Acarlar Floodplain Forest

About this place

The trees here stand in the water, not beside it. Acarlar is a ribbon of ash, alder and elm some seven and a half kilometres long, tucked behind the Black Sea dunes, barely two kilometres from the beach, and for most of the year it is flooded so thoroughly that the trunks appear to grow out of a dark green mirror. The Turks call this a longoz; together with İğneada in Thrace it is one of the country's two great floodplain forests, and Acarlar is the largest unbroken block of one. Protected as a first-degree natural site since 1998 and registered as a wetland of national importance in 2019, it holds some 200 recorded bird species (the ministry's own count runs to 235) and hundreds of plants, twelve of them found nowhere outside Turkey. The visitor area on the Karasu side is small and tidy: about 1,250 metres of wooden boardwalk and bridges that weave between the trunks, sometimes above the water and sometimes alongside it, picnic tables, a timber restaurant and a stall of local produce. Rowing boats and pedalos used to ply the channels but were banned in 2014 to protect what lives under the water, so the forest is seen on foot. The boardwalk is dead flat with no steps, so pushchairs and grandparents manage easily, but a family will have walked it in three-quarters of an hour; the picnic and lunch are what turn this into a proper outing, not the path. Timing is everything. From late May the water is high and the light comes through fresh leaves; in July and into August the white water lilies open with the morning and close again by evening. In October and November the canopy turns yellow and copper over still water. Late summer is the catch: the level drops, parts of the forest go shallow and green or dry out altogether, the humidity is heavy and the mosquitoes are at their worst, so bring repellent and come early. In winter the water returns but it is cold and some facilities close. From Sapanca it is about 70 km, an hour and a quarter by car via Adapazarı and Kaynarca to the Denizköy turning. There is no practical alternative to a car for families; the minibus from Adapazarı to Karasu and on to the village eats half a day. Pair it with Karasu beach a quarter of an hour away or Poyrazlar Lake on the way back, and avoid summer weekends and bayram holidays, when the tour buses arrive.