Lviv. Stryiskyi Park. To walk and walk

There are many reasons to love Lviv, and one of them is the abundance of parks and gardens in this overcrowded city, congested with traffic. Stryiskyi Park, the oldest park in Ukraine to hold the status of a monument of landscape-garden art of national significance, is considered by Lvivians and visitors alike a favourite place of rest — for its shady avenues, its romantic ponds with swans and little ducks, its sculptural fountains, its architectural gems, its attractions and its sports facilities.

Lviv. Stryiskyi Park

Lviv. Autumn at the Shevchenkivskyi Hai Open-Air Museum

The Klymentiy Sheptytskyi Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life in Lviv is a treasury of wooden-architecture landmarks and a place you want to return to. One or two visits are not enough to examine every exhibit in detail, and a walk here in the autumn season heightens the impression: paired with the golden magic of the season, it lets you hear your own thoughts, rest from the city's troubles and revel in the beauty of nature.

 

Lviv. Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life. Church of Sts. Olha and Volodymyr

Lviv. The Home for Rescued Animals

This is not a zoo, not a menagerie, not a safari park and not a zoological garden. Here, animals and birds rescued in various circumstances have found their refuge.

 

Lviv. The Home for Rescued Animals

Sloviansk. The 'Pryozernyi' Ornithological Reserve

The "Pryozernyi" ornithological reserve is located in the north-eastern part of Sloviansk , near residential estates and busy motorways. The location of a natural ecosystem within the city limits entails problems such as spontaneous rubbish dumps on the territory, noise from enterprises, disturbance of living organisms, and pollution of the soil and water by domestic sewage.

Sloviansk. The "Pryozernyi" ornithological reserve

Slavkurort. Awaiting the Revival of an Old Resort

Sloviansk resort is one of the oldest mud-cure resorts in Ukraine. Sloviansk has been known for its mineral waters and therapeutic muds since 1827. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sloviansk mud was recognised as the best in Europe and won the Grand Prix at an international exhibition. In Soviet times this resort of national importance was the most financially prosperous trade-union health resort.

 

Sloviansk resort. Donetsk region. The closed "Yuvileinyi" sanatorium

Bilokuzmynivka. The Cliffs of Two Landscape Parks

I never compare our stunning landscapes and astonishing, spectacular panoramas with foreign natural monuments. The fawning turns of phrase heard in every region of Ukraine towards foreign curiosities, with invented names like "Rivne Iceland", "Donetsk Maldives", "Ukrainian Venice", "Zhytomyr Switzerland", and the like, are surprising. Perhaps our picturesque mountains and cliffs, lakes and rivers have not won worldwide fame, but they arouse no less admiration and are quite well known to the Ukrainian traveller. So let us cherish and popularise the tourist gems of our own country — the unrepeatable landscapes with their own peculiarities, history, and national colour. Ukraine will always remain Ukraine, without obsequiousness or servility, and in every region there are exotic places, wondrous locations that one wants to tell about and to show to guests and travellers.

In Donetsk region, one of the most inspiring landscapes, where you can draw a reserve of energy, opens out across the steppe expanses 10 kilometres south-east of Kramatorsk and 13 kilometres east of Druzhkivka.

 

The "Kramatorskyi" Regional Landscape Park. The Bilokuzmynivka section

Kramatorsk. What Draws Tourists to an Industrial Centre?

Why do trips to not very popular tourist places attract travellers more and more? In little-known corners there are as yet no artificially created spectacular attractions, no distracting stage sets to tangle the tourist in their nets. In Kramatorsk, connoisseurs of architecture will find much of interest in the town's cultural heritage of the interwar period and in the post-war "Stalin-era" blocks, and will see some historical monuments that appeared with the industrial rise of this administrative centre of Donetsk region.

 

Kramatorsk. Donetsk region

The 'Kleban-Byk' Regional Landscape Park

The Kleban-Byk regional landscape park was created in 2000 in the Kostiantynivka and Bakhmut districts of the Donetsk region.

The "Kleban-Byk" regional landscape park

Kramatorsk. The Landscape Park and Nature Reserves

18 April — Environment Day

On the third Saturday of April, Ukraine marks the ecological professional holiday, Environment Day. Protected areas in the agglomerations of the industrial cities of Donbas especially need the strengthening of nature-conservation measures.

Section No. 1 "Bilenke". Kramatorsk regional landscape park

Myrhorod. A Glorious Town, a Wonderful Resort

Myrhorod — a resort in the Poltava region with a welcoming and kindly name — has been hospitably greeting holidaymakers for more than a hundred years now. The well-known lines of the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna, "Myrhorod is not the same now, the Khorol river is not the same", can be linked to the positive changes in the amenities of this health resort.

Myrhorod, Poltava region. The embankment of the Khorol river

Kleban-Byk. Just a day off

Purpose of the hike: to visit the Kleban-Byk regional landscape park with a look at the outcrops of bedrock. Route: the Kleban-Byk stop, the settlement of Kleban-Byk, the Kleban-Byk RLP, the reservoir, the quarry, the village of Pleshchiivka, the Pleshchiivka stop. Distance: 13.5 km. Time: 3 hours 40 minutes. Weather: sunny, +18° .. +27°.

Kleban-Byk, Kostiantynivka district, Donetsk region.

The Bilokuzmynivka Rocks. A Wonder of the Virgin Steppe

In the Donetsk region, where the cities have merged into one continuous industrial agglomeration and the distance between them is about 5-10 kilometres, nature has given this industrial region an astonishing creation — The Bilokuzmynivka chalk cliffs.