Varadsko Fortress

You climb all day toward a village that no longer has anyone in it. Varad stands empty now among high open clearings more than 1,200 metres up, and above it, on a rocky crown at 1,510 metres, lie the broken walls of a fortress. Thracians are said to have held this rock first; later it was one of the Byzantine strongholds strung through the Rhodopes; later still the Bulgarians used it to guard against Ottoman raids. The stones keep their own counsel.

The way there earns the view. From Mogilitsa the path climbs through the Elinden neighbourhood and trades forest for meadow and back, past fountains where you can drink, until the whole range opens out: Mount Kom and Ardin, Golyam Perelik and Tsigansko Gradishte, the Snezhanka tower over Pamporovo, and Falakro and Pangaion away in Greece. Locals call a view like this a sea of mountains, and from up here you see why.

Just before the last climb the trail passes a beech so old and so broad it is held to be the thickest tree in the Upper Arda. The summit is the turning point; the way home swings south through Chereshkite and Borikovo, a different road back to Mogilitsa.