Augustow Forest

Puszcza Augustowska is generally counted the largest continuous forest complex in Poland - well over a thousand square kilometres on the Polish side, continuing across the border into Lithuania and Belarus - and it is mostly pine on sandy outwash, with spruce, with a scatter of clear deep lakes in hollows left by the ice. It has three things that make it a destination rather than a place you drive through: the Augustow Canal, built from 1823 to 1839 to link the Vistula basin to the Niemen and now a working recreational waterway with its original locks; the Czarna Hancza river, one of the best-known kayak routes in the country, which runs through the forest and joins the canal; and the lakes themselves, Wigry and Serwy among them, which are unusually clear. Beaver, wolf and elk are present, and the forest is quiet away from the canal towns.

History

The forest was once called the Grodno Forest and reached from Grodno to the Baltic. The Yotvingians lived here until the thirteenth century, and resettlement began only in the 15th century, when the royal forests were divided into wildernesses such as Perstuńska, Przełomska and Berżnicka; timber was floated down the rivers to the Baltic ports, people made potash, tar and charcoal and smelted bog iron, and villages of royal forest guards and beekeepers, among them Bartniki and Rakowicze, grew up on its edges. The northern part became Wigry National Park in 1989 (Wikipedia, Augustów Primeval Forest).

Highlights

• Poland's largest unbroken forest - pine on outwash sand, continuing across two borders.
• The Augustow Canal - built in 1823-1839, still working with its original locks.
• The Czarna Hancza - a kayak route through the forest into the canal.
• Clear lakes - Wigry, Serwy and others in hollows left by the ice.

When to go

May to September. Two days.

What to expect

Ticks are a serious problem here. The canal locks operate seasonally and to a schedule. Kayak routes book up in July and August. Away from Augustow, services and phone coverage thin out fast.

Nearby

Wigry National Park is north; Suwalki Landscape Park is beyond it.

Key facts