Irakli (beach)

Worth a detour

Irakli is the longest stretch of genuinely undeveloped beach a person can drive to on this coast: more than two and a half kilometres of clean, unstony sand between the Emona headland and the Vaya river, with forest behind it and nothing built on it. It is inside two Natura 2000 zones. There are no facilities of any kind, which is the point and also the catch.

Story

Background

The locality lies in Nesebar municipality beside the village of Emona, twelve kilometres from Obzor and about sixty-five north of Burgas. It falls inside the Emine bird protection zone and the Emine–Irakli habitats zone, and plants on the Bulgarian red list grow in the dunes. At one end of the beach are cabins belonging to various organisations; the rest is empty.

What grew up here instead of hotels was a tent culture. Because it is far from Sunny Beach and Golden Sands and has no infrastructure, Irakli has for decades drawn people who accept the lack of everything in exchange for the lack of everyone: families who camp from June to September, driftwood sculpture, guitars, and the July Morning gathering on the first of July that began with the Varna hippies. Part of the beach is used by naturists. A post of the Green Patrols movement sits at the southern end, and from there south to Cape Emine the ground is protected.

The practical position is simple and unromantic. No lifeguards, no drinking water, no toilets, no bins, no shade except what the trees give, and a track in that punishes low cars. Litter is a genuine and worsening problem, and volunteers clear it periodically. If you go, go self-contained and leave nothing. Karadere, the next undeveloped bay north, is the same proposition with the same problems.