Kozloduy Island

Worth a detour

Twelve kilometres of poplar and pasture in the river opposite Kozloduy, cut off from the bank by a channel a couple of hundred metres wide with a small farm ferry across it. There is a marsh of fifteen hectares, geese and ducks nest, and the whole thing stands three or four metres above the water. This is something to look at from the bank and know about, not a destination.

Story

Background

The island runs from Danube kilometre 689.5 to 701: elongated, broader at the western end and narrowing eastward, up to about 1.2 kilometres across at its widest. It is gravel and sand fifteen to twenty metres deep, rising to 28.4 metres above sea level and only three or four above the river. Most of it has been planted with Canadian poplar; the rest is pasture and cultivated ground, with a marsh of about fifteen hectares. When the Danube rises the low parts go under. The narrowest point of the channel between it and the Bulgarian bank is 220 metres, and a small ferry works across it for farm machinery. Upstream lies the smaller Bulgarian island of Svraka; to the north, the Romanian island of Kopanitsa.

One thing worth getting straight, because the shared name invites the error: Botev's men came ashore at Kozloduy itself, on the bank, not on the island. The landing monument and the steamer Radetzky are both in the town, and that is where a visit here actually happens.

Figures for the island's area vary wildly between sources; the Bulgarian geographical literature gives about six square kilometres, which puts it second among Bulgarian Danube islands after Belene.