LANDSCAPE/SEASCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART CONTEST | Uninhabited Land

I decided to visit this place with my child so that he can know about the existence of this corner forgotten by people.
I think nowadays the gentleman no longer lives in our dear fatherland, he has left his things here and emigrated somewhere. Everything related to faith is in decline and ruin. The reason for such gloomy thoughts is a walk in the area of the Iskar Gorge around the Cherepish Monastery. The place has amazing natural beauty, to which, according to old tradition, we have added absolutely nothing, rather the opposite.

Around the Cherepish station there are several impressive buildings between each church, crumbling and completely abandoned. Everything here has been designed with thought and great care. Wide avenues fill the space between the buildings, there is even a small well, but no water flows from it anymore. The stairs and walkways are made of stone. A lonely arbor remembers days gone by and awaits its fate. The roofs of the buildings are missing. Even the bell tower of the church stands jagged towards the heavens. I didn't feel like going into the premises, everything that could was stolen, drunk, eaten and fucked up. Nature has begun to take its toll and cover everything with green oblivion. The temple is also very beautiful, I think it is a single-nave church with a bell tower outside, painted. From the outside, a semi-circular room can be seen outside the facade, which housed the altar. The facing is made of cut stone, it reminds me of the churches in Veliko Tarnovo.

Many ancient manuscripts are preserved in the Cherepish Monastery, the most famous of which is the Cherepish Four Gospels from the 15th century with a gilded fitting, made here in 1612 by the Chiprov master-goldsmiths Nikola and Pala, who left their names on the edge of the fitting. In the 18th century, the monastery was on the rise.

The Cherepish limestones are located on the border between the Pre-Balkan and Staroplanina structural zones. From the south, they border along the Plakalnish plateau with the metamorphites of the diabase-phyllitoid complex. The Cherepishka conglomerate has a Tithonian-Barrem stratigraphic range. It is made up of light gray, gray to beige limestones. They are organogenic, hemogenic, clastic and cryptogenic limestones. They contain remains of pachyodonts (Dicerasis in the Tithonian part and Requienias in the Cretaceous), bryozoans, corals and other fossils of very shallow-sea benthic organisms. They are interpreted as a carbonate reef structure. The rocks are thick-bedded to massive, and the layering is very difficult to differentiate and in few places. The most clearly northeast-dipping strata can be observed in the high parts along the left slope of the Iskar river valley north of the Cherepish station. In the old quarry on the right slope of the valley, the layering can be traced by the rare interlayers of whole-shell limestones or by the distribution of biodetritus.

The Cherepish rocks are formed among the limestones of the Cherepish formation near the Cherepish station at an altitude of 200 to 600 m above sea level (43.09885, 23.60887). The karst canyon of the Iskar river, deeply cut among the Cherepish limestones, is considered to be the "northern door" of the Iskar gorge to its old mountainous part.
The Cherepish rocks, at the foot of which is the Cherepish monastery, are one of the symbols of the northern part of the Iskar gorge. However, despite their fame, they are not a protected natural landmark and are not included in the register and cadastre of geological phenomena in the Republic of Bulgaria.

Later I learned something about the history of the place. The beginning begins with the bombs falling on Sofia and the Theological Academy is forced to move from the capital. They are moving here, in the area of the Cherepish monastery, right next to the station. After the war, the communist regime that came in has a special attitude towards faith and the clergy (it must be admitted not as porky as it was in the Soviet Union, but definitely enough), church properties were appropriated. The tiled temporary abode became permanent and expanded to meet the needs of the clergy. All this continued until not so long ago until 1990, when the Theological Seminary returned to Sofia, where it is located today, believe me.

For 25 years the place has been devastated. Something that the bombs of the second world war and a regime as repressive as the communist one failed to do anything about. We manage to do it with our laziness and disinterest in anything and no one.

The monastery itself consists of a church and several buildings located next to the river Iskar. Above them in the rocks is the ossuary, which is reached by a steep staircase, and high among the limestone crags is perched the Bay House. According to legend, this house was built as a gift to the monastery by a Turkish bey, whose daughter, suffering from an incurable disease, found a cure in the rooms of the abode of God, praying in the Christian way.

The monastery is not included in tourist routes, but in combination with the remarkable karst landscape, it is an attractive place for recreation and tourism.

Most of the karst pyramids are vertical, across the layering. They resemble figures of the most diverse shapes and sizes - rock mushrooms, rock columns, human figures or silhouettes of animals.

Despite the relatively low scientific and research value, the rocks have a high educational value as an object of annual student practices. They also have a high historical value for Bulgarian geology, as they were the object of the first explorers of our lands.

A transit train passes through this area once or twice a day, from which passengers pass through the place like the wind.