The House

As I mentioned before Kate had found the house before we came over to visit in the July!

She had taken some great photos and with very little research to the area, I knew that I wanted to buy it! The size was great, 4k of land for the horses with its own stream running through it! No more problems with getting a big truck up the hill every few weeks.

The house is based in a small village called Musina or Мусина in cyrillic. We are only 24km from the town of Veliko Tarnavo, if you click on the link it will open a you tube video which is quite cute if you ignore the music!

The downside for this area is we are so far from the airport compared to living near Alicante. Sofia is at least a 3 hr drive away and any other airports that can be used liked, Varna or Bucharest! Great thing about the area is the rock climbing for Rich and clients and amazing riding for the horses right from our back door!

The plan at this stage is that the house will be our summer home! So all designs are based on summer living....

This is looking into the large barn, with a smaller one behind with 4 walls! All stone and amazing oak beams!

Inside what is now one large open plan area, mud floors but great wooden ceilings!

Straight out of the front door this is the porch that will be our outdoor kitchen!

The front of the house hidden behind years and years of overgrowth!

The 2 rooms as was originally found!

The Bathroom with piles of what we first thought was rubbish! Glad we didnt ask builders to throw away as you will see later! 

Why Bulgaria?

...........if you want to read back on the last few years of madness you can read our other blog thespanishgoodlife which gives the story for our Eco house built in Spain over a 4 year period with many, many helpers!

WHY BULGARIA?

We have been living on the Costa Blanca, running our climbers hostel The Orange House, for 13 years. From the months of May to September however, the climbers leave, we change over the decor and the house becomes a large rental Villa. Apart from cleaning and handing over keys, there really is no reason to stay in Spain.

Why would anyone want to stay in Spain over the summer anyway? Way, way too hot unless you are on holiday and are happy to live on the beach and hide in the shade! In the past we always managed to escape back to the UK or the Alps and enjoy cooler temps and be able to be outdoors!

However, we took an odd turn in our lives 3 years ago when we discovered our love of horses, so leaving them behind for long periods of time was not an option! That is when I started to look at other areas in Europe to move lock stock and barrel during the summer months! I never imagined for a minute that we would be moving so far east and that it would be a full time move and not just for the summer as we first thought!

Again you might say "why Bulgaria?" I am going to lay the blame 100% on a mate called Kate, horse mad, Podenco mad, change your mind every minute mad! Actually shall we just say she is mad full stop! But, she really is not mad when she suggested we came and had a look around and she was 100% right when she said that after a few visits we would want to be based here and not Spain! I hate to admit that she was correct and after only a few trips that is exactly what we are planning to do!

The view across to the mountains! 

We went over to check out the area last July 2015, Kate had already found us a house, I knew just from the photos that we would buy it! Rich took a bit of convincing and we did spend a week looking around at other places, but nothing came close and we went back in the October to pay the money!

I will admit now that the grand total of  3500 euros really helped make our mind up, as even once we have done it up and made it livable if it all goes tits up and we come back to Spain we have not really lost too much!

One important thing to happen during the July visit was to meet a couple called Charlie and Lubamira, they had lived in London and now based back over here they are to provide an invaluable service and friendship!