Exploring the Klodzko Valley

The fine weather continues with cloudless skies, cool mornings and hot sunny afternoons. Yesterday we took what must be one of the most charming train rides, over the mountains from Duszniki to Kudowa. Our little train had only three cars and a locomotive, and worked very hard to get up over the pass to the other side of the Stolowe Mountains.

Once there, we hired a car to go up to the Bledne Skaly, or labyrinth cliffs, a stone plateau at the summit of one mountain, which is criss-crossed by deep crevasses of 3 or 4 metres. You walk along the bottom of the crevasses on a marked trail, and often have to squeeze through exremely narrow passages, or get down on all fours to crawl through low overhangs.

Later, we visited the chapel of skulls in Czermna, an ossuary filled with skulls and bones from the victims of the plagues of the 17th and 18th centuries, and of the Swedish and Austrian wars. The morbid display consisted of a small chapel with walls and ceilings stacked with skulls, and a cellar filled with more bones.

Later we took the waters at the Kudowa spa, and returned to Duszniki by bus.

Today we are going to visit the museum of paper making here in Duszniki, and then the town of Klodzko with its medieval stone bridge.