Pamporovo

This was once Bulgaria’s most popular resort with tourists because it first attracted UK school parties who kept returning year after year when they became young adults. Pamporovo sits high in the Rhodope Mountains on the Greek border and the great attraction here is sun, ski and incredibly cheap food and drink. So if you’re young and broke, like most students – and most of us these days – this is a place where you can have a fabulous oldstyle blowout.

More good news, the skiing’s all dead easy, apart from one great black run. Some guide books will tell you the snow quality is poor, but the resort has made a huge investment in snowmaking and 70 per cent of its runs have the man-made stuff. That said you’re chancing your arm is you go after the end of February. Again the ski schools are among the best in Europe, a throwback to the long-gone Communist era.