The beautiful Balkans on horseback

My husband and I decide we are up for a horse-riding adventure. We’ve done a few and have realised it’s the only way to travel: the truest way to experience an up-close and personal with a country and its people. You’re out of your comfort zone, there’s no turning back, you must abandon all control and anything can happen. There’s nothing like extreme vulnerability to induce trust and affection in your guide and his horses. But gratitude for surviving your holiday aside, it’s not hard to fall for everything the trip has to offer.

We arrive in Apriltsi, a small Bulgarian town at the foot of the central Balkan Mountains, after a three-hour drive from Sofia. You get a sense of the level of hospitality, aesthetic and food quality before you can even smell a horse, and here there was an instant whiff of the authentic. The Bulgarians might want all the ubiquitous capitalist junk, but so far it hasn’t reached the central Balkans. What you get is all the flavours of seasonal produce without the waste of endless choice. Wine was always available and delicious, although their beloved rakia is the national tipple. The accommodation is simple, the homes whitewashed with red tiled roofs and spectacularly unadorned, but every window-sill and courtyard is crammed with coloured splashes of potted plants and grape vines.

Our steeds, bred by the Turkish army, are bomb-proof and fit enough to carry us for up to seven hours a day across the Stara Planina national park. Over six days we will ride 160kms. It seems like a ridiculous amount of time in a saddle, but something strange happens to time on horseback. No sooner have you had your first canter and gasped at your first vast panorama than it’s time to dismount for lunch.