The wooden church in Sękowa is small, dark and quietly astonishing. It stands on a slope in the Beskid Niski, the low and thickly wooded mountains of south-eastern Poland, and dates from the early sixteenth century, with a steep shingled roof, a tower with a pointed top and a gallery running around the walls. The timber has gone almost black with age, and inside the walls and ceiling are painted with colourful flowers, figures and scenes of faith from the seventeenth century. It is one of the wooden churches of southern Małopolska listed by UNESCO in 2003, and unlike a museum piece, it is still used for services.
The craft is the story. These churches were built by village carpenters using only axes and simple tools, without nails in some parts, locking logs together with joints, and covering the roof and walls with split shingles that need replacing every few decades. They have survived fires, wars and neglect because communities kept repairing them, and you see that devotion in the care taken with the surroundings.
The hills around hold a layered and painful history. In May 1915 the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive broke the Russian front here, and the fighting left countless graves in the hills, now tended as small war cemeteries, many designed by the Slovak architect Dušan Jurkovič with wooden crosses and gentle landscaping. Gorlice, the nearest town, with nearly thirty thousand people, is also a birthplace of the oil industry, since the pioneer Ignacy Łukasiewicz worked on oil lamps and wells in this region in the 1850s. Fuel, food and shops are easy in Gorlice, and Sękowa itself is a village of one and a half thousand.
For riders, the Beskid Niski is a joy. The roads wind through beech forest and open meadows, over low passes, with gentle gradients, few cars and decent asphalt, though a few back roads have patches and gravel. Autumn is glorious, with copper beech leaves, mist in the valleys and the smell of smoke, and spring brings blossom. Winters are cold, with snow and ice. Eat pierogi, barszcz and smoked cheese in a roadside inn, and ask whether the church key is available, because a lit interior is worth the stop.