14^th May 2017

Dear All,

We have just returned from a week walking in Bulgaria. It was a great holiday and we can thoroughly recommend it. We stayed at Yagodina in the Rodolphe Mountains in the south of Bulgaria only 30 Km from the Greek border. Our accommodation was a small family run guest house which served traditional Bulgarian food. The scenery was spectacular – we were at about the height of Snowden and climbed about 300 m most days. In a week’s walking we only saw one other hiker and he was looking for mushrooms. It was about as remote as you can get in Europe with steep limestone gorges and tree covered slopes. The area is home to bears, wolves and wild boar but we only managed to see chamois and deer of the larger animals but also several birds and reptiles. Plant wise there were numerous orchids, wild iris, and roman hyacinths and several unique indigenous flowers.

We were in a party of 10 and the others were all interesting characters with tales to tell and our leader, a Bulgarian girl was excellent displaying great enthusiasm and knowledge of the area.

I have taken a few photos and hope to put them on Dropbox before long!

love

Mike & Kate