Wacky Poland- Desert

Not dessert, but desert. Poland really has one, and it’s the biggest in Europe. Forty kilometres north west of Kraków lies the Pustyna Błędowska, created thousands of years ago by a melting glacier. Covering an area of 32km2 the desert is nine kilometres long, and around 4 kilometres wide. Today it is shrinking at an alarming rate; back in the 1970s government action was taken to prevent the sands encroaching on farmland and populated areas. A programme of forestation was undertaken, and today the wasteland finds itself gradually disappearing, strangled by the pine and willow trees that were planted around it. Estimates claim it once covered an area of 150km2, though today scientists claim it will vanish completely within the next five decades. As late as the 1960s visitors would be able to witness natural phenomena such as mirages and sand storms, and it was here that Field Marshall Rommel trained his Desert Rats detachment during WWII. Abandoned military bunkers can still be found scattered around.