Good morning YouTube and welcome back to the channel now today you can see I'm in a car again.
No Himalayan today! its morning we're skipping over into Varna because there's a motorcycle
rental company and they're quite well known here in Bulgaria i've seen them on the internet and
they rent out um Africa Twins and that type of Motorbike so the plan is go there and let's see if
we can get ourselves an africa twin or two, they give you the gear and all that as well and then
we're gonna it's a bit wild a bit wet but that's all right then we're gonna head out towards some
of the older capitals here in Bulgaria, places like Provadia and stuff like that so anyway stay
tuned. It's called Rosetta moto tours they rent Motorbikes like africa twins or at least they did.
I think i'm going to have real difficulty renting a motorcycle here just because of the area that
i'm in. That's a shame because I was thinking I would rent an africa twin for maybe a day or two
and then go out and do some of these motorcycle tours, need to try and re-evaluate oh well.
Still showing on the website etc that the place is operational but you know obviously there's nothing
in there anyway never mind. They are called rosetta moto tours, so rosetta moto tours if you
exist anywhere in the world let us know and when we come back to Bulgaria we'll definitely use you.
So the first place we're heading to is Ovech fortress in Provadia. Now when we were coming out
of Varna there was actually a huge battle there an east versus west type battle you know Christian
forces against the Ottoman Turks who were trying to you know conquer Constantinople at the time,
this battle took place in 1444 but what we'll do is once we get to the Ovech fortress we'll
be looking south towards Varna we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail.
So four Bulgarian Lev to get in here I think that's about what's that John? Let's say two
pounds a couple of euros. If you're following the steps guys are wet very very well worn
It's not even steps really is it's just carved rock.
Before we go looking at the entire fortress this actually here was a church
I thought this was a well it must still be
There were three churches on this site this was one of the larger ones and these are actually
coffin slabs you can see coffins have been cut carved right out the rock I'm thinking are these
people having baths we can tell by the shape and the size of them that people were buried here.
There's some view I mean even even apart from the weather it's amazing.
The site here at Ovech is absolutely vast folks it's basically sitting on two hills
and probably the most impressive part we're going to cross in a minute and there's a little bridge
between the two hills. We came up the east gate this is the west gate maybe another one
further over but you can see they put this modern walkway in here.
Wow
It's a really impressive area this now you wouldn't know it to drive through this town
here Provadia but archaeological records show that there was a settlement here dating back to
around 4700 bc 5000 years before christ almost!
I actually hiked uh not the entire wall but a very very significant portion
of the Great Wall of China 2015. This looks almost like a tiny section of it.
Needless to say this fortress is very very old it's been controlled by the Thracians the Romans
uh the Bulgers the Bulgarians the Turks as part of the ottoman empire.
What a building stunning!
And this here would be the main gate to the fortress.
It's very cold you always imagine Bulgaria is going to be warm not in December as I
was saying earlier there was a huge battle here at Varna in 1444. Just south of here
about 20 kilometres south of here where a force of uh Christian forces uh came up against the
Ottoman Turks Murad's forces huge huge armies on both sides now in the Christian army you had
the Polish King, the king of Wallachia all these different areas, bulgars. You cold?
Murad II himself he was later to become the Turkish emperor or the Ottoman emperor. The
brother of Vlad the Impaler he was fighting on the Christian side Wallachia. Vlad was Dracula
yeah of course he was later to go on and fight the ottomans for quite some time.
Drawbridge here wow! Now in the midst of the battle the young Polish king now he was a king but
against orders he led the elite cavalry to be fair they were mainly Polish cavalry 500 of them right
into the heart of the Ottoman lines he wanted the glory yeah he wanted to capture Murad II or
kill him. Unfortunately for him that young king was killed directly in front of the Ottoman tent
the sultan's tent he was beheaded his body was never recovered but that eventually led to the
rout of the Christian forces and they tried to flee. It's a huge massacre there was a massacre
in both sides it was so bad in fact that Murad himself it took him three days before he realized
that he'd actually won the battle that's how many men he had lost. The result of that battle meant
that the Christian forces were no longer willing to come to the aid of Constantinople certainly
not in any great you know force and essentially what that meant was in 1453 Constantinople fell
and was to become Byzantium. That was essentially the end of the holy roman empire because there was
two emperors in Rome and Constantinople was the capital of the eastern empire.
It's now Istanbul. Let's talk about the first time you and I were on a bike together John id
be riding pillion is that right? yes. So how long ago was this and what happened exactly?
35 years ago... The largest fortress in the whole of Europe. 870!
Oldest Christian church in Europe dating back to 320. Preslav here was known as a spiritual and
literary heart of Bulgaria. That's it for this one guys I really hope you liked it
if you did give me a thumbs up subscribe down below maybe even hit that notification
bell so that Johnny can tell you the next time there's a video on Youtube we'll see the next one.