we could tell we were going to have a fun time. Anyway, we had no sooner started panicking when a mobile mechanic with flashing orange lights and a jolly "ha ha ha welcome to Bulgaria" (the only English words he could say) arrived and helped us change the wheel. We were so grateful that when he asked for "10 mumble mumbles", we thought he'd said 10 Euros, which we happily paid him. We found out the next day that it was 10 leva (about $8) and not 10 euros (about $16) that he'd asked for.