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Nice to sea Polesie on hackernews, even if for such reasons. My grandparents lived there (in the Polish part near Włodawa), I spent every holidays in 90s and 00
by ajuc 7y ago
Nice to sea Polesie on hackernews, even if for such reasons. My grandparents lived there (in the Polish part near Włodawa), I spent every holidays in 90s and 00s swimming in these lakes and biking through these forests.
It's a very pretty region, great for tourism (the default is forest, there are clearings with lakes every few dozen kilometers, there's also some villages and farming land, but mostly it's one huge forest).
It's very flat, and the roads (except the one that connects Lublin to Włodawa and the country border) are almost always empty - so it's a paradise for biking.
The villages are very poor even for eastern Poland standards, most young people leave cause there's no jobs except for farming and some tourism in the summer but still not much. I'd say the median age is over 40 in the countryside or possibly more.
My grandfather was working for a local farming cooperative there during communism, and they tried to dry the swamps for agriculture reasons. They were also searching for coal (there's a coal mine in the region and there is a possibility for some more).
The end result was that in that particular part (near Stary Brus - Kołacze - Hańsk) it got much too dry, the ground water level dropped and it's almost a desert now - ground is mostly sand, only pine trees and a few kinds of grass grow there.
In the Polish part there is already an artificial lake (Wytyczno) and a channel between some rivers (Wieprz-Krzna), but nobody really uses it for transport. I don't think it makes much sense to build waterways there at the cost of nature.
- there's no industry to speak of
- the population is sparse and poor
- the border between Poland and Belarus on the Bug river is the external border of the EU, it separates 2 opposing economic unions and blocks almost all the trade
- the next part downstream (Mazury lake district) is also underdeveloped sparsely populated countryside with little money and lots of rare nature
If Poland, Ukraine and Belarus joined one economic union (preferably EU) - it could maybe work, but as is it's useless investment with lots of harmful side effects.
- mongol 7y agoYou mention it is great for tourism. I am intrigued. As a tourist, how would I best get around in this area (longer distances), if I would not be cycling? Rental car?
- ajuc 7y agoIf you want to travel fast you need a car there, yes. Public transport only works well along the few main roads, outside of that it's like 2-3 buses a day or none at all. In any case traveling fast kinda misses the point, the fun stuff is in between. If you don't want to bike you can rent a kayak and go down one of the rivers. IMHO the best way is to get a tent and a bike, take a train to some city (Włodawa works), and bike for a week or two camping elsewhere each day. Best time is June - late enough that there's lots of cheap fresh fruits everywhere (you can buy them from farmers along the roads or just gather the wild fruits in the forests), but before the school ends so even the popular lakes are empty. Also there's that https://greenvelo.pl/en/map https://greenvelo.pl/en/map a bike-only road that goes for over 500 km through most of the tourist spots in the Polish parts of Polesie (and also later Warmia and Mazury). Less wild but still cool. Easy flat terrain starts north of Chełm and continues all the way to the Baltic sea, BTW choosing a smiling scenic mask icon for museums wasn't the best choice on that map, especially when you have a museum of a german death camp there :/
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y agoI crosschecked that with https://www.darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#7/51.283/22.775 https://www.darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#7/51.283/22.7... so there should be some pretty good nightskies enjoyable with a large binocular, or even a 5 inch Maksutov. How do you remember the weather to be on average for the time (June) you suggested? Cloudy, hazy, or clear? With clear i mean, could you when you camped somewhere in the forest, the campfire out, your eyes used to the dark, see the milky way or some other faint smudges of nebula with the bare eye?
- ajuc 7y agoYes you could see Milky Way pretty well on the moonless nights, even with naked eyes. The weather should be 20-35 C, usually partial cloud cover but no rain, sometimes no clouds at all, sometimes a quick thunderstorm, very rarely you'd get a whole day of rain.
- 7y ago