Wed 18th June: Ojcow Park

Ojcow is the smallest of Poland’s national parks and is only 20 miles from Krakow. It’s basically a gorge running through small hills providing a network of footpaths through mixed woodlands. This is the typical sort of scenery, not spectacular but very pleasant.

You see so much more walking than driving; Jane’s discovered here some unusual large trumpet shaped fungus. So if you know of a trumpeter that’s looking for his fungus, we know where they are.

There’s a chapel with a strange story in the park: the Chapel on the Water. This part of Poland was controlled by the Russian Tsar at the end of the 19^th and early 20^th century. The Tsar wanted to limit the influence of the Catholic Church and decreed that “no religious structure should be built on solid ground”. So in 1905 the Poles built their chapel here “on the water” i.e. not on solid ground. Let’s hope the Tsar had a sense of humour.

We had local food for lunch, veal goulash with potato cakes, and meat filled dumplings, again at bargain prices. These were very tasty and seemed to use good quality meat, always a concern with cheap prices and unfamiliar dishes.  

There was more to the park than we had time or energy for, a ruined castle for instance, but we were pleased to have a day out in the country after so many city and high volume tourist places.