was entirely ignorant about Bulgaria apart from reading about it in the ‘Crap Holidays’ section of the Observer on the day I was leaving. The web revealed that it has the unhappiest people in the world, so it was our job to cheer them up a bit, and Bulgaria has a cuisine which has only two cheeses named unimaginatively after their colour – yellow and white, so no Bulgarian Stinking Bishop. I had no idea of the land that geographically (and in terms of judicial corruption) lies under Romania, which we visited for the last solar eclipse visible from Europe. We almost visited Bulgaria accidentally during that trip, which we were deported from for videoing a military installation, but turned back at the intimidating border – they may have had advanced warning of what we were like.

Bulgaria is a pre-accession state for the EU (well delayed for a year once we visited) which like Lithuania, where I was attacked and returned with typhoid, has Scottish trade missionaries which would provide us with intelligence, hopefully without being deported. Bulgaria also boasts vast exports of its wines (second only to France) and an impressive and lengthy history (although they did make the mistake of not being on our side during the war). They nod their head for No and shake for Yes, although confusingly well travelled Bulgarians do the reverse to fit in with international conventions.

I decided to spend the night at the airport rather than risk sleeping through the Prince CD that normally wakes me up for early flights at 3:30am. I stayed at the sterile Hilton Hotel which seemed to be run entirely by the Indian branch of Hilton International (one wonders if the Scots were all in the Calcutta branch). It had the side entertainment of a bed that leans which provided hours of fun in waking up as I almost fell off when rolling over in my sleep and the strange experience of imagining that I had an Indian call me up with my alarm call only to find out it was 1am (I finally got woken up by the real automated call at the correct time).

Espressoing through Prague airport, only to be ejected from my seat and stuffed into a lonely corner with only clouds as company, they obviously didn’t enjoy my company as Bulgaria was more or less cloud free for our entire visit (25 degrees of temperature and six degrees of separation as it turns out with the remarkable coincidences in the inter connectivity with us missionaries).

The ambassadors reception at his residence was outside thanks to the wonderful weather on the vine strewn terrace, and then it was ‘Under The Linden Tree’ to listen to Bulgarian music and eat anything that was not Avian Flu compatible which included Mashed Nettles and Pike on a Tile (although the pike was replaced by ‘Troot’ on a strong recommendation from the gypsy waiter).

The next day was an endurance walk through soviet architecture, Russian churches, moved on by a guard from resting on their National monument and a delightful stroll through an autumnal park to an obelisk with russian figures posed in dramatic scenes. The icon museum was filled with priceless objects ripe for plucking with minimal security – all one would require was a good screwdriver, a very large coat and absolutely no ethics and the prizes of Eisenstein films could be hanging on my wall.

We all met for dinner at what the guide books describe as the best restaurant in Sofia in the room labelled VIP suite, whilst the others had gone on the embassy minibus (described as on its last legs by the girl at the embassy) for a 5 hour journey to an area that had been devastated in a flood last month and for a press attack asking what they were going to do about the area.

Cocktails in the world famous Buddha bar with live fish in bowls on the glass tables and watching mermaids dancing in a night club at someones wedding and so to bed.

Next morning I wanted to see more of Bulgaria so jumped on a Russian train through the autumn coated hills to Plovdiv in Thrace, home to Orpheus, who got the return ticket to Hell, and Spartacus – I was terribly disappointed that no-one asks for your name when travelling by train as I would have surely answered ‘I am Spartacus’. I did have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, as invented by Cyril the monk, which is somewhat confusing with familar letters representing entirely different characters (i.e. c is s, y is u, backward n is i) – mikeforsyth.com becomes микефорсътх.цом

Plovdiv was built upon seven hills, one hill was demolished by the Soviets, and captured by Alexander the Great’s dad who promptly renamed it Philipopolis. It has a magnificent amphitheatre discovered after a landslide. I climbed one of the seven hills over the angle twisting random cobbles to reach the roman fort.
Plovdiv is an absolute joy, beautiful houses, cobbled streets and the museum of Bulgarian Wine where the fine Mavrud, a Thracian red wine, was quaffed.

Returning on the train was more challenging as Plovdiv station planners in their rush for digital information boards omitted to actually provide English speaking guards or numbered platforms to back them up. There was also the amazing linguistic barrier between the word ‘beer’ pronounced in ever desperately random frequencies and increasing volume (which always increases understanding) and the attractive waitress expecting ‘beera’ as the only solution.

Dinner was at a tourist restaurant in the mountains which had the added delight of a theatrical dancing on coals scene. Since I knew (well sort of hoped) that I wouldn’t get burnt when prancing across the coals after their performance, I kicked off the shoes and socks and went firewalking with my trousers rolled up as one doesn’t really want to have ‘fiery breeks’.

The evening panned out with drinks in a piano bar (with my private lift to the night club from my room), dramatic music signalled the start of a live lesbian sex show (a very vulgar bulgar) at the Kama Sutra night club but this was relatively dull compared to some very acrobatic inverted pole-dancing which certainly put my efforts in Lithuania into perspective. A piano bar with Beatles songs around 4am sung by a jolly clientele denied the rumour that Bulgaria was the unhappiest country in the world and was a perfect end to the day, well technically at 4am pretty much the start of the next day as breakfast followed only a few hours later.

The final day was spent wandering around the speed chess players in the park, Bulgaria being the Grand Master and the trophy proudly displayed in the hotel, buying a crystal ball in a nazi ephemera flea market and admiring the chicken paintings hidden behind closed shops possibly in an attempt to prevent the spread of H5N1.

Not forgetting the traditional Czech Beer and Chips with mayonnaise in Wenceslas Square watching the sunset over the silhouetted buildings in Prague whilst cutting CDROMs of everyones photographs – a nice stop over in between flights. Unpacking at home we unearthed the treasures of brochures and hotel shampoos and the unusual complementary banana flavoured condom branded with Grand Hotel Sofia.

Sunday normally consists of swim, steam, market and breakfast but today we squeezed in a blood donation after the market – or rather we tried to squeeze in a blood donation. I was feeling somewhat virtuous – “what are you doing today?” said the blonde pool attendant – “I am giving blood”, you could see her looking in awe at my new halo.

I hadn’t given blood in so long that the computer records no longer existed in a transferable medium – so I was a new blood donor and scrutinised carefully. I managed to stumble quickly over the prostitutes, dangerous hobbies and injecting drugs questions (I thought that not at the same time covered them) and slowed down too much at the “have you returned from foreign parts with a fever?” – wow they make these forms so difficult to lie on almost as bad as the US immigration one “have you ever committed genocide?”.

Mentioning ‘typhoid’ in passing to the nurse was a bad idea – the nurse visibly moved her chair back as I quickly recovered with “but all the tests were clean – looked like some sort of fever from Lithuania”. Too late – she had already donned her biosuit and was prodding me with a long stick with a disclosure signature they could now double check my medical records and see if they could ban me for life. She quickly pointed out the exit, otherwise known as the walk of shame – as you walk away from the interview the long line of pious blood donors were all thinking – is he banned for prostitution or intravenous drug use?

Still I sat in the cafe munching my way through the chocolate biscuits, whilst my keep fit instructor came in, smiled and then collapsed to the floor and was quickly hidden behind a screen with nurses saying reassuring things such as – “if you feel pins and needles in your feet kick the box away”, and “you are looking a much better colour now” – as a fan was starting to put her into fast freeze and brought an icy pallor to her.

I was waiting for Kim for ages, judging by the empty biscuit plate, pondering the fact that they didn’t have a lycanthropy question (although werewolfism may be transferred through saliva) or a vampirism query (HIV might be that though) and wondering how much blood they had taken from her – she appeared looking like a voodoo doll. It appeared they had in fact not taken any blood from her – although not for the want of trying. Kim ‘the stone’ has veins which don’t give up blood easily – they could have guessed when her birthplace is marked as Yorkshire. Three nurses and four attempts later they gave up and she toddled down the walk of shame with sore arms.

So it was now up to Stuart to redeem the Forsyth blood giving record, which he did although having to be fanned down by one nurse and having his feet raised by another as he feined fainting – some people have all the luck.

October – the eight month of the Roman calendar, the tenth of our Gregorian calendar, started with great disappointment. On the trail of an abandonded lead mine near Edin Hall Broch and armed with walkie talkies, rope and torches we ended up being torn to pieces on brambles, ripping my trousers on a barbed wire fence and falling into a burn. Following that we couldn’t find the geocache under a viaduct at loanhead – after having worked out the coordinates from various gravestones in the Loanhead cemetry, got lost on the trail to Roslin Glen, couldn’t get into Rosslyn Chapel with the filming for the Da Vinci Code ongoing, and finally found that Roslin Glen was closed at 5pm as we were fighting lack of diesel and daylight.

We returned the next day and parked in Roslin and walked through Roslin Glen, which was a wonderful walk along the river (although there were signs saying that the riverwalk was closed). Cara threw herself off a particularly steep section but managed to scabble safely onto a ledge and scramble back to the path (fortunately as we had no idea how we were going to get her). Wallace’s cave was inaccessible high up on a rocky face on the other side of a deep and fast moving river, but there were lovely views of Hawthornden Castle high up on a cliff. We bagged two caches enroute but still couldn’t find the viaduct cache, even though we were all dangling from parts of the viaduct.

October 3rd saw the annular eclipse (only 52% of which we could see from Scotland). If we had been in Spain we would have the seen the entire thing (we missed it in Shetland last time thanks to Scottish cloud cover) and the side effect of the circular sunbeams

Tested out our Kelly Kettle and origami picnic set in the garden all set for the assault on the Three Brethern and ice cream shop in Innerleithen. It has to be said that the trial went much better than trying to light it on top of the Three Brethern in a howling gale – with no Zippo lighter we gave up and tramped to Traquair across the windswept Southern Upland Way limping to the ‘Evil Dead’ like Minchmuir Bothy built by the Airborne Initiative ‘Chancers’. It was disappointing that we didn’t find any WayMerks but there are other sections of the Way to explore.

We had left Stuart at the Tibbie Tamson geocache because he wanted to head back to the car park as he was going to drive to Traquair to pick us up – he did however get crashed into by a car full of rugby players in Selkirk. He met us by driving up some of the Southern Upland way at Traquair and watched Donnie Darko on my new PSP whilst we struggled down to meet him to inspect the damage. Our car had a bumper scratch but the Fiat was badly damaged and could not be driven away.

And then the rain fell – ‘And Lo the Lord hath flushed out the sinners from Hawick’. There are cars floating down the misnamed high street of Hawick and through shop windows – ironically the Home Improvement Centre was wrecked as its wall collapsed under the force of the Teviot. A months worth of rain in 24 hours – the fishermen are happy, our pond is full and our stream is in spate but, being on top of a hill, if we get flooded I suspect there will be more people in far serious difficulties.

Hotel Five November One (H5N1) – Avian Flu has now surrounded my next destination – Bulgaria. The advice seems to be that I should not visit poultry farms nor bring back live poultry and definitely not go around slaughtering and defeathering them, nor should I eat dishes made with fresh duck blood (need to consult the Bulgaria/English dictionary for that phrase).

Solved Petals Around The Rose and am now a Potentate of the Rose. Started learning to play the Djembe drum at the Village Hall in Smailholm, met an african person in the small village (we don’t have many africans in Smailholm) so wound down the window and said ‘This is a long shot but do you know where the African Drumming Wokshop is?’. Great fun and my palms are still tingling. Smailholm also boasts the Hundy Mundy folly and a new natural burial site.

The new Wallace and Gromit film – the Curse of the WereRabbit has a side effect – quoting the Head Cheesemonger of Teddington Cheese – “As I’m sure you are aware, the demand for Stinking Bishop is phenomenal at the moment” – however I managed to secure some and it is simply delicious with a cup of espresso, whilst lusting after my new love The Seqair Falco – designed 1955 and called the Ferrari of the air and to go with it the Fortis Pilot watch – Xmas is coming…