Calm is the last word to describe the Bulgarian Black Sea coast with in summer. Then, the resorts and beaches teem with tourists and suffer from noise and litter. The feeling that you have stumbled into some sort of a din is inevitable.

Visit the Black Sea in winter, however, and you will experience a very different place. Gone are the crowds. The bars are closed. The resorts are empty. The sky is grey, and so is the sea. Driven by the strong, freezing wind, choppy waves crash onto beaches, promenades and jetties, filling the air with foam and the tang of salt and seaweed. Even the gulls' cries are different in winter: deeper, hungrier, more menacing.

Maritime Garden, Varna

Winter also transforms the big cities, Varna and Burgas. Swept by the winds, these are now hushed, quieter, more pleasant places to walk around, discovering their fin-de-siècle architecture and their beautiful maritime gardens, their modern graffiti and their sites of interest, like the improved port at Burgas and Varna's Archaeology Museum, where the oldest gold treasure in the world is on display. Walking around these cities in winter, sharing streets and empty beaches with locals, their children and their dogs, makes you feel part of the place, something impossible to achieve in summer, with all the souvenirs, bars and visitors.

Abandoned pier of Shabla

This feeling of belonging grows stronger in smaller towns like Sozopol and Nesebar, Ahtopol and Balchik. They rely heavily on tourism, and winter is the time for them and their inhabitants to take a break from the hospitality industry. They go fishing. They spend hours drinking (if male) or chatting (if female) with their friends. In such an atmosphere, it is much easier to succumb to the pleasures of these places: exploring the mediaeval churches and Revival Period mansions of Old Nesebar and the steep lanes of Old Sozopol, or yielding to the romanticism of Queen Mary's Palace in Balchik, or watching the winter waves crashing onto the waterfront in Ahtopol.

Tyulenovo sea stack

Winter also transforms the natural wonders of the Black Sea. The Pobiti Kamani, a rocky phenomenon near Varna, looks even more surreal when covered in snow. The Yaylata Plateau near Kamen Bryag is but a barren nothingness, until you reach the edge of the cliffs and stop there mesmerised by the scary magnificence of the waves pounding against the red rocks dozens of metres below. In winter Yaylata, Europe's southernmost steppe, is a place of dark beauty, but it has a spot of warmth and shelter: Ogancheto, or The Fire, a natural gas leak burns constantly.

Sea beacon in Ahtopol

On the South Bulgarian Black Sea, winter is the time to visit the Begliktash Thracian sanctuary in the dense Strandzha forest, without being pestered by nasty midges.

Winter, in short, is the best season to get to know the Bulgarian Black Sea coast without the summer hustle and bustle. There is yet another reason: in the cold months your chances of eating fresh local fish, almost nonexistent in summertime, rise significantly. Why? Because just like the experienced visitor, the schools of fish come here in wintertime.

Central Burgas with the port in the background

Nesebar used to be an islet, now it is connected to the mainland by a causeway

Sozopol harbour

The northern beach of Sinemorets