Dospat Reservoir

Worth a detour

Twenty-two square kilometres of water at twelve hundred metres, held in a spruce basin in the Western Rhodopes — high enough that the summer heat of the plain simply is not there. Most of the people you see are fishing; the rest are on the road between Dospat and Sarnitsa along the north-eastern shore. Very little infrastructure, which is most of the appeal. Bring warm clothes even in August.

Story

Background

The Dospat river was dammed between 1963 and 1968, and the water began to rise in 1967 over a high valley at about 1,200 metres. The result is one of the larger reservoirs in Bulgaria — around twenty-two square kilometres, nineteen kilometres long, holding some 449 million cubic metres — and the highest-lying of them, which is what gives it its character. The wall is modest for the volume behind it: sixty metres high and 230 long.

Its purpose is power. Dospat is the head of a hydroelectric cascade that runs down through Teshel and on into the Vacha system, exploiting the drop between the Rhodope plateau and the Thracian plain. The villages of Orlino and Barduche went under when it filled, along with part of Krusha.

What people do here now is fish. Carp, trout, perch, pike-perch and rudd are all taken, and in summer the shoreline is a line of rods. The towns of Dospat and Sarnitsa sit at either end with guesthouses, and the road between them along the north-eastern shore makes a pleasant hour. There is no promenade and no resort. Come for the water, the forest and the air, and remember that at this height the evening drops fifteen degrees without asking.