Emen Canyon

On Tuesday of this morning we had our first amazing visit to Emen Canyon, west of Veliko Tarnovo. Yes, it really is as incredible and spectacular as all of the photos on Google Images and as breathtaking and huge as the videos on YouTube. Tina, that naughty little doggie, had a great time too.

From the little suspension bridge at the beginning to the waterfall at the end of the canyon takes about an hour of fairly strenuous walking and then you will want to do what we did: go for a swim! Tina went swimming tooo. What a brave little dog! One commentator has described “a crystal clear lake with a quiet waterfall providing its water”. What a lot of nonsense! The pool at the bottom of the waterfall was full of muddy brown water. Even though there was a modest flow of water, it certainly was not quiet and the surrounding cliffs amplified the sound.

Some of the paths through Emen Canyon are quite easy and pleasant, but there are some pretty steep and rocky bits too. In the UK, a Health and Safety Committee would have installed guard rails everywhere, to stop anyone falling off anything, and the National Trust would probably charge a ten quid entry fee (and then another tenner for the car park). In Bulgaria, it is all free! Best of all, Emen Canyon is only about 25 km from Veliko Tanovo. The journey is a lovely drive through the beautiful Bulgarian countryside – the sort of countryside we used to have in the UK, before Barratt and Wimpey built rubbishy and overpriced houses all over it.

The bad news? There were several rustic-looking wooden bridges that looked as though they had come from the pages of The Hobbit, so you could easily imagine Bilbo and the dwarves crossing a similar bridge into Rivendell. However, this is Bulgaria, so of course there were notices (only in Bulgarian) telling you not to use the bridges because they were unsafe. So why not repair the bridges? Or simply demolish them?