Another Polish Placename with not enough vowels!

I woke up on Saturday morning to find that it was raining again. It has rained almost everyday since I arrived in Poland. I'm not sure if that is normal for here or not but the locals don't seem to mind. They all have very good umbrellas.

I headed out to the shops and got some supplies for the walk. I had to go past the parish church and they were having another service (they have like 7 a day!). They broadcast the service over the loudspeakers on the front of the church. I'm not sure if that is meant to make the rest of us feel guilty for not going or just annoy the people who live nearby.

I headed off through town to find the skansen and found it easy enough as it is about the only thing in town that is well signposted. That was where the navigation troubles arose though.

First  I tried to follow the instructions given to me by the girl at the information office and headed up the main road on the Sanok side of the river. It continued to look awfully like the main road with trucks and buses and I decided that it couldn't be the track. So I back tracked about 1km and headed back to the skansen side of the river. There I found a sign with a map on it which was a start but unfortunately the tracks marked on this map didn't match the map in my hands. I thought I'd give it a go anyway and headed off in the direction given on the large map. I followed the road from the sign and ended up at a fork with three little trail markers at it. Two pointed in one direction and one in the other. I decided to go with the ones that had stripes on them as one was yellow and black and the trail on my map was black (I may as well have drawn out of a hat at this point!) So up the hill I trotted with my backpack before finally coming to another map and some signs in Polish. Again the map in front of me didn't match the one that I had except for the red bike track and I didn't want to go on it. I looked at the trail in front of me and it was muddy and steep and I decided that it couldn't be the right track for the icon trail. I'd been told that it was a relatively easy walk. So back down the hill I went. I stopped and asked directions from a Polish man who not only looked at me like I was stupid but told me that I would have to cross the river again to get to Miedzybrodzie (I think anyway, my Polish isn't that great). So I headed back down the hill to the bridge again. Well my map definitely showed a track running along the skansen side of the river and damn it I was going to find it eventually. I decided to chuck a hard left at the bottom of the bridge and walk along the river bank for a while and see what I found.

This trail looked much more promising. There were car tracks heading along the river bank and there were people on bikes and fishermen. It was quite pleasant walking along. Then the car tracks ended and I realised that I was stuck out on a little section of the bank between the main river and a creek. So back I turned and headed back towards the Skansen. Maybe it was because I hadn't been inside it. Maybe it has a magnetic attraction. I found a set of bike tracks heading across the grass next to the car tracks so headed in their direction only to find that it is actually the correct trail. I should have guessed by the complete lack of trail markings! After crossing the large field I did actually find a trail marker which I later learned is the one for the icon trail. It was blue and white triangles and was half hidden on a fence post. I chucked a left onto the gravel road and set off. At this point I was willing to try anything that looked vaguely right. I followed the road through a collection of houses and continued up a hill through the forest before I came to a church. It was much closer than I thought it would be looking at the map but then again the map had proved to be fairly worthless so far.

I headed on into the village to try and find the man with the keys. This is when I hit another stumbling block. The houses in the villages here aren't numbered consecutively. No the numbering system is effectively random and probably has something to do with when the house was built rather than where it is. So for instance number 51 is next door to number 19. After asking I did eventually find the right house and get the keys and the man did very nicely drive me up to the church to save me having to walk back through the village again.

The church was really pretty on the inside and very Greek looking with lots of blue and white. It was built in 1900 with funds from a local doctor whose statue is out the front of the church and portrait inside.

As I was leaving the man asked me where I was heading and using the map I tried to explain that I was going over the mountain track to Tyrana Solna. He just laughed and explained that the track was knee deep in mud at the moment because of all the rain and told me to go back to Sanok and catch the bus. So back I headed to Sanok (only about an hour's walk) and headed over the bridge again to have some lunch and catch the bus to Mrzyglod. But again another stumbling block. I found the bus stop just fine. I read the bus timetable just fine but the bus did not turn up. It wasn't that I'd made a mistake with the timetable as there were other Polish people waiting at the bus stop too. So I stood and waited in the freezing cold for another hour for the next bus. I was getting colder and colder so when the next bus didn't turn up within five minutes of its scheduled time I decided not to stand around waiting for it and set off on foot. Of course within five minutes of me setting out on foot two buses went past me. I could have cried!

I couldn't find a sign telling me how far it was to Mrzyglod so I worked out roughly two hours from my map and the distance that I had walked in the morning. So onward I ploughed into the country side. Luckily there wasn't much traffic on the road so you could walk on the verge easily. When I hit Miedzybrodzie again I was a bit confused. It turns out that there are two halves of the town separated in the middle by the river and without a bridge. One half has the church and the other has the main road. Strangely enough the street numbers continue between the two halves. By this point I was warming up which was helping my mood dramatically.

I continued on for quite a while and it was beginning to get dark when I finally started on the final approach to Mrzyglod. At this point out of the hundreds of cars that had passed me (well maybe that's an exaggeration, more like 50) while I was walking, one stopped and a man gave me a lift the final km into town. Then I faced the difficult task of finding the place that I was staying. Of course, the random street numbers struck again. The first person that I asked wasn't from town but the second person attempted to point me in the right direction. I still walked vastly further than I needed to but I did find it in the end. Here there was a street sign that showed the way to two places, Sanok which was 14 km away (I really did walk a long way!) and Tyrana Wolina which was 9km away. They don't really do street signs in the country in Poland. I don't know maybe they are worried about being invaded again and want the enemies to get confused and annoyed and walk around for ages wondering where they are.

I crashed pretty early in the evening because I calculated that I had walked 25km for the whole day (at least 6 more than I needed to with all the backtracking!). The hostel was comfortable enough and the warm shower was very appreciated.

In the morning I awoke to more rain but thankfully it stopped while I was having breakfast. I set off to do some more of the towns on the track. I walked through Mrzyglod and fairly rapidly saw all its sights. There isn't an old church remaining in Mrzyglod only a church that once was but was altered to make it a warehouse and now is in ruins. It's behind the one and only shop in town. The shop isn't too bad and sells a reasonable collection of stuff (all very Polish though). I was astounded to find the man in front of me buying a beer and opening it. I don't know if he was drinking on his way to or home from church but the sermons must be bad! I grabbed some delicious apples and headed on my way. The villages in the upper part of the trail are quite close together and the walk is fairly easy. It does get hillier in parts but most of it is fairly flat.

I reached the first village, Hlomcza, just as the service at the church was finishing so I didn't have to go and find the keys. I whipped into the church as they were all coming back out again. It was quite a nice church and had a particularly nice painting of Noah. A lot of the artwork in this church wasn't iconic in style but was still very nice. You have to walk up a hill in the mud to get to it though and even the little old ladies take that route. There is actually a sign pointing to the church and to the next village, Lodzina, which absolutely astounded me. I headed onto the next village and most of the walk to it was uphill. I felt like the road went on for ages but it was only a couple of km. As you walk you pass through true Polish villages. They all have chickens and turkeys and sometimes goats and cows in their front yards. No one has fences so the chickens truly are free range and are often wandering on the road. The cows at least are tethered so that they don't wander off and cause trouble.

When I got to the village I found that the church was at the far end of the village rather than the edge with the road. I walked through and judging by the number of people coming back the other way, I would say that I had just missed the end of the service. The church here is a lovely little wooden number and I think is probably nicer on the outside than the inside. The walls and ceiling are largely unpainted but the iconostasis is nice. I found the keys fairly easily and a lovely little polish lady (who thankfully spoke some German so I could have my first conversation in three days!) showed me around the church. I looked at where the trail continued through the forest next to the church and decided that I had made the right choice by sticking to the road. I walked back through the village just as it started to rain again. It really started to blow for a bit which made it really unpleasant for a bit. Especially since the road to Witrylow was exposed and on the top of the hill for the first km or so. Then it descended into the forest and the rain stopped. The road (and I'm only using this term loosely because I'm surprised that people can actually drive cars on sections of this road!) was quite steep and because of all the rain, completely covered in water in places. There were no signs at all and there are several roads coming off the main road but I just stuck to the one that I thought it was and finally came to the next village. This village has no church, no buses, nothing really except for a bridge across the river to Ulucz.

Now people who know how much I hate suspension bridges will be impressed with how well I coped with this one. I trekked down the hill in the mud to get to it and then managed to make it all the way across (which is quite a distance) over the flooded and fast moving river without stopping and without panicking. I just didn't look down! It didn't help that the wind was still blowing quite strongly and the bridge was not only moving up and down but side to side as well.

I was very pleased to make it across the river and set off on the other side to Ulucz (for where there are also no signs) By the way, I'm going to write a separate set of instructions for people who are thinking of doing the walk so that they don't have to walk the extra distance I did. While walking through the fields, I saw a deer but unfortunately it was pretty timid and rapidly bounded off into the trees. Given the unfriendliness of the local dogs, this didn't really surprise me much.

Everyone in the country has a dog and most of the people in the village will have the same type of dog. The two most popular are German Shepherds and St Bernards but there are also lots of other large and non-friendly dogs to also be found. There are lots of UWAGA PIES signs (which means beware of the dog in Polish) and you don't ignore them. The truly nasty ones are tied up as well as having a 6 foot fence but some of them seem to be allowed to wander at will.

Another odd thing that I noticed while doing this walk was the large numbers of small squashed animals on the roads here. You don't see any large roadkill but there are huge numbers of dead frogs, mice and other small rodents. Now I don't know if they are stupid or unlucky to get hit by the five cars that go on some of these roads each day.

Anyway, back to the trail. The church at Ulucz is the oldest of all the churches in the region and was originally built in 1510. Now the keys here were a bit of an issue. The booklet just lists the address but no instructions as to how to get there. It is actually at the other end of town nearly 2km away. And just as I set off to look for it (after having got Polish instructions from a lovely lady I knew that I had to keep going past the new church to a sign with keys to the church written on it), the arctic wind blew up, it dropped about 4 degrees (and there weren't all that many degrees to start with!)  and started to bucket rain. I sheltered briefly in the new church but it didn't offer that much protection from the blowing rain so I decided to keep walking instead. I finally found the house because of the street number not the sign because it very helpfully can only be read if you are coming from the other direction. The people with the keys weren't too impressed about having to come out and show me the church but damn it they hadn't walked all that way in the rain so they couldn't complain too much. They drove me back up to the church and then we set off up the hill to the building. Now this is definitely not a church to bring Grannie to. It is straight up the hill, without any stairs or even a proper path, with just the tree roots to stop you slipping in the mud. Clearly they didn't wear their good clothes to church or there is another way of getting up the hill that they didn't tell me about. The church is rather cute and would look gorgeous in the snow. It's no longer a functioning church so there is nothing left inside. Most of the stuff from it is either in Sanok Museum or Warsaw. There is an exhibition of icons painted by local painters in the church at the moment but I don't know if that is there all the time. There is a small section on one wall where you can see the paintings that used to cover all the church walls.

The girl didn't wait for me to get down the hill before heading home so I had to walk the two km again through the village and get chased by the same dog as the first time as well. Thankfully, the rain had stopped while I was in the church and it was starting to warm up again (to double figures at least!). I headed onto Dobna by the road rather than the slightly shorter track.

Dobna is another one of these spread out villages that you hit one edge of and then twenty minutes later you are still walking through the houses. Unfortunately when I found the church and the shop where the keys are meant to be, there was no-one there and I couldn't find anyone except some drunk rude men at the pub to ask. So I went to the outside of the church and had a look around. There was a sign up at the entrance saying there was a funeral that afternoon in the new church so maybe that was where the lady with the keys was. The church in Dobna is most famous for it's gate tower with a little chapel inside it. The rest of the church is quite nice on the outside but unfortunately it's difficult to get far away enough from it to get a photo of the whole building.

I was going to buy some lunch at the shop in Dobna but now couldn't so I decided that I'd have to keep going to Mrzyglod and get something there instead. Luckily it was only about an hour's walk to get there. I was astounded that I managed to do it in that time as I was very tired, very hungry and I had a huge blister on my heel. I think that I did about 20km all up for the day so it wasn't surprising that I just wanted to go to bed after eating a large amount of pasta.

The next day was going to be much easier. It was raining lightly as I set off from the hostel for Tyrana Solna which is just across the river. I made it to the church in less than 30 minutes. The keys proved to be a difficulty here. I went to the house that was listed in the tourist booklet and a very unhelpful man came out and yelled at me and waved his arms in the general direction of the church. I have no idea what he was trying to tell me. I thought that maybe he meant that the man with the keys was in the church so I went over to check and found the door definitely locked. It had started to rain in earnest at this point so I sheltered under the porch briefly. Of course there was no-one wandering around in the rain for me to ask for directions and the UWAGA PIES signs were very prominent so I wasn't going to go up to anyone's door. Eventually I spotted a little old lady feeding her chickens and she explained to me where I had to go (it's now number 23 not 88, the brown house at the end of the street where the church is). I headed down there and the woman was most helpful and came out in the cold to let me into the church. This was one of my favourite churches on the inside.

The woman pointed me in the right direction to get to Siemuszowa ( I never would have gone that way by myself and of course there was no sign) and off I set. The rain stopped not long after I left and the sun actually came out for a little while. To get to the church at Siemuszowa you have to turn off the main road and walk up the hill for about half a km. The church is quite obvious once you get up there a little bit. Again the booklet was wrong and the keys are now at 25 not 28. Luckily the woman in 28 was quite helpful and pointed the house out for me. We walked up through the mud to get to the church and it's not bad on the inside but not one of the best. The artwork looks much more European in this one.

Siemuszowa is a seriously rural village. They still use draught horses and carts to get around and work in the fields. Coming back down the hill from the church I got charged at by a horse that had got away from its tether. I had to jump out of the way. It was followed fairly quickly by a man in gumboots and thankfully it rapidly became more interested in getting away from him than chasing me.

I headed back down to the main road and along to the village of Holuczhow (don't ask me how to say that one!). I got to the turn off to the village to find signs (oh the novelty) but they did have conflicting information. One said that it was 1.2 km to the church and the other 2.2. I'd say that it was somewhere in between. I  found the church just fine in the village but had trouble with the keys again. The description in the booklet made the house easy to find but the only things home were two unfriendly dogs and  a mother duck with hundreds of ducklings. A woman came out of the house next door as I was deciding whether the dog chains reached the front door, but was very unhelpful  and  I think told me that there was no key. I went up to the church to see if it was actually locked (which it was) and then gave up. I couldn't see anyone else around to ask and the dogs in this village looked like they were breed from the hound of the Baskervilles. They breed them big and mean in Holuczhow (people and dogs!). So I headed back down the hill to the rest of the village.  At this point my blister was hurting and I'd walked at least 10km so I decided to catch the bus back to Sanok, leaving the last church out completely. There was one back to town within 30 minutes which was even better and to top it all off the sun came out and I got to stand in it and wait for the bus.

I was going to go out to the church at Czertez after I got back but once I hit the hotel , all I could think about was a hot shower and a lie down. So I did that before going out to the Hotel Jagellonski for dinner. This is the only place in town with an English menu (even if it is interestingly translated) so I actually knew what I was getting. I had really nice veal and went to bed with a nice full stomach.

I got up late the next day and pottered around the hotel packing my stuff back up before getting on the bus to Krakow. At the bus station the signs are also misleading. The large sign outside the station doesn't seem to be for the actual buses. I'm not sure what else it would be for but it's wrong. Luckily there happened to be a bus about 15 mins later than the one I thought I would be catching so I got it instead. With the road works on all the roads in and out of Krakow, it took nearly 5 and a half hours to get there instead of the usual 4, but I made it eventually.