Heading away from Borovets is easy enough at first, we head downhill in daylight, and as the sun sets we get onto what is, for Bulgaria, a main road - single carriageway, but mostly straight with not too many potholes. Things take a turn for the worse when we turn off towards the resort, the roads are very poor and soon we are driving into the mountains, along a twisting route bordering more huge lakes. Probably very pretty in the day, slow work at night though. And increasingly there are chunks of ice on the road, and then more and more snow to drive through... the last fifty kilometres is a nerve-wracking ride over packed snow, in first or second gear all the way, and the car is sounding increasingly frail. But after some five hours we make it, then have to ask where our apartment complex is, and almost make it to the top of the steep snowy track that leads to it. We abandon the old Ford and walk the last few hundred meters, arriving at the Complex Kamelia with frayed tempers and empty stomachs. Thankfully they have a restaurant open late and serving excellent and hearty Bulgarian food, the 'poor man's sizzler' featuring a selection of pork, chicken and vegetables on a hot skillet is a highlight.
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| TV tower on Mount Snezhanka. |
Pamporovo is oddly spread out for such a small skiing area... our apartment is two kilometres from the centre, such as it is, with no lift or piste between. It's also strange to see a large number of half built apartment blocks - not only is there no real infrastructure here, but the ski area surely isn't big enough to support them all. Some sort of property bubble I suppose... A small problem now is that Stoykite, from which we've booked our skis, is fully seven kilometres away by road - sounded like a simple drive back in England, but now we decide to go with a taxi, which turns out to be more of a white-knuckle ice rally experience... On reaching Stoykite, the lift isn't running and the ski shop is unmanned - thankfully a phone number on the door allows us to summon a man to give us skis, though we have to get the taxi back too - this time with our skis in the boot, which the driver holds closed with sticky tape.
Finally getting to the mountain, we find every lift leading up to the same point at the mountain top - distinguished by a communist-era television tower that now houses a panoramic cafe. And again the skiing is excellent, lots of snow, and with both some good slopes for beginners and some challenging blacks for me to bomb down. Although to my shame I fail to get on the steepest, the 'wall' - the route to it from above is shut, and I fail to spot that there is also a drag lift to the top until too late. Again the lifts are second-hand French, one even with a bubble, though there are also a couple of ancient things of communist manufacture. Alex and I risk the two-man one, having little choice from where we are, but decline the single-man version. For lunch we find a nice little hut at the mountain top, by the start of the #3 and #4 black runs... a roaring log fire warms our toes while we eat some excellent salami and cheese on toast.
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| Good food and a log fire. |
Rather than find a way into the resort centre which doesn't seem to consist of much at all, we keep to the Kamelia complex - there's a bar, a (free) pool table and the restaurant is good. This night we are entertained by a DJ (not so good), and then by the other diners dancing a tradional 'Horo' - rather cool. The next day we have to drive away though... and in the morning the snow is coming down hard. After a morning of crazy skiing through blizzard conditions, Austin reports that the road down through the centre is so bad even the locals are crashing - among other things a coach has collided with a snow plough. So - we decide to head off from the hotel at 3. At least we have a better car - the Ford would not start the previous day, so the car hire people, after a bit of argument, drove a rather newer Opel Zafira all the way from Sofia for us. And the snow has stopped falling, though there is still a lot on the road. Is it worse than Alex's drive up here? Probably not, but I certainly do not enjoy it, particularly the bit where I'm following a truck uphill, and it stops to let an articulated lorry barrel past the other way... I just about keep moving forward to pass the truck - if I'd stopped I rather doubt we could have moved on. The four wheel slide on a bend later on was fun too - but after a couple of hours we're below the snow line, and from there the way to Bansko is easy enough - we're there by 7pm.
Photos to go with this post can be found here.
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