Enduro Intensive

Four nights at Banya near Bansko, guided, with three full days of trail riding across three Bulgarian mountain ranges.

The three ranges are what justify the trip. The Rila, the Pirin and the Rhodopes all meet within reach of the same valley, and they are quite different from one another: high granite, limestone and rolling forest respectively.

Sofia airport opens it with a transfer to Banya, a briefing with the team and dinner. The three riding days follow, each one heading into a different range, with lunch at a village restaurant and a different route back to the hotel each afternoon. The riding time is matched to ability rather than fixed, running from two or three hours for beginners up to five or six for advanced riders, which is the sensible way to run a mixed group. The evenings are spent in the hotel’s mineral pools, and the last morning is breakfast and the transfer back to Sofia.

The hotel, breakfast and dinner, lunch at rural restaurants on the riding days, the guiding, the enduro bike and its maintenance and the airport transfers are all included; spa treatments and massages are extra. The bikes are GasGas models from 2022 onwards. The price shown is per person sharing. Spring and autumn are the best of it for trail conditions, though the operator runs through the summer too. Five days with three full riding days in it is a well-balanced short break rather than a tour, and the prices across this operator’s range are notably low for what is included.