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With reference to Bulgarian roads. On a recent trip I picked up a brand new hire car at Bourgas Airport to drive to Dobrich. Anybody who has done that trip will know that the road between the Airport and Varna (twists and turns)is a complete contrast (fairly dead straight) than between Varna and Dobrich

Having got up a bit of speed on the Dobrich approach road and at 10.30pm I hit, not a pothole but a b****y great crater which left me with a square nearside front wheel. My Son who is in the car trade took off the wheel and replaced it with the spare, looked at the wheel and said, that is a right off job Dad

The next day somebody told me about a specialist in Dobrich who makes square wheels round again so I took it to him and 30minutes later I had what looked like a new wheel which is now back in the boot as the spare. The total cost for repair, putting the tyre back on and balancing the wheel, 14leva. A bargain

I think the wheel specialist is on a winner and never lightly to go out of business

Gimp wrote:

Sounds like a step in the right direction lets hope they spend the money in the right place and not pocket it

Well said Gimp totally agree with you

im not sure which is worse the roads or the cheap metal used on the wheel trims of the hire cars. we happily bounce our car up and down the potholes round yambol but when we borrowed a hire car we had to replace all the wheels.

Not wanting to get into the argument here, but has anyone considered the extremes of temperature in Bulgaria? This must play havoc with any new road surface.

Gimp wrote:

Sounds like a step in the right direction lets hope they spend the money in the right place and not pocket it

gimp, didn't you know their pockets are the right places

oldun wrote:

Not wanting to get into the argument here, but has anyone considered the extremes of temperature in Bulgaria? This must play havoc with any new road surface.

It's not just to do with the extreme temperatures oldun, in many cases it's down to mentality
Example:- Last year I was held up in a queue of traffic on the Dobrich by-pass, the reason being that there were two lorries tipping ballast into the potholes, during the night there was a thunder storm and guess what all that hard work done the previous day was washed away and so we still had the potholes :Headbang:Will they ever learn

They just don't have the money due to pocketing! Its the normal way of dealing with roads here because our village has had its holes filled with tar and chippings which is already being washed away by storms. Bulgarians don't seem to prioritise roads as, comparatively speaking, there are not so many cars in the country. Depends where you live of course! No doubt all our holes will reappear after our Rockfest when about 2,000 people on bikes and cars will descend on our village.

The mayor in balchik has announced on tv that eu money has come through to do all the roads in balchik and the nearby villages, whoppee. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] all i have seen is a minute layer of tarmac that just covers the surface, they have made more mess of preparing the roads for the tarmac and not really doing anything else, worse than ever now. they have not got it have they, spain has the most marvelous roads you have ever been on because they used the eu money properly.

starlite wrote:

The mayor in balchik has announced on tv that eu money has come through to do all the roads in balchik and the nearby villages, whoppee. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] all i have seen is a minute layer of tarmac that just covers the surface, they have made more mess of preparing the roads for the tarmac and not really doing anything else, worse than ever now. they have not got it have they, spain has the most marvelous roads you have ever been on because they used the eu money properly.

Well said and that's what its all about? the money going to to right places and not in a Swiss bank account

Ambulance Breaks Down in Road Potholes
An ambulance dashing for an emergency case broke down in broad daylight in the potholes of the road from Dobrich to Krushari yesterday. People from sixteen villages warned they were prepared for civil disobedience unless roads in the municipality were immediately repaired. A month ago Zyufie Kadir(49) from the village of Lozenets died of hemorrhage because the ambulance sent for her bunkered in the potholes and arrived hours later. More than 7000 people have signed the protest declaration in the municipality in which they accuse the rule of having isolated them from the rest of the country. Yesterday they showed up, holding placards in front of the Municipality Hall and on April 25 they will block the road to Dobrich. Some days ago farmers threatened they would plough up the remnants of asphalt on the should-be road and would sow wheat on it to put it to some use. No.1 Farmer in Dobrudja Kiril Zhendov has paid 6000 levs for vignettes for the year. Because of the potholes his five-ton trucks loaded with wheat lose one ton each before reaching the port in Balchik. No one from the municipality will vote at the general elections, states local teacher Yordan Nikiforov. Some even raised voices offering to split off from Bulgaria and join Romania, say locals from the border municipality. Many people have friends across the border and say that there even the smallest streets are perfectly asphalted.
Krastina Marinova

I have posted the above text for all to read. My wife and I have just returned from our villa near Dobrich and I want to say how disgusted I am with the so called roads. I actually posted on this forum my displeasure of hitting a pothole and damaging a front wheel, and that was eight years ago, the only good point about all this is that it keeps the garages in business
The Dobrich by-pass is almost impassable unless you have a tractor, this is the main road  leading to Kardam on the Romanian border and is heavily used by large lorries and even they have difficulties in finding their way through, there are two places on this stretch of, supposed to be road where the holes are no potholes, they are craters and stretch across the complete road and to get through you have to drive some 40cm deep and most of the potholes are over one metre across and up to 30cm deep
I would say that particular part of the Dobrich road network is a death trap, certainly if you were on a motor-bike. The Dobrich council, highway agency or local Mayor have a major problem to deal with, if in fact anybody is going to address the situation          

I live in a farming area here in Canada and we have the same problems, especially in the spring when the frost is coming out of the ground and the roads are soft. Many years ago we use to have grain terminals at almost every little town around here where farmers can haul their grain then it was taken away from there by train. But our govt took those away and now the farmers have to get their grain hauled far away with big trucks hauling a lot more grain at one time. Ever since then the roads have become worse and worse. There's not much you can really do about it when the farmers are forced to move so much grain by road.
Some of the not so busy asphalt roads have even been taken out and gravel has been out down because of the potholes that were always formed from all that weight getting moved on them, it holds up better and is a lot cheaper to maintain. And the ones that are still asphalt are terrible to drive on, they are buckled, not nice and flat and always seem to have potholes on them. They are especially bad in the winter when the potholes form and it is too cold to patch them. Those farmers who threatened to rip up the asphalt probably aren't too far off with their idea!
But our municipalities constantly maintain the bad spots so they do not get as bad as what you described there. Even in the winter when it is too cold to properly patch them they will put some gravel in the holes so at least you don't have a big crater to drive through. Those roads there do sound like death traps! I was thinking about renting a vehicle and doing some travelling around Bulgaria while I am there, sounds like I should maybe consider an suv, not a car!

If they did the same on the Dobrich bypass road it would be one hell of a big lake and many ducks would be needed

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I've lost my front wheels but not my sense of humour