Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:00am

Travel | The Long Road East

I've just completed my "Transeurope National Express" trip. It was a 2,100 mile coach journey from my home in Loughborough to my house in northwest Bulgaria.

The journey took down to London and then by ferry to France, through Belgium, then Germany, with a break in Frankfurt, then through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and to Bulgaria, with a short break in Sofia, before continuing to Varna and then up to General Toshevo near the Romanian border.

In in all it took almost four days, with three nights spent travelling. I've done the UK/Bulgaria journey by air many times, but this time I fancied doing it overland, in part to save on carbon emissions, but mostly just to see what it was like.

I think the most interesting thing was seeing autumn in full flow across the European continent. From the still mostly green trees in the UK I passed through the incredible fiery scenery in Germany to the more subdued tones in the Balkans. Going over the alps in Austria and Slovenia by moonlight was also impressive, especially with a lightening storm illuminating the night sky through Slovenia as I headed toward Croatia.

Passing through Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade reminded me that the last time I was in this part of the world I was a student and that these three capital cities were part of a single country, Yugoslavia. What an enormous amount of change has happened in the region since then.

Travelling from Serbia to Bulgaria the scenery becomes impressively mountainous again, leading up to Sofia (which I think is one of the highest capitals in Europe at around 500m). From there it was downhill all the way to Varna by the Black Sea and up to General Toshevo in the northwest of Bulgaria.

I have to say that I've never been so pleased to have arrived *anywhere*. The journey was *long*. Especially the Frankfurt to Sofia leg. The buses were fairly comfortable, but there is just so much time you can spend on them in one go. It hasn't completely put me off travelling by coach over long distances, but in the future I will plan more breaks in the journey.

Throughout the journey I took pictures and "geotagged" them with my phone's GPS. These pictures can be seen on a map on my Flickr page.

Finally, how did I do on carbon emissions? Well, according to the calculator on the Eurolines Web site by replacing a 1,500 mile East Midlands to Varna flight with a 2,100 mile coach journey I reduced my CO2 emissions from 282.3Kg to 97.99Kg. This is apparently equivalent to 4,000 boiling kettles or 5,000 hours of TV. I'm still deciding which option to take them up on.

Author: Sean Clark