Siobhán Forshaw

It’s so hard to choose!! For me the trails were just perfect. The routes are stunning, the aspects are gorgeous, the climbs are strenuous but rewarding. Hiking from Cerem to Doberdol was probably my favourite day – so varied and truly beautiful. The wildlife and biodiversity we saw was amazing and made us feel so happy and appreciative. We also appreciated the sensitivity to some of the conflict heritage that is still visible.

The majority of the accommodation is carefully chosen and the hosts are tremendously welcoming and relaxed. Our night in Theth was particularly special. The food (except the food poisoning) was great.

We loved how quiet some parts of the trails are – sometimes we could walk for several hours and not meet anybody. The level of effort, detail and consideration in the guidebook was very clear and we felt like we had chosen a company with a deep passion and love for this region, which really was special. The company is clearly very organised and with large and comprehensive networks.

We’d say it’s absolutely perfect if you are not very experienced hikers and you would benefit from the levels of organisation that are provided, and the sense of safety and wellbeing that we received from knowing there were people out there somehow looking out for us who we could contact in an emergency. We are fairly fit (usually bikepacking) but not experienced with hiking, so we felt confident with the physical challenge but not so much with the environment. This really gave us more confidence that in the future we can approach through-hiking ourselves and also where our knowledge and competence needs to improve. We travelled in a pair but we could see how so many families and groups were benefitting from the expertise of Zbulo – and sometimes we could see the big group tours and for a solo traveller I would recommend this in a heartbeat.

The downsides are a relative lack of flexibility and independence. When I became sick, if we had been independent then we probably would just extend our stay in the accommodation so that we could continue hiking and save some money, instead of needing to keep up with the tour. This isn’t at all a criticism of the company (!) as Ricardo was brilliant and so helpful, it’s just a reflection of some of the ways that there is a flipside to all the great positives 🙂