Dear Rositsa,

As promissed, here are my comments and feedback from 2 days of mountain bike ride with Siméon, orgqnised by Zig Zag holidays.

The first contact at hotel vega was very good and the presented program was exactly fitting what i was looking for when i contacted Lubomir Popiordanov. The contract was very professional. And discussion was very nice (I still have to taste a true bulgarian coffee as we had an Italian one at Vega.... maybe next time!)

On Saturday, the start of the bike ride started with a quite steep climb for a start, maybe we should have left  the car a bit before to have a bit of warm up on a flatter terrain but otherwise the pathes were fantastic for the first section in the forest.
Afterward the hard bit was the long slow climb in the afternoon to the highest point of the ride through pathes that needed a bit of maintenance (trees had follen under the weight of snow some weeks before and we had to carry the bikes over).
I must admit that i had a bit presumed of my forces and I was very happy to get to the descent to the arrival point at 56 km from our start.

On the way back in the car, Lubomir stopped at a horse riding new facility that was very nice indeed with a nice yourt and we then stopped again for a beer in a place typical of former regime.

On Sunday, Lubomir and Siméon have improvised a more touristic, shorter distance run as i thought i would not have been able to go for another 50 km and that 35 km would be great! The places we went to were very nice even though the improvisation led to very difficult climb and descent to and from the summit. The very nice flat last run through the valley to Passarel St Pierre & Paul monastery was a must see by itself but the church is only open on Sunday mornings... maybe it would be an idea to do the sunday tour we did the other way round starting at 31km restaurant, going to Passarel and back and then climbing through the mountain to the monasteries on the other side to finidh at St Jean de Rila monastery in German.

Overall, i had a very nice week end, i did appreciate a lot Siméon who was very patient with me and very adaptive.


Regards,

Philippe Le Tiec