Uholka - Shyrikyi Luh and Yasynia-Tserkva of Our Lord’s Ascension
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
679 km
Riding-time estimate
11 h 43
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
679 km from Drahovo to Drahovo, about 11 h 43 of riding. The stops in between: Synevyr - Darvaika, Gorgany, Yasynia-Tserkva of Our Lord’s Ascension and back through Gorgany. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Uholka - Shyrikyi Luh
The Uholka and Shyrokyi Luh massif, in the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve of western Ukraine, is the largest tract of virgin beech forest in Europe. It lies in the upper valley of the Tisza, in Zakarpattia, among steep slopes between roughly four hundred and twelve hundred metres, and it forms a key part of the UNESCO listing for the primeval beech forests of the Carpathians and other regions of Europe, inscribed in 2007. Here the trees have never been logged, so the forest has the structure that old Europe once had: giant trunks, fallen and rotting wood, moss, fungi, and gaps where a tree has died and light floods in.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Uholka - Shyrikyi Luh is where the day begins. Next is Synevyr - Darvaika.
2. Synevyr - Darvaika
Lake Synevyr is the largest lake in the Ukrainian Carpathians, a deep, dark mountain lake at about a thousand metres, ringed by spruce forest and fed by springs. It sits in the Synevyr National Nature Park, in Zakarpattia, and the Darvaika forest to which the label refers is a part of the park's old beech woods, that UNESCO lists among the old beech woods of the Carpathians. The lake owes its name to a legend: a count named Shenborn had a daughter, Synya, who fell in love with a shepherd called Vyr, and when the count killed him, her tears made the lake, while the island in the middle is the shepherd's grave.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Synevyr - Darvaika comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gorgany.
3. Gorgany
The Gorgany are the wildest part of the Ukrainian Carpathians, a range of sandstone peaks rising above dense forests in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. What makes them unusual are the gorgany themselves, the fields of loose stone blocks that cover the upper slopes and summits, formed by frost shattering the rock. Walking across them is slow and tiring, and the forests below, of spruce, beech and Swiss stone pine, are among the most pristine in Ukraine, with brown bears, wolves, lynx and red deer. The Gorgany nature reserve protects a part of this landscape.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 242 km into the recorded legs you reach Gorgany. Next is Yasynia-Tserkva of Our Lord’s Ascension.
4. Yasynia-Tserkva of Our Lord’s Ascension
High in the Ukrainian Carpathians, in the valley of the Black Tisa, the village of Yasinia stretches along the river beneath steep spruce-clad slopes. On a rise near its centre stands a small wooden church, the Church of the Ascension, sometimes called the Strukivska church, built in the early nineteenth century by Hutsul craftsmen without nails. Its stepped roofs, covered in wooden shingles, and its small domes give it a cosy, fairytale shape, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of wooden tserkvas of the Carpathian region in Poland and Ukraine.