Sanok is the last proper town before the Bieszczady, the wild, empty corner of south-eastern Poland where the country runs into Ukraine and Slovakia. About forty thousand people live on the banks of the San River, in a valley of wooded hills, and the town has a calm, dignified feel, with a castle on a rise, an old market square and a river that is wide and clear in summer.
The open-air museum on the hillside is the one stop to make. It is among the largest of its kind in Poland, with wooden houses, churches and farm buildings brought from villages across the region, including those of the Lemko and Boyko mountain peoples, whose communities were largely uprooted after the Second World War. Walking between the old timber churches, with their onion domes and shingled roofs, is a gentle way to understand the cultural mix that once covered these hills. The castle holds a remarkable collection of icons from Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches, and also the largest collection of works by Zdzisław Beksiński, the painter born in Sanok in 1929, whose dark, dreamlike canvases are sometimes called hallucinatory. The town also builds buses, as it has for generations.
The Bieszczady Loop, which starts here, is the reason riders come. The road climbs south through beech forests and open mountain meadows, the połoniny, where grass ridges run above the tree line, then drops to the huge lake at Solina, the largest artificial lake in Poland, with its great curved dam. Bends are gentle and varied, the surface mostly good, and traffic is light outside the summer weekends. The forests hold brown bears, wolves, lynx and a herd of European bison, though you are far more likely to see deer, and sheep crossing the road. Early mornings can be misty, and fog in the valleys is common.
Fuel is plentiful in Sanok, which has many stations, so fill up before going south, since the villages in the mountains have few. Zagórz, about six kilometres away, has a ruined Carmelite monastery on a hill and a small supply of services. Pierogi, potato pancakes and fresh trout from mountain streams are the local meals to look for.
Start early, take layers because the weather changes quickly, and plan time to stop in the villages. September, when the grasses turn gold and the crowds thin, may be the best month.