BLACK SEA COAST – ADVENTURE RIDE 

“Let’s ride around the Black Sea!” This idea, back in 2001, took us from Slovenia to Georgia in a 22-years old Volkswagen van. Eighteen years have passed since that adventure and I’ve traveled to more than 100 countries all over the world while operating various tours with all kinds of different vehicles. I always kept coming back to the Black Sea. Riding around Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey discovering new areas, allowed me to pinpoint amazing roads to ride. Besides roads virtually undiscovered by tour bikes, I’ve acquired a deep insight to this extremely diverse areas, with very different cuisine, people, culture, history and beautiful landscapes with roads that connect them” says Rožle Verhovc, Clutch Desmo Tours CEO.

Our adventure will be 28 days long with 5 rest days. Since it’s a loop, the start and finish are in Nessebar, an ancient town and one of the major seaside resorts on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Very quickly we’ll enter Istanbul, a city that lies on two continents and literal border between East and West. That’s where the adventure begins. We’ll swerve on splendid curvy roads of northern Turkey and experience a very different culture and probably its strongest point – delicious cuisine. After a few days of Turkish delights, the road goes to a former Soviet Union country of Georgia and its treasure – wine. Earliest traces of wine producing (6000 BC) were found in the region that is today Georgia. The old military road and now a twisty alpine riders’ nirvana road over Caucasus Mountains will take us to the biggest country in the world – Russia and its newly annexed peninsula of Crimea. Crimean Yalta was and still is one of the finest tourist destinations in Russia, with a very long and complex history. Odessa or “the pearl of The Black Sea” will welcome us with both arms wide open as the finest tourist destination in Ukraine. Before crossing Romania and finishing the adventure in Bulgaria, we’ll stop briefly in a tiny country of Moldova to take a ride in the longest (200 kilometers!) and biggest (nearly 2 million bottles) wine cellars in the world.

***Important note – We know this area by heart and can tell you that you don’t have to believe all you hear from mass media. Most of negative press is part of propaganda of the “political game” played between East and West. Life is normal there and for the past 4 years we are always welcomed there with a huge smile and appreciation for getting there.