Drawa

Drawieński Park Narodowy is organised around moving water — unusual for the Polish lowlands, where rivers mostly idle. The Drawa and its tributary the Płociczna have cut into the glacial outwash of the Puszcza Drawska deeply enough to run quick, cold and clear over gravel, swinging through pine terraces and ravine beechwoods. The park, declared in 1990 on former military-adjacent state forest, protects the finest reaches of both rivers along with a scatter of lakes, Ostrowieckie the largest among them.

The water quality carries the fauna. Otters den along undercut banks, beavers have re-engineered every slack side-channel, and the gravel beds are spawning grounds for one of Poland's few river-running populations of migratory sea trout, which climb far inland from the Baltic each autumn; kingfishers and goosanders work the riffles year-round, and white-tailed eagles patrol the lakes. The forest between is two-layered — plantation pine from a century of Prussian and Polish forestry over relict fragments of the original cover, of which the Radęcin beechwood is the celebrated piece, an old-growth stand left essentially untouched for centuries.

The river's most famous paddler came before the park existed. In the 1950s a young Kraków priest named Karol Wojtyła ran the Drawa by kayak repeatedly with his student circle, camping on the terraces; the trips entered biography when he became John Paul II, and the canoe trail now effectively doubles as a memorial route. Halfway down, the river does something unexpected: below Głusko it drops through the Kamienna hydroelectric plant, generating since 1903 on Escher Wyss Francis turbines ordered in the 1890s — one of the oldest power stations in Europe still at work, and surely the only one operating inside a national park.

What's worth knowing before you go

Drawno at the northern edge is the main gateway and standard canoe put-in, with Głusko serving the southern reaches; both are reached most practically by car or seasonal bus, the nearest rail being Choszczno or Kalisz Pomorski. Paddling the park section needs a permit and launches are capped per day — book ahead for July and August — and the river's fallen timber and steady current make it honest, occasionally sporty, canoe water rather than a float.

May, June and September are the kind months for paddling; late October turns the Radęcin beeches and brings the sea trout upriver (fishing inside the park is off-limits, watching from bridges is not). The connoisseur's stop is the Kamienna turbine hall: ask nicely and you may be shown the two signal bulbs that have burned continuously since 1903, outliving the empire that installed them.