Walking, trekking guide to Bulgaria's National Parks, Europe

• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps
• Reviews
• Further Reading

Hiking maps at varying scales, and even more varying accuracy, have been produced for most of the major mountain ranges in Bulgaria, but it is often a rather hit-and-miss affair trying to obtain them. Your best first point of contact for maps is Balkan Trek (www.balkantrek.com), as they usually maintain a stock and sell them by mail order. Something to bear in mind is that these maps are nowhere near the same standard or accuracy of British Ordnance Survey or French IGN maps. They are not proper topographic maps, and even those at a scale of 1:50 000 should be treated as schematic, and not relied on for critical navigation with a compass.

Thankfully, the majority of hiking trails are very well marked. Summer routes are indicated with coloured blazes (usually red, green, yellow or blue) painted onto rocks or trees, while the safest winter routes are delineated by lines of tall metal poles.

One other thing to be aware of when studying Bulgarian maps is that over the years many of the peaks, passes and other important topographic points, have had their names changed, often more than once. In this guidebook I have tended to use the most traditional names as my preferred choice, and included any other widely used title in parenthesis.