Vitanovo Reserve

Worth a detour

Vitanovo is one of the four strict reserves inside Strandzha nature park, declared in December 1981 and covering one thousand one hundred and six hectares of forest west of Malko Tarnovo. Like the others it is closed except for science and for passage on designated paths, and unlike Sredoka and Silkosiya it has no published route. It is in this guide so that you know what the boundary signs mean.

Story

Background

Strandzha's protection works in layers. The nature park covers a hundred and sixteen thousand hectares, more than four times the size of the next largest in Bulgaria and forty per cent of all nature-park land in the country, and within it ordinary walking is allowed on the usual terms. Inside the park sit four reserves — Silkosiya, Vitanovo, Sredoka and Tisovitsa — where the Protected Areas Act bans everything except guarding, science and marked-path passage.

Vitanovo was declared on the third of December 1981. Its eleven hundred hectares of oak and beech are, from the outside, indistinguishable from the forest around them, which is precisely the point: reserves here protect a condition rather than a spectacle.

For a visitor the useful thing is to know the difference. If you want Strandzha forest, the park directorate publishes marked routes that go through it — the Path of the Stars from Zvezdets to Brashlyan, about five hours with two river fords; a two-hour circuit at Kondolovo; and two coastal geological trails with information plaques between Ahtopol, the Veleka mouth and Silistar. Tsarevo municipality lists a dozen more eco-paths with times. All of those are legal, waymarked and empty. The reserves are none of those things, and the fines for being in one are not nominal.