Four Regions – Two Visions

The southern shores of the Baltic Sea are perfect for motorboaters. The tours through the Bodden Landscape of Vorpommern, through the Bodden of Barth and Saale, the Achterwasser and the Szczecin Lagoon offer some of the most beautiful panoramic views for boating enthusiasts. The Vorpommern Bodden Landscapes and Bodden and Szczecin Lagoon suggested routes lead here.

Further east in Pomorskie, the Żuławy Loop (Pętla Żuławska) remains pretty much an insider tip. It can be reached from Gdańsk and has a connection to the Vistula Lagoon (Zalew Wiślany) or to the Ebląg Canal (Kanał Elbląski). The two sug gested routes River Landscapes in the Żuławy Loop and Żuławy Loop with Vistula Lagoon take you right into a nature-infused experience.

If it weren’t for borders, the tours could continue even further. The E70 International Waterway connects the west and the east through inland waterways. It starts in Rotterdam and Antwerp on the North Sea and leads through at least five countries into the Baltic Sea, leading right up to Lithuania. A route back along the outer shore should be possible but this leads through Russian territory in the Kaliningrad enclave and through the Curonian Lagoon. At present, only boats flying Russian, Polish or Lithuanian flags can travel through here. Given this fact, a continuous passage for other boaters to the Curonian Lagoon – including the Pregolya and Deime Rivers – remains a vision to be realised in the near future. Despite these remaining difficulties, there are ways to travel to the Pregolyan Delta. A few visa formalities have to be completed when entering Russia, but the trip up the river will quickly make you forget the small amount of bureaucracy
you had to endure.

The Nemunas Delta also invites to a similarly attractive river scenery. Its labyrinth of canals, hidden jetties and reed-lined banks leads on up the Nemunas River to the Curonian lagoon. A view onto the dune landscapes of the Curonian Spit will, quite literally, broaden your horizons. A route covering Klaipėda, Nida and Nemunas Delta is the perfect opportunity to get to know the whole region. The culinary delights in Bornholm are just as multi-faceted as the nature that surrounds you. There are first-class inns in almost every harbour. The Bornholm Culinary Route will show you the way to these culinary hotspots within nine days. Anyone making the trip to these rather uncharted regions can expect a whole range of new experiences and will get an idea of a sheer limitless vastness of landscapes that travelling to might one day be a reality.

Rafał Wasil
Marshal Office of Pomorskie Voivodeship