Park Krajobrazowy Wzniesień Łódzkich
Nature reserve · Łódź
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Established in 1996, this landscape park protects 11,580 hectares of the northern Łódź Uplands, terrain unusually hilly for central Poland that rises to 284 meters near Dąbrowa. Only 28 percent of it is forested, but that includes Poland's largest beech forest, Las Janinowski, and the Łagiewnicki Forest, one of Europe's largest forests within a city's limits. Streams cut through wooded ravines across its six municipalities.
The hills here are a glacial leftover: about 150,000 to 180,000 years ago an advancing Scandinavian ice sheet dropped the gravel, sand and clay that later eroded into this landscape's ridges and ravines. A first-order watershed divide, separating the Vistula and Oder river basins, runs across the park's highest point. Three nature reserves protect its core: Las Łagiewnicki, Struga Dobieszkowska and Parowy Janinowskie. Oaks over 200 years old still stand in Łagiewnicki Forest, and the park counts 71 rare plant species, including the coralroot orchid, alongside moose, wild boar, badgers and around fifteen bat species.
What you see
Erosional ravines and gorges cut through wooded hills studded with glacial boulders, opening to wide views from viewpoints across the highland terrain.
Practical
The loop starts from a parking area on ulica Wycieczkowa at the edge of Łagiewnicki Forest; within Łódź its roughly 13 km run about 6 km of forest asphalt with the rest gravel and unpaved rural roads.
landscape parkglacial terrainnature reserveforest