Beli Lom Nature Reserve

Good to know

• Nature preserve
• Good for kids
• Bulgaria

A forest that once covered the plains

Entering Beli Lom, the first thing to notice is how green and layered the woodland is. The canopy is dominated by Hungarian, sessile and pedunculate oak together with silver and small-leaved lime, with hornbeam, elm, field maple, manna ash, flowering ash, wild apple and wild pear threading through it. On the rocky, sun-baked slopes, low scrub communities cling to the calcareous ground, and along the riverbanks willows, alders and white poplar lean out over the water.↗↗↗

This is the classic lowland forest of the Ludogorie plateau, and a detailed botanical survey recorded 367 species of vascular plants within the reserve. The open, seasonally flooded sections of the river are another world entirely, their surfaces carpeted with duckweed, water-milfoil and arrowhead, and a strip of the valley bottom kept wet and boggy by the meandering Beli Lom as it winds toward the Rousenski Lom, the last right-bank tributary of the Danube.↗↗

Birds, deer and other residents

Beli Lom is valued above all as a bird area, and most of its recorded species are songbirds that fill the canopy with sound in spring and early summer. Look for woodpeckers, white stork, and the grey and red-crested herons working the water; among birds of prey, the greater spotted eagle and the honey buzzard pass through, alongside buzzard, hobby, goshawk, sparrowhawk, tawny owl and eagle owl. The combination of mature trees, open floodplain and rocky slopes is exactly what makes the site so attractive to nesting and hunting birds.↗↗↗

On the ground, the signs of wildlife are easier to find than the animals themselves. The reserve shelters red and roe deer, wild boar, fox, wolf, badger, polecat, weasel, European wildcat, hare and hedgehog, while the warm flushes and ponds host frogs, newts, grass snakes, lizards and turtles, and several species of bat roost in the older trees and nearby karst of the Danube Plain. Patience, quiet and a pair of binoculars at dawn are your best tools here.↗↗

How to visit a strict reserve

Beli Lom is a protected reserve rather than a landscaped tourist park, and the rules reflect that. Most activity is prohibited; visitors are allowed to walk the marked paths, and scientific and educational visits are encouraged. The environment inspectorate has established two waymarked footpaths through the forest, both starting from the Iztok Cheshma area and running to the Krivnya hut and to the Krivnya road, with simple shelters, tables and benches set up along them and cleared for use in recent years.↗↗

If you would rather stay outside the inner core, the reserve can be observed from the Kaleto locality on the slope below the village of Krivnya, and from the western side, where a short walk upstream along the river connects it to the Tsar Kaloyan–Vetovo road. These vantage points give a feel for the wooded valley and its river without you having to stray from permitted routes.↗↗

Getting there and what's nearby

There is no public transport into the reserve itself, so it is best reached by car. The two usual approaches both branch off the Ruse–Razgrad road: a dirt track turning left after Tsar Kaloyan, or a route in from the village of Krivnya. From Ruse the drive is short, and the landscape en route—open grain fields giving way to the hidden, watered gorge of the river—is part of the experience.↗↗

Beli Lom sits comfortably within a day-trip network of northeastern Bulgaria. The far more developed Rusenski Lom Nature Park, with its rock churches and river canyon, is roughly 17 km away, the town of Razgrad about 23 km, and the wetland reserve of Sreburna and the Danube city of Ruse make natural companions for a wider birding or nature weekend in the Lomovete area.↗↗