AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Lake Pile (Jezioro Pile) is one of the largest and deepest lakes in the Drawsko Lakeland of northwestern Poland, a broad, clear sheet of water fringed by forest and bordered on its south shore by the small town of Borne Sulinowo. It is the biggest of the 57 lakes in the Borne Sulinowo commune and the second-largest water body in the surrounding Szczecinek county.↗↗
What draws visitors here is the variety packed into one lake: sailing and motorboating on open water with no noise-restriction zone, a celebrated kayak route down the river Piława that runs straight through it, sandy beaches for swimming, rich fishing, and an underwater sunken forest that makes it one of Poland's most unusual places to scuba dive.↗↗
A large, deep lakeland water
Lake Pile is a classic glacial morainic lake — long, deep and irregular, with a shoreline broken into numerous bays. Its surface covers close to 1,000 hectares, and the water stretches more than 9 km from end to end, with an uninterrupted shoreline of roughly 30 km once you exclude the islands. While the average depth is about 12 m, the deepest hollows plunge past 40 m (some surveys put the maximum at over 50 m), which is why the lake stays remarkably clean and supports a healthy range of fish.
