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.
On the way it passes Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch, Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve and back through Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch. It crosses from Poland into Slovakia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 71 km this is Bieszczady Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Where the Bieszczady mountains of Poland meet Slovakia and Ukraine, there is a stretch of forest that has hardly been touched. The Stuzhytsia-Uzhok area, on the Ukrainian side of the watershed near the Uzhok pass, is one component of the Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians, a World Heritage group that spans several countries and continues into the Polish Bieszczady and the Slovak Poloniny. The trees here are mostly beech, with fir and sycamore, and in the oldest stands, some of the trunks are huge, with fallen logs lying where they dropped and rotting into the soil, a kind of forest that has almost vanished from Europe. The wildlife is what you might expect from such a place: brown bears, wolves, lynx, and the European bison, which was reintroduced to the Bieszczady in the 1960s.
Read the complete Stuzhytsia - Uzhok write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stuzhytsia - Uzhok is where the day begins. Next is Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch.
The wooden church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Turzańsk stands on a gentle slope in the foothills of the Bieszczady mountains, in the far southeast of Poland, near the borders with Slovakia and Ukraine, with its onion domes rising above the trees. It was built in the early nineteenth century by the Lemko or Boyko communities, the Ruthenian highlanders who once lived in these mountains, and it is one of the wooden tserkvas of the Polish and Ukrainian Carpathian region listed by UNESCO in 2013. Inside, an iconostasis of painted icons separates the nave from the sanctuary, and the church is still used for Orthodox services.
Read the complete Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 172 km into the recorded legs you reach Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve. Next is back through Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch, late in the day. Next is Stuzhytsia - Uzhok.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stuzhytsia - Uzhok write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Stuzhytsia - Uzhok. That is the ride.
Stuzhytsia - Uzhok → Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch → Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve is 101 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bardejov Town Conservation Reserve → back through Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch is 101 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Turzańsk-Tserkva of Saint Michael the Arch → Stuzhytsia - Uzhok is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.