Roztochia is a low, wooded ridge that runs like a spine from southeastern Poland down to the outskirts of Lviv, and on its Ukrainian end, between Ivano-Frankove and Novoyavorivsk, lies the Roztochia nature reserve. Its old beech woods were added in 2017 to the UNESCO listing of Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a chain of forests that tells the story of how beech recolonised the continent after the Ice Age. The ridge is also a watershed: rain that falls on one side ends up in the Baltic by way of the Vistula, and on the other in the Black Sea by way of the Dniester. Standing on a hilltop and knowing that is oddly satisfying.
The country is soft and mixed: sandy soils, pine stands, beech and oak on the slopes, small lakes, fishponds and meadows full of storks in summer. Ivano-Frankove, an old town named after the poet Ivan Franko, sits on a lake, and the woods around it have long been a place for Lviv people to walk, pick mushrooms and swim. Lviv itself, half an hour away, has an old town of Renaissance and baroque streets and the Vysokyi Zamok hill with its view over the roofs.
We should be straight about the present. Ukraine has been under martial law since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the large Yavoriv military range lies nearby, and travel rules, curfews and checkpoints can change at short notice. Check official advice before planning a ride here and follow local instructions to the letter.
If and when you do ride, the roads west of Lviv are a mixed bag: some main routes are freshly resurfaced, others patched and potholed, and village lanes may be cobbled or sandy. Traffic is a mix of fast cars, trucks heading to the Polish border at Krakovets and horse carts. Novoyavorivsk, six kilometres away, is a town of nearly thirty thousand with fuel and shops; Lviv has everything. Look for varenyky and borscht in roadside cafés, and in Lviv, where coffee culture runs deep, take your time over a cup.