Kayaking the length of the Wisła River

Next year, I and two friends are going to kayak the length of the Wisła River, starting at its source in Wisła and travelling all the way through Poland to Gdansk.

This is a scientific project for my two friends, as they are PhD's, and they want to conduct an environmental examination of the total length of the Wisła River, and this will be the first time it has been done.

The total length is 1,047 km (678 miles) and should take just under a month to do.
This is not the first time I have done this as ten years ago I kayaked across France on the Loire River, starting at the Cévennes Mountains and Kayaking across to the Atlantic, ending up in the Bay of Biscay at St Nazaire and was one of the most amazing times in my life.

We had many adventures, from meeting Mick Jagger in a cafe in Poce-sur-Cisse (he has a wonderful chateau there), living with Romany Gypsies for four days (the most alcoholic experience of my life), nearly drowning on the maintain rapids (scary), and many more.

I don't expect the same things in Poland; however, I think this will be compensated through its natural beauty of winding itself through Poland.

The total length of the Wisła River is very similar to the Loire River 1,013 kilometres (629 miles).

What I really want to know if anyone has kayaked down parts of the Wisła River and their experiences.

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Great idea!

I know that you can make a kayaking trip around Warsaw, but it can be quite dangerous.

Wistula between Sandomierz and Płock is a wild river with thousands of islands, few branches, trees in the water etc...

zumi.pl/namapie.html?&loc=Warszawa&Submit=Szukaj&long=21.1675184&lat=5 2.1403088&type=2&scale=4

Here you can see Wistula in the outskirts of Warsaw...

This is the last wild big river of Europe so I wish you very nice trip!

Lukasz

Can't be as dangerous as the start of the Loire River as we had four metre dropoffs, white water rapids 2.5 metre in hight sometimes, but thanks for the info, much appreciated :)

We have been studying the river and from the town of Wisła to Ochby Małe (first 20klms) it looks really interesting, as it is a series of 0.5 metre high weirs every 100 metres, and it will be like a roller-coaster ride lol

wear a body condom if you want don't want to catch anything. lol

also, be very careful of the river traffic. poles tend to drink too much. lol

very coool UKP. we sure hope to see some pics and a nice write up.

i canoe quite a bit around here. i love the load bearing capability of a canoe although it's a bit harder to paddle.