When I first set off on this trip I was confident I could knock out 10 photos and 400 odd words every second day.  As we moved through Europe that stretched out to every third or fourth day and now it’s been a week.

I could have written a thousand words a day because it’s been so exciting and exotic but the photos have not been easy to come by.  We had another couple of beach days in Halkidiki, the beach was calm and perfect for swimming but offered little in the way of underwater photography.

As we moved through Northern Greece and closer to Turkey, you really got a sense that this land has been at the crossroads of some of the great civilisations.  The Persians, Greeks, Byzantines and the Ottomans have all controlled this part of the world at one time and left their mark. It’s impossible to pin down any one type of identity.  One morning we wandered through the peaceful Island monastery Saint Nicholas and chatted with a Greek Orthodox priest, we then spent the afternoon in the ancient Thracian town of Xanthi where we listened to the Muslim call to prayer over the loudspeakers.

Sensory experiences are impossible to capture in a photo.

Bringing a dog to Eastern Europe has been a challenge.  Back home I’d planned for nearly every contingency but I never considered roving bands of wild dogs.  Chloe attracts attention from humans but pack dogs are also interested in her exotic charm.  One night were parked up in a pine forest but there was a little Greek port town just at the end of a dirt road, we thought we’d go explore.  We didn’t get that far until the dogs came running, there was at least a dozen, they weren’t attacking but they had a curious intensity that was unsettling.  We turned back for the van, they followed, and somewhere along the way some local must have felt sorry for our plight because a gunshot rang out.  The pack dogs fled to all corners of the forest.

Crossing into Bulgaria has been an experience, the old Soviet influence is clearly evident but much of that infrastructure lays crumbling and empty.  My first interaction with a Bulgarian was strange, we had just crossed the border, it had been a long drive and I thought I’d get the dog out for a toilet break at a convenient parking place.  But I guess it was a good place to for smugglers to transfer goods because a huge Border Force guard jumped out of the bushes where his car was hidden and began questioning me in rapid Bulgarian.

I can’t have looked much like your typical smuggler with my dog sniffing the ground as we waited for her to shit and he was content to send me on my way.

Bulgaria has proven charming. It’s sometimes ramshackle and haphazard and on the other hand the seaside resort town of Sozopol is more than worthy of the mass tourism that plagues so much of Western Europe.  Contemporary restaurants overlooking the Black Sea offer fancy seafood meals while campsites serve up toilet facilities from half a century ago.  Yesterday we spent a captivating afternoon at Castle Ravadinovo. It had loomed up from the roadside as we drove by and when we went to investigate it proved to be a completely fake fairytale castle tourist trap, but with its exotic gardens and attention to detail it was astonishing.

I write this with no idea what today brings, our campground is bustling as locals prepar for the summer patching sheds and caravans with whatever materials they find, the sea is just beyond the sand dunes and the van is parked in a shady meadow, I’ve never seen a campsite like it but it has a rustic allure. Or do we head to Sozopol for a seafood feast?

Bulgaria is like that… confusing.