Cherepish | Landscape Photography

It is undoubtedly a popular enough tourist site, but in this story I would like to tell not about it, but about other remarkable things of Cherepish.

Any trip to Cherepish can offer nature, architecture and desolation. And just how impressive the nature is there! Every time I get off at Cherepish station, I feel like the first time I went there. I will never forget how impressed I was by the giant rocks overhanging the roaring Iskar and the collapsed station, all eaten up by caves and rock niches. The sky was dark, which added drama to the already stark landscape. Most impressive of all, however, were the numerous large crosses protruding from the most impenetrable chukars. I still remember standing at the foot of the dizzying cliffs and couldn't take my eyes off the crosses. Time and time again I looked around the massif and couldn't imagine how it was even possible for anyone to reach these peaks, let alone carry with them a cross of similar size and manage to fix it there. And why were there so many? The questions of who and why had placed these crosses on the peaks soon found their answer, and not anywhere, but by the stove in the Cherepish inn. It is a little known fact that in September 1950 the communists exiled the Sofia Theological Seminary "St. Ioan Rilski" at Cherepish station. And the crosses on the rocks are directly related to this period of the seminary's history: each graduating class placed one somewhere on the steep rocks to mark their graduation.

A week ago I headed to Cherepish again. The original plan for this trip was a little different than what ended up happening. In the project version, in addition to me, two friends were also present. One of them was the proud owner of a new professional camera that needed to be tested in a suitable environment, and the other is a well-known cyclist and travel enthusiast. For different reasons, they both tied tins to me, so my wife and a friend came to help with the project. So, on Sunday morning we parked the cars in front of the Central Station to catch the 7:50 a.m. train to Cherepish.

Our friend was going to the area for the first time, so she asked what was there anyway. I replied that there were many sights to see there, but of them only the monastery, the inn, and the station were inhabited, while everything else was abandoned. As soon as we got off the train, however, I was floored. The station was also now uninhabited. The padlocks on the bars of the doors and windows quite visibly bore the rusty imprint of time, suggesting that it had not been closed since yesterday. I hoped that the same fate did not befall the Cherepish inn, because it would be very sad.

And on this Sunday's journey, the steep white cliffs towering rapidly on the opposite bank of the river and engulfing everything below managed to take my breath away.

The train continued on its way to Mezdra, and as it plunged into the darkness of one of the two tunnels cut into the spectacular sheer cliffs, it left behind a silence broken only by the songs of the birds. Behind the low and quiet building of the station, you can see the waters of Iskar, which here move calmly. A little further on, however, just below the tunnels, the river meets an insurmountable rock barrier and takes a sharp bend, over which rise two railway bridges parallel to each other. Everything was still as impressive as the first time, except that with time there are no more crosses left on the tops of the rocks. No more than two survived.

The journey in the abandoned Cherepish can continue. In our case, we took the railway line in the direction of the tunnels. As soon as we crossed the bridge, we turned right on the barely perceptible narrow path running along the edge of the cliff, following the path of the river. Shortly before reaching the traverse of the monastery, located on the other bank, there is a view of a thick and rusty steel rope stretched over Iskar. Right in the middle of it, a metal basket hangs over the water, which was probably once used for transportation between the two shores. Opposite it, at the beginning of the hill, there is an old abandoned house. The first floor was used as a pen for animals, and the second floor is the living quarters. The staircase that once led to the second floor has not only collapsed, but there are no longer any traces of it. Instead, a makeshift and poorly braced ladder leads up. On the other hand, the bottles from someone's party were clearly visible on the terrace. Through a charcoal inscription above the door, someone had likened the place to a temple of the damned, while at the same time emphasizing that it was guarded by Bat Boyko. From the terrace there is a wonderful view of the river and the opposite monastery. The only drawback is that the house is on a northern slope, and although the opposite peaks were sunny, it was damp and gloomy here. For summer it's wonderful, but winter is a bit unpleasant.

It was raining, so we had to go back to the abandoned station to wait for the train to Sofia. From the bridge over the river, we covered the surrounding landscape for the last time in an attempt to seal for a longer time in our memories Iskar, pressed by the steep white rocks overhanging it, the caves covering half of the sunlit massif, as well as the monastery nestled a little further. All this still represents in my mind an extremely inspiring picture, the like of which can hardly be seen elsewhere.