Severen Plazh

Worth a detour

The North Beach is the livelier half of Burgas's seafront: 1,700 metres long and averaging thirty-eight metres wide, with fourteen lifeguard posts, two football pitches, four volleyball courts, showers and changing rooms, and a line of restaurants and taverns that go on into the evening. If you want a city beach that also feeds you, this is it. If you want quiet, keep walking north.

Story

Background

It runs from the pier northwards along the foot of the Sea Garden, which means shade and a park path are always thirty seconds away — a real advantage in August, when the sand itself offers none. The strip is levelled and cleaned every day, and the municipal apparatus around it is substantial: lifeguard posts every hundred metres or so, matching changing rooms and showers, and a children's playground.

Sport is the other thing it is set up for. Beach volleyball and beach football are played here seriously, there are spectator stands, and national and international tournaments take the courts over in midsummer. Out of season the pitches sit empty and the whole strip belongs to dog walkers and runners.

Keep going north and the beach changes character. The bars thin out, the crowd disappears, and you reach Atanasovska kosa, the sand bar between the sea and the salt lake, where the sand is black with iron, heats to the point of being uncomfortable barefoot, and the kitesurfers set up. That end is also where the free lye pools and mud beds are. It is about three kilometres from the pier to the salt pans — a good early-morning walk with a swim at each end.