Sozopol, Bulgaria. Making our way across Bulgaria is all fairly event-free, just enjoying the tunes and more sun as we wind our way through gentle forest climbs, with the sea veering into view every now and then below us to our left. I haven't seen that big wet beast since I left Cornwall. Of course there's plenty to keep the bored motorist entertained - loads more insane overtaking on blind bends, and the occasional game of layby whore-spotting. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with: 'hello handsome, fancy a good time with these mams?'
Steve's still out of it, but we have to make up a load of miles, so we have decided to plough on and hoof it from the Romania/Buglaria border to the Black Sea. He says he's fine in the back, as long as we can stop for him to throw up. Bloody backseat drivers.
Another team from the rally - 4 Play Nice - have been in touch via this blog, saying they'll be on the Black Sea coast around the same time as us. In one way this is a pain - we'd really expected to be last by miles by now, so they've kind of stolen our glory. But given that we haven't spoken to any Fellow Rallyers since the Czech party last week we figure it'd be good to hook up. They say they're heading for Sozopol, a small beach resort towards the border with Turkey, so we agree to meet them there.
The good thing about Bulgarian billboards is that they seem disproportionately weighted towards Bruce Willis. He's in all these vodka ads, declaring - or, I like to think, defending - 'the truth about vodka'. In one he does so by resting his elbow on a sword and looking very bald. This seems to be the key to selling products in Bulgaria, judging by the other ads. One features a bald man in a huge fur coat, surrounded by dogs. Forget sex. Selling here is all about war, hunting and hair loss.
It's not such an epic drive, and we turn up in Sozopol by five, seeking the campsite. Turns out it's way easier in the light. We find the campsite without any trouble and drive around a bit looking for a pitch, before settling for one next to a caravan with about three porch extensions. The owner waves hello, then gets up and comes over to advise us where to set up, making all sorts of Steve-style calculations about where the sun will be at what time. Then he gets stuck in helping stick the tent up. And brings out some tools to help us. And blows up our airbeds. Of course he does. He's Romanian.
Turns out his name is Gabi, a big gregarious tanned chap in a white vest who's here with his family. He's really chatty, but his English, while good enough to understand, is patchy, so as he gets deeper into conversation he keeps calling on his wife for help. She's in the caravan. So throughout our chat with him he keeps pausing, then you hear the odd word - 'chicken', 'plum', 'war' - roaring out with a Romanian accent from a slit in the caravan curtains.
Jeff wanders over behind the tent and suddenly throws up. Then he feels better again. This trip is still weird. Once he's recovered, he makes the point that he'd never considered the concept of Bulgarian caravaners before. He'd only ever thought of it as typically English. But they're all here. Most of them have brought TVs. Gabi's rigged up his own satellite dish. So basically they're all squashed in, in confined rows, having brought all their mod-cons, deftly recreating for their holiday all the realities of suburban life. One guy has a huge flatscreen TV in his two-man tent. I'm surprised no-one's brought a lawn mower.
We take a wander along the beach, which is peppered with open-sided bars playing house music. There's not more than three or four people in any one. It's a bit odd. Pete Tong was apparently playing here last week. We wander back via a shortcut, which leads us into another area full of little wooden shacks. I wish I had the balls to walk up to people and stick a camera in their face, as this place would make a wonderful photo essay - holidaying Bulgarians and their little colourful boxes. We sit around chatting to the guys from the other team - they actually brought chairs. One of them has a gran who lives in Hemmick, the stunning beach down the road from where Jeff and I live.
They're a bunch of engineering graduates from Nottingham University, doing the rally, in a rusted Skoda, to get some fun in before they start work. Makes it all sound so ominous. We're way older than them and we're out doing the same thing. Looks like someone has a mistaken perception about the working world. I'm not sure whether it's us or them. With one man still well and truly down, and another been all weird and pukey, the night is another quiet one for us. Budapest nights seem so far away. I lie down to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance, a book recommended to me by Steve Roe, lord and master of Hoopla impro. With the way things are going with the team, it's looking increasingly prescient.
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