Protect the Beauty! Don't Pick the Spring Flowers!

The sun warms the earth, nature awakens from its winter sleep, and the world around comes to life and turns vivid. Sunbeams rouse the adornments of the forests – the first heralds of spring. We receive this priceless gift of nature every spring.

 

Crocus glades

Carpathian Forest. A Winter Walk to Recharge

A forest is always balm for the soul, a source of inspiration and reflection, and winter forest scenes amaze with their charm and stir the imagination.

Chortovi Skeli. Watch Post, Quarry and Tourist Spot

Close by us there are spaces that are at once historical in character and of scientific and practical importance, that shape our aesthetic sense and are also attractive to tourists and sportspeople. Within the bounds of Lviv, on the southern edge of the village of Lysynychi, a stony scatter rises in a picturesque ridge, named the Chortovi Skeli — the Devil's Rocks — for their air of mystery and their wondrous beauty.

 

Chortovi (Chotovi, Chatovi) Skeli

The Yablunytsia Pass. A Picturesque Carpathian Crossing

The Yablunytsia Pass lies in the Eastern Carpathians, on the border of the Transcarpathian and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. In the Middle Ages trade routes ran through the pass, and it was called the Tatar Pass, because as far back as the thirteenth century the Mongol-Tatar horde moved through this very place on its way to Europe. Its present-day name this geographic feature received from its location on the south-western outskirts of the village of Yablunytsia, in the Nadvirna district of the Ivano-Frankivsk region.

 

The Yablunytsia Pass

Morshyn. From Pump Room to Pump Room. A Health Walk

Morshyn begins with the mineral-water pump room, around which all the roads, avenues and paths converge. It can serve healing water to 6 thousand people at once.

 

Morshyn. The pump room

A Carpathian Hike. An Abandoned Cabin on the Polonyna

One of the most popular ways to relax and spend free time in Ukraine is hiking, combined with exploring natural and architectural landmarks. Usually people choose weekends or holidays for a trek across the Carpathian slopes and peaks. But short-term opportunities are worth taking too, to stroll along the picturesque trails, to fill up on positive impressions and to immerse yourself in the kingdom of Carpathian nature. In mushroom season you can pair the admiring of the scenery with a spot of quiet hunting and, in a couple of hours, gather a certain amount of forest produce to vary your diet.

 

The Carpathians. Ivano-Frankivsk region

The Oak. Patriarch of the Forest and Natural Monument

A mighty oak, an age-old oak  

Stands there beside the ravine. 

It has flung out its leafy forelock, 

Its brow touches the cloud.

Its boughs have been bent since time began, 

Its bark is as if of steel. 

In the forest, from afar, to the grandfather 

The trees are bowing down. 

(Mariia Pryhara) 

In the forest, among birches and poplars, it stands out with its mighty trunk, its curly crown and its carved leaves.

Lviv. Enerhetychna Street. A monument oak. Trunk girth 5 m

The Blue Lakes. An antiviral winter

How to spend a day off when quarantine restrictions are in force and the theatres, museums and cafes are closed? The best choice for a Sunday outing at the height of the rampage of disease-causing bacteria always remains the forest. Trips to out-of-town green zones and landscape parks are not outlawed yet. Let us make an excursion into the pine forest in the area of the Blue Lakes of the Lyman district of Donetsk region.

 

Kamianka. The 'Floodplain of the Byk River' Reserve

The village of Kamianka in the Dobropillia district lies in the west of the Donetsk region, where the administrative border with the Dnipropetrovsk region runs.

The Nykonorivka Spring. Nature and the Work of Hands

The Nykonorivka spring gives people clean water and the joy of communing with nature.

The Nykonorivka spring, the Kliuchyk ravine. Sloviansk district, Donetsk region

The Velykoanadolskyi Forest and the 'Forest Park'

Forest Park is a resort town in the south of Donetsk region, in the very heart of the Velykoanadolskyi Forest. This paradisiacal corner is located 65 kilometres from Donetsk and 6 kilometres from the district centre of Volnovakha (12 kilometres by road). Until 2014, the top management of Donbas was a frequent guest of the hotel and health complex; a helipad was built for the wealthy visitors.

Hrafske. Donetsk region. The "Forest Park" hotel and health centre

Hrafske. No Fairy Tales of the Velykoanadolskyi Forest

Like a green sea amid the waterless steppe in the south of Donetsk region spreads the Velykoanadolskyi Forest. The largest man-made forest tract in Europe saturates the air with healing energy amid the smoking factory chimneys and slag heaps. How the green wealth of Donbas was created, and how the memory of its creators is preserved, can be learned in the village of Hrafske in the Volnovakha district, at the forest museum.

Hrafske. Volnovakha district, Donetsk region. The Velykoanadolskyi Forest Museum