Hi Lethagized,

Friends of mine have driven from South Wales to the Varna area a couple of times (2007 & 2008) - they used the ViaMichelin Route Planner to initially plan their route (shows toll costs, additional road taxes, etc., in its route calculation). For example, a test route from Birmingham to Balchik (using 'recommended route') shows an estimated cost of €283.23, of which Tolls = €2.22 EUR, Petrol = €261.27 and Road taxes = €19.74 [Austrian & Hungarian motorway tax (10 days) and Romanian (1 day)].

The first year they entered Bulgaria from Romania, but said that they found crossing Romania the worst part of the journey roadwise. This experience led them to enter Bulgaria last year from Serbia (Kalotina checkpoint) and cross Bulgaria via Sofia/Veliko Tarnovo instead.

From my own experience of travelling to Varna from London by coach in 2005, the only border controls of note were entering Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria itself (via Kalotina) - at that time Bulgaria was the worst/most rigorous of the three, but that was before EU accession.

If you use Google Bulgaria (google<dot>bg) and try something like "satnav bulgaria maps" you will find several ex-pat posts about satnav use in Bulgaria.

When I was in the Varna/Dobrich areas in March this year, fuel prices were around 1.73 to 1.75 Leva per litre for A95H unleaded and 1.66 to 1.68 Leva per litre for diesel.

Thanks for the swift response Baldur. Very much appreciated I was reading a story on the whatsonbulgaria site last night shortly after posting my thread on here. He suggested the michelin site too. He set it for bucuresti, then changed it to ruse bulgaria as he passed bucuresti. Doing it this way he avoided serbia. I have heard on here to avoid serbia like the plague. The michelin site takes me through france, belgium, netherlands, germany, austria, hungary, romania into bulgaria.

Thinking of all this reminds me of the tv documentry 'The long way round' Featuring Ewan Mc Gregor and Charley Boorman except they did 19,000 miles on a motorbike!

Wow, what a road trip! I would like to do it but 2 hours drive from Bristol to Nottingham is my limit, I fall asleep after then! Good luck, put a post on here when you get back as I would love to hear all your stories. A mate of mine who was backpacking said he was forced to bribe at boarder check between Romainia and Bulgaria, hope this doesnt happen to you.

Hi
I am intending to drive a small van over from Manchester to Sunny Beach next May.
The route that appeals to me more is down the east coast of Italy and a ferry across from Brindisi.
Rightly or wrongly I'm a bit wary of driving through the old eastern european states.
If anyone has experience of driving over to Bulgaria all info will be gratefully received.

My brother moved to Tenevo and drove from Manchester to Ancona, Italy, where he got a ferry to Igoumenitsa, Greece and then on to Tenevo. He went that way to avoid certain countries. He shared the driving and even missing their intended ferry from Ancona, it only took two and a half days.

Well...We still haven't made the trip over just yet. We've had a load of building work done on the house, electric water and sewerage pipes put in place. All that is left is the security grilles for the windows and doors, then we can take our furniture over. Because the extra work has stretched our money, we are canceling the trip to around this time next year.

I will get back here to ask more questions no doubt, and hopefully some pics and an experience of how the trip went.