Boli goes Belarus: From Hrodna to Brest and some small detours

The major plan for today was to go to Brest via the Bjelavjeza National Park but then I figured out on the night before some nice detours so I was planning for a long day - and it was. You cannot miss out on the oldest church in Belarus from the 15 th century do I changed my plans and it was worth it. The outer shape has not changed over decades and the church has still kept its defensive character - the inside however was used by the Russians as grain storage and hence was completely destroyed. It still has kept its defensive character a true impressive building.

I hit the road again towards Ruzany, the Versailles of Belarus is located here in form of the Sapieha castle - dating from the 16 th century and was built by Leo Sapieha - it must have been once a true impressive building but still is - now the gateway was completely restored and is back to old glory - but the rest still gives an impression on how it must have looked like.

I continued my trip towards the Bjelavjeza national park, under UNESCO world heritage and one of the place of primal forest in Europe containing over 12 000 different species - the forest areas comprisies a size of 64 times 54 kilometres and is again the home of the Europena Bison that was already extinct. I hired a bycicle and to the 32 km long loop - they call it "the big way" to take me through the park - it was a really nice ride - with finally bison encounter.

My blue bike ...

If you look at the shape of the tree you can see the had of a bison if you look carefully

A 300 year old oak

Part of the forest has been replanted after a fire and is now pine forest

An old logging village in the park

The patriarch oak - this forest gist is about 600 years old and its height reaches about 32 meters. The diameter of the trunk is 2 meters and it takes five men to encompass the tree. It consists of 40 sqm of workable wood - so whole house can be built from it.