Matka Lake, Macedonia

Matka Lake is approximately 10 miles from Skopje and is Macedonia’s oldest artificial lake. Here old monasteries hide above the steep sides of the Treska Canyon- built out of sight of the Ottoman Turks, who forbade the building of churches – and nature is reflected on the calm surface of the lake, which is occasionally ruffled by boats heading to the caves. Matka’s underwater caverns could well be the deepest in Europe, with depths to 218 metres. Walkers can take the rough path along the canyon for a number of miles and visit grotto shrines in some densely forested areas. I walked along the canyon for half-an-hour. In the midst of all this nature, I was shocked to see that people had left their litter behind, most of it recyclable plastic bottles, both along the path and by the edge of Matka Lake.