Instructors using Jägermeister as a teaching aid, hot spas and pistes that all lead to a bar at the bottom: Inside Bulgaria’s Bansko ski resort – and discovering it’s cheap and VERY cheerful
The first thing to tell you about Bansko, Bulgaria, is what it is not. It’s not a sanitised Alpine ski resort full of British parents maintaining rictus grins as banknotes fly from their pockets, surrounded by Eurotrash playing Europop out of portable speakers as they swish bellowing down the piste in designer kit. It is not, in other words, boring.
No. Bansko is a place of character. On our first day on the mountain, for example, we learned that the place was frequented by sharks. Benign sharks, as sharks go, but sharks nonetheless.
These were out-of-work ski instructors on the hunt for idiot beginners who arrive at the top of the slope hoping for the best and find that they can barely stand up.
The sharks offered to guide them to safety for €50. We saw several hapless skiers making their way down the slopes in this way, terrified and in the grip of death.
But the sharks were honourable and good-humoured. They left their charges weeping but unharmed, gracefully accepted their trembling wads of cash and went off to score a bottle of Jägermeister. That’s what I mean. Bansko was colourful.
It’s all downhill from here: Jake Wallis Simons took a ski holiday in the famously cheap ski resort of Bansko
Jake writes: ‘The first thing to tell you about Bansko, Bulgaria, is what it is not. It’s not a sanitised Alpine ski resort full of British parents maintaining rictus grins as banknotes fly from their pockets.’ Above – stock Bansko image
My fiancée, Roxanna, was taught snowboarding by an instructor who kept a bottle of Jägermeister in the pocket of his ski suit – we didn’t ask if he had bought it with the proceeds of sharking – and recommended slugs of it to her as a relaxant at strategic moments.
She found it very helpful and we bought a bottle to take home.
Meanwhile, my three teenagers (plus a mate) and I were taught skiing by an abstracted young man with the temperament of a physicist who declared at the outset that he wasn’t there to be our friend, he was there to teach us to ski. And teach us skiing he did. Most efficiently. It’s amazing what you can achieve without the smalltalk.
Even the youngest, who is ten, made good progress without – so far as we know – any Jägermeister.
We all stayed in a wonderful chalet with the improbable name of ‘Diana-Ross’. It was run by a group of super-chilled British ex-pat dudes with an odd appetite for Backgammon whom we nicknamed ‘the buddies’.
Powder to the people: Bansko ‘is a place of character’, writes Jake
Jake and his fiancée, Roxanna, in Bansko
There was homecooked food made by a Bulgarian Mama in a headscarf; a sauna and a hot tub; and a bottomless supply of homebrewed rakia (a fruit brandy) to which you could help yourself behind a little bar in the sitting room.
The ski-hire place was right next door and the mountain was five minutes away.
We visited some hot spas, which were steaming and still in the cold air.
On the last night, we had a traditional Bulgarian dinner at a restaurant where men in embroidered waistcoats played raucously on accordions and guitars until you gave them enough money to go away. Every evening, the air was laced with wood smoke.
But about the skiing.
Bansko is located in the Pirin mountain range, at an altitude of about 3,000ft (914m).
The resort basically covers a single mountain with lovely runs of a range of difficulties, plus some decent off-piste areas that can keep a family amply entertained for a week.
This is one of the things that makes it good. If you have semi-independent teenagers, as I do, or groups of skiers of different abilities, you can give everybody free rein without fear of losing them forever. All roads lead to the bar at the mountain’s foot. Just tell them roughly what time they need to be back and get the beers in.
Jake stayed in a ‘wonderful chalet with the improbable name of Diana-Ross [above]’
Chalet Diana-Ross, explains Jake, ‘was run by a group of super-chilled British ex-pat dudes with an odd appetite for Backgammon’
Speaking of which, for this trip I also got hold of a handful of gadgets called Milos (www.okmilo.com/en-gb/), which I heartily recommend. These are small, round, highly powerful walkie-talkies that clip to your arm or ski helmet and are voice-activated.
So long as you speak loudly enough, your group can chat all the way down, even at some distance. This means, in theory at least, that nobody gets left behind.
It also means that when you’re bombing towards a fork in a piste, you can yell, ‘turn right, turn right!’ and it’s their own bloody fault if they turn left.
Bansko being Bansko, you’ll see them at the bottom eventually. (Just make sure you use the little lanyard to loop the Milo around the band, as it can tend to pop off if you take a tumble.) A must-get.
But I was talking about the skiing.
It’s a winterful life: Chalet Diana-Ross is available to book for catered ski holidays for up to 25 guests from late December to mid-April
‘When you arrive at the Bansko summit (at 2,600m/8,530ft),’ writes Jake, ‘you find yourself standing in the wind atop a blank white dome that stretches out in all directions. You have to gird your loins, check the kids are up for it – they are – and edge over the top’
The runs themselves evolve – yes, evolve – around the crown of the mountain and take shape as they go down, winding their way past the occasional bar and culminating in that single point at the bottom.
When you arrive at the summit (at 2,600m/8,530ft) you find yourself standing in the wind atop a blank white dome that stretches out in all directions.
Aside from one or two nonsensical signposts, there are no markings. You have to gird your loins, check the kids are up for it – they are – and edge over the top, following lines of other skiers until you arrive at the poles and fences delineating the sides of the different runs.
It can be quite difficult to tell whether you’re on a blue or a red, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s all very skiable.
Thaw out: Jake’s ski holiday included visits to hot spas
Head for the chills: Bansko is a two-and-a-half-hour transfer from Sofia International Airport
For thrill-seekers, there are several decent blacks – one long, straightish one in particular – and acres of fluffy off-piste (I’m told it’s fantastic but I’m not an off-piste kind of guy).
For beginners, meanwhile, there are some greens peopled by good-natured instructors, a clutch of very pleasant blues, and some extremely friendly reds. Something, in other words, for everyone.
Bansko is nothing if not affordable. But in these times of boomerang demand and unstable economies, the prices are no longer rock-bottom.
In December, it was revealed that the cheapest resort on Earth was Bardonecchia in Italy, where one week for one adult, excluding flights and accommodation, comes in at £531.65, according to Post Office research. In Bansko, the equivalent cost is £641.62. Which leads me to an overwhelming question: Is the extra fun worth the extra £90?
I damn well think so. Let us go and make our visit.