Stara Reka

Worth a detour

Roughly 1,900 hectares protecting the entire catchment of one river as it comes off the southern wall of the central Balkan range above Karlovo. Its old beech is one of the nine Bulgarian components of the World Heritage beech forest listing. Over forty Red Data Book plants, around twenty Bulgarian endemics, bear and wolf. Six marked trails, three huts, and a firm rule about staying on them.

Story

Background

Declared on 19 March 1981, Stara Reka does something reserves rarely do: it protects a whole watershed rather than a habitat type or a species. The river rises high on the ridge and drops through a steep wooded gorge to emerge above Karlovo, and everything that drains into it is inside the boundary. That is why the vegetation runs through such a range in so little horizontal distance — warm-climate ash and hornbeam at the bottom, beech through the middle, fir and spruce at the top.

The botany is the reason specialists come. Over forty-five species listed in the Bulgarian Red Data Book grow here, along with roughly twenty endemics found nowhere outside the country. More than a hundred vertebrate species have been recorded, including bear, wolf and golden eagle, and the wetter rock faces hold fire salamanders and tree frogs. The old beech stands are among the nine reserves in Central Balkan whose forests entered the World Heritage list in 2017.

Six marked routes cross the reserve, linking the Hubavets, Balkanski Rozi and Vasil Levski huts and continuing up to the ridge. The access rule is absolute and worth repeating: you may walk the marked routes, and you may not leave them. In a strict reserve that is not a suggestion about erosion, it is the legal basis on which the place is left alone. Karlovo at the foot of the gorge is the obvious base, and the walk up from the town is steep from the first step.