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The Ancient Kingdom

Veliko Turnovo is one of the most spectacular cities in Bulgaria. The capital of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1187 to 1396) it grows like moss on the rocks above the River Yantra, literally clinging to the limestone escapements with follow the river through violent meandering bends, somehow making itself into a city. The houses hang on to the precipitous rocks like swallow's nests and it appears a miracle that they are still there. But there they are, resplendent, most of them, with iron ballustraded balconies defying gravity. A little distance away from the town is the fortress of Tsarevets Hill, a magnificent crusader -style fortification. It was on that hill that the brothers Assen and Peter led an uprising, which eventually freed their country from Byzantine rule. I am reminded of this as I look out over the town from my hotel room and view a vast tasteless monument of stone and iron, commemorating this bygone victory. Turnovo seems prosperous today but their neighbour, Arbanassi, is doing better.

Arbanassi is about 5 kilometres out of Turnovo and the road up to it provides stupendous views of the deep limestone valleys, looking west across the hinterlands of the Balkans Mountains. In the middle ages, Arbanassi was famous for its traders who set off on merchant ventures trips to barter for goods in exchange for hides, wool, wine and fur. The Arbanassites, if that is what one should call them, went to all points of the compass and returned with all manner of exotics like silk and new, fashionable textiles. Arbannassi is still a thriving village with new houses shooting up like beansprouts.

The architecture of the village is most curious. A stone wall capped with red tiles surrounds each house and access is only through a wooden gate, again surmounted with a red tiled porch. There is almost a flavour of St Tropez in the hills about it. Our purpose was to visit the two churches in the village, the first being the tiny monastery of St Nicholas. Efrem was convinced that they lay to the South, so we left the village and after a few miles I persuaded him to stop and ask for directions. He drew up at a parked car and barked at a courting couple. The man was so annoyed that he sent us in entirely the wrong direction, down a steep dirt track. I successfully pleaded with Efrem to return to the village where I reasoned there was more likely to be a church.

Half way down the hill towards Turnovo, the little monastery of St Nicholas appears from a distance to be a working farmyard. It lies in the centre of a group of buildings, most of which are stacked with hay and logs. When I went into it at about six o'clock, the priest was chanting evensong with a sole parishioner in attendance. Light was shining through the glass panes of the cupolas, highlighting the full length icons on the iconastasis and the frescoes on the walls which, with their semi circular tops, extended the windows.

There are two other monasteries to the East of Turnovo, Plakovo and Kapinovo. The former, the Monastery of St Elijah, wins the dubious prize as the most badly beaten up surviving monastery in Bulgaria. Started in the second half of 13th century, it was destroyed in the Ottoman invasion in 1393. Rebuilt in 1450, it was assaulted and set on fire in 1595, 1706, 1784, 1835, 1842. As if that wasn't enough, the north wing was burnt down in 1947. So what remains is just a small church. The Kapinovo Monastery of St Nicholas the Miracle Worker, in contrast, is an early 19th century complex based around an older site of 1272.

There is a marvellous painting of St Elijah in ' a chariot of fire and horses' on his way up to heaven 'in a whirlwind'. He sits facing you, holding the reins of two pairs of red horses with wings, and in his right hand he holds a tiny green coat laced with fur edges, just like a doll's coat. He is offering it to the small sainted figure of Elisha in the bottom left of the picture who is about 'to take hold of his own clothes and rent them into two pieces' before donning Elijah's mantle. I never liked Elisha after he was teased by some small boys who called him "baldhead". He set two she-bears on them from the woods and forty-two of them were "torn".

Following a wide valley leading North towards Ruse, we came to the Preobrazhenie Monastery of the Transfiguration, set high up on the hillside, nestled under a towering limestone cliff. It faces East and catches the full brilliance of the morning sun. Founded in 11th century, it was supported by Tsar Alexander's wife, Theodora, and is charmingly known as the Tsarina's Monastery. It then experienced the usual vagaries of Kurdjali raids until, in 1821, there is a record that it "was ruined and on the verge of financial desolation". Enter Hieromonk Zotik and order was restored. I'm not surprised since there is a photograph of him in the entrance, showing a very forceful personality who died aged 100 years.

Times were not easy for Zotik. In 1834, he commissioned an experienced builder, Dimiter Sofialiyata, to build the church. Poor Dimiter was arrested the next year for treasonable activities by the Turks and hung. The final result, completed several years later, is a narthex with three altar niches and a low-rise dome on an octagonal drum.

Here the hand of Zahari Zograph is much in evidence. He came here after finishing at Trojan and spent the years 1849-50 at the Church of the Transfiguration. The little Church is brilliantly painted outside with scrolling designs of floral motifs, trompe d'oeuil windows and centred with a large fresco, The Wheel of Fortune. There is little evidence of restoration, so the colours have aged naturally, leaving a sense of timelessness.

Inside the church, Zograph has let his vivid imagination run wild. Never can there have been a better collection of horrible monsters to deter mankind from sin. He had strong ideas about who deserved to be punished and on the lower band in the narthex, his list depicts adulterers, traitors, robbers, lechers, sorceresses, millers, grocers, drunks and tavern-keepers.

As I was looking at them, I noticed a blanket over the centre door and cheekily peeped around it. From what I could see, there was a young monk standing at the lectern reciting his devotions. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a small hunchbacked man with a long white beard and dressed in green vestments scuttled over to me and ushered me out, making quiet shooing noises. I protested my innocence – " Anglichanin tourist". He stopped in his tracks, looked me up and down and then pulled me back into the direction we had started from. Fortunately, no offence had been taken.

There was something puzzling about the monastery when compared to its photograph and I suddenly realised that the whole East wall and buildings which it had supported, had vanished down the side of the mountain. The ten monks who live there today now have to brave the bitter east winds of winter without a wall. On the other side of the valley, there is an almost identical monastery complex, which is the Monastery of the Holy Trinity. Like its opposite number across the way, this 13th century foundation had been rebuilt in 1847, was then devastated by earthquakes in 1913 and finally rebuilt in 1927 with little left of the original. It has a wonderful icon of the Archangel Michael punishing a naked and highly agitated sinner beneath his left foot. St Michael is in his usual dress of a Roman warrior but in this image, his knees are the sort of whitey pink one associates with an Englishman on Blackpool beach at the beginning of summer!

From here, we headed West to Trojan. The road was straight as a die and crossed a landscape of rich fields and vineyards. Jays and turtledoves abounded. The first and only town before Trojan is Sevlievo, a large industrial area. Turning off South towards the snow capped ridges of the Balkans, we picked up the Cherna Ossum River which led us to Troyan, high in the foothills.

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