Stamopolu

Worth a detour

Stamopolu is the lagoon and marsh immediately behind Primorsko's north beach, protected since 1991 for its Hungarian oak and oriental beech and the wetland behind the dunes. Forty hectares, a Ramsar component, and a burial mound inside it. It is a fifteen-minute walk off the sand and almost nobody takes it, which in August is the whole recommendation.

Story

Background

The protected site was declared in May 1991, covering forty hectares, to conserve communities of Hungarian oak and oriental beech and the habitats behind them. Hunting is prohibited outright; shore angling is allowed from the end of June to the beginning of March, which is an unusual permission and tells you the fishing here matters locally. The site is part of the Ropotamo Ramsar complex and contains a listed burial mound.

The confusion is in the name. Stamopolu is used for the marsh, for the lagoon, and for the beach concession at the northern end of Primorsko, which has its own entry in the ministry's beach register and its own umbrella prices. Maps and signs use all three meanings without distinguishing them, so a pin labelled Stamopolu may be sand or reed.

What a visitor does with it is walk. From the north beach a short track leads inland into oak and beech that feels a long way from the town — the same forest type as Strandzha proper, twenty kilometres north of where it usually starts. In spring the marsh is loud with frogs and the wood with warblers. There is no interpretation, no hide and no bench, and the ground is wet after rain. Combine it with the Perla dunes, which are the next thing north along the same shore, and you have an hour that costs nothing and gets you off the sand.