Puszcza Notecka

The Notec forest fills the belt between the Warta and Notec rivers with something like a hundred and thirty-five thousand hectares of almost unbroken pine, and it grows on sand - specifically on a field of inland dunes, formed when wind reworked glacial outwash at the end of the ice age, which is why the ground rolls in low ridges and the soil is poor. The forest is nearly all Scots pine and nearly all one age, and the reason is a catastrophe: between 1922 and 1924 an outbreak of the nun moth defoliated and killed the trees across an enormous area, and the whole forest was clear-felled and replanted, so what stands is a century-old monoculture with the vulnerability that implies. Within it are lakes, the Warta river valley on the southern edge with its bird reserves, wolves that have returned in recent decades, and a network of cycling and kayak routes. It is quiet and very large.

The landscape

• Forest on dunes - inland sand dunes from the end of the ice age under the trees.
• A replanted monoculture - clear-felled and replanted after the nun moth plague of the 1920s.
• 135,000 hectares - among the largest continuous forests in Poland.
• Returning wolves - recolonised in recent decades across the forest.

When to go

April to October. Two days.

Good to know

It is uniform - a century-old pine monoculture with limited variety. Navigation on forest tracks is easy to get wrong; take a map. Ticks are a real problem from spring. Services inside the forest are minimal.

Nearby

Sierakow and the Warta valley are south; the Notec runs along the north.