Słowiński National Park
Słowiński Park Narodowy
Interesting facts
- During the Second World War the Germans used the dunes near Rąbka to test the Rheintochter anti-aircraft missile and the Rheinbote long-range rocket.
- From the late 1960s into the 1970s, Polish scientists launched Meteor meteorological rockets from the same former German test site near Łeba.
- Łebsko, at about 71 square kilometres, is the largest lake in Pomerania and the third largest in Poland.
- The Slovincians spoke their own Slavic language, related to Kashubian, which died out in the early 20th century; Kluki was its last stronghold.
- In 2004 the park was extended to include about 110 square kilometres of the Baltic Sea itself.
- The park's emblem is the herring gull, a familiar bird of its Baltic shore and lakes.
Why it is worth it
Słowiński National Park guards a strip of the Polish Baltic coast where the land is still being made and unmade by wind. Between the sea and two large shallow lakes, Łebsko and Gardno, runs a long sandbar on which bare dunes up to 30 metres high and more march inland at three to ten metres a year, burying the pine forest in front of them and exposing the dead trunks of older forests behind. The park was created in 1967, became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1977 and a Ramsar wetland in 1995, and covers about 186 square kilometres - more than half of it water. It takes its name from the Slovincians, a small West Slavic people who lived around these lakes.
The moving dunes near Łeba are the largest such field in Europe and the reason most people come. The highest, Łącka Góra, rises around 40 metres above the sea, and from its crest the view takes in a landscape that seems to belong to another continent: a pale, rippled desert of sand, with the grey-blue Baltic on one side and the reedy expanse of Łebsko on the other. In spring 2016 the wind uncovered the stumps of a forest buried several thousand years ago - a reminder that the dunes have been travelling here for a very long time. Walk on to the north and the sand runs straight down to the open Baltic beach.
The rest of the park is quieter and more varied: shallow coastal lakes, forests that are mostly pine, and a coast where 257 bird species have been recorded. Rowokół, a wooded hill near Smołdzino, rises to 115 metres and gives a view over the lakes and the dunes. The 25-metre Czołpino lighthouse stands among the forested dunes further west, and at Kluki an open-air museum preserves the farmsteads of the Slovincian village. Near the dunes at Rąbka, the concrete remains of a wartime rocket test range - used by the Germans and later for Polish meteorological rockets - now house a small museum.
Getting there
Słupsk, about 32 km away, is the nearest city, but the practical base is the seaside town of Łeba, at the eastern edge of the park; the park entrance for the dunes is at Rąbka, about 3 km from the town centre, from where the dunes are reached on foot, by bicycle or partly by electric cart. Łeba is linked by a single-track railway to Lębork, with trains on the line, and by regional buses. The nearest airport is Gdańsk Lech Wałęsa Airport (GDN), about 83 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Slovincian National Park, also known as Słowiński National Park, is a national park in Pomeranian Voivodeship, northern Poland. It is situated on the Baltic coast, between Łeba and Rowy. The northern boundary of the park consists of 32.5 kilometres (20.2 mi) of coastline.
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