CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 605 km round trip from Velykyi Bereznyi - roughly 11 h 41 in the saddle. The stops in between: Udava, Bodruzal, Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve and Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i. It crosses Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 125 km this is Bieszczady Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Rožok is a small patch of very old forest on the eastern edge of Slovakia, close to the borders with Poland and Ukraine, and it is one of the components of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a World Heritage Site that stretches across many countries. Here, on a steep slope above the Starina reservoir, beech trees have grown undisturbed for centuries, some of them huge, with smooth grey trunks and wide canopies, and fallen trees lie rotting on the forest floor, feeding fungi, insects and birds.
Read the complete Rožok write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rožok is where the day begins. Next is Udava.
Out where Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine meet, the eastern Carpathians fold into long, rounded ridges covered in beech forest so continuous that from a high point it looks like a green sea. Udava is one of the Slovak pieces of the UNESCO Primeval Beech Forests listing, protected within Poloniny National Park, the most easterly and least populated corner of the country. Here the forest has been left to its own rhythms for a very long time: giant trees, fallen trunks covered in fungi and moss, a dense understory of young growth wherever light breaks through. Wolves, lynx, brown bears and even European bison roam the area, and the dawn chorus in May is unforgettable.
Read the complete Udava write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Udava comes up about 125 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bodruzal.
Bodružal is a tiny Rusyn village in the far northeast of Slovakia, close to the Polish border, with a few dozen houses scattered along a valley among the forested hills of the Low Beskids. What brings people here is its wooden church of St Nicholas, built in 1658, a three-domed Greek Catholic church with shingled walls and onion-shaped towers stepping up from east to west. It is one of the eight churches in the UNESCO listing of the wooden churches of the Slovak part of the Carpathian mountain area, and it is a perfect example of the Lemko style: compact, harmonious and rooted in its landscape. Inside, the iconostasis glows with painted saints.
Read the complete Bodruzal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 207 km into the recorded legs you reach Bodruzal. Next is Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve.
Bardejov's main square is a long, gently sloping rectangle lined with Gothic and Renaissance burgher houses, their tall gables painted in pastel colours, with the Gothic Basilica of St Giles at the top and the old town hall standing alone in the middle. The town grew rich in the Middle Ages on trade between Hungary and Poland, and its walls, bastions and moat largely survive. Bardejov was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2000, along with its Jewish suburb, with a synagogue and ritual bath from the eighteenth century, a reminder of the community that lived here until the Holocaust.
Read the complete Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve, about halfway. Next is Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i.
In a narrow valley in the Low Beskids, close to the Slovak border in south-eastern Poland, stands the wooden church of Saint Paraskeva in Kwiatoń, often called the most beautiful of the Lemko churches. Built in the seventeenth century by the Lemkos, an East Slavic highland people who lived in these hills for centuries, it is one of the sixteen wooden tserkvas of the Carpathian region in Poland and Ukraine that UNESCO listed in 2013. Its silhouette is unmistakable: three towers rising in steps toward the west, each topped with onion-shaped domes and crosses, the walls covered in wooden shingles that have weathered to silver-grey.
Read the complete Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i sits at 182 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve comes up about 351 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Bodruzal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bodruzal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 398 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Bodruzal. Next is back through Udava.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Udava write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Udava, late in the day. Next is Rožok.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rožok write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 605 km.
Rožok → Udava is 125 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Udava → Bodruzal is 82 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bodružal → Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve → Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region i → back through Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve → back through Bodruzal is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bodruzal → back through Udava is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Udava → Rožok is 126 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.