We arrived at the northeastern edge of Poland. We drove to the Stańczyki village to explore the historic Stanczyki bridges also called aqueducts of Rominta Forest.
Before coming to Stanczyki we passed the village Kiepojcie. There is a much smaller and less famous bridge, but it is also worth seeing. Under the bridge is a dirt road and on the bridge a train used to ride, and now there are no longer even tracks. Admission to the bridge is prohibited; you can only climb the slope of the embankment to see the bridge from the top.
The main attraction, namely Stańczyki, is twin 5-span bridges. They have a length of 180m and a height of up to 36m. The Błędzianka river flows under those bridges. These bridges were built between 1912 and 1914 (northern part) and 1923–1926 (southern part) as part of a non-existent today railway line Goldap – Żytkiejmy. These are the highest bridges in Poland.
Puzzling is the location of these bridges. If the railway could go a few hundred meters further south, it would enable bypassing such difficult crossings (the area there is a lot flatter). The probable intention was to show the strength of German engineering, and the designers seem to have specially chosen the most difficult terrain to conquer.
The bridges served as railway bridges. This was the main communication link with Lithuania. Both freight trains transporting wood from nearby forests and passenger trains transporting tourists ran here. In the ’40s, stones were transported this way from Lithuania to build Hitler’s headquarters — the Wolf’s Lair, which we had seen the previous day.
The railway was dismantled in 1945 by the Red Army.
Today, bridges are a tourist attraction and are used by extreme sports enthusiasts like bungee jumping. The land is privately owned, and we needed to pay an admission fee.
Walking the whole tour takes about 30 minutes. You can go to the bridges, then go down the stairs and walk under the bridge. Although there are signs indicating danger, you can see that it is quite a popular sightseeing route. It is well worth the climb to the top to see the view down. The wind blows there pretty hard, and the construction of the bridge is impressive.
We noticed for the first time the construction of a new bike trail, which was to be routed along the eastern border. This route has the name Green Velo. While we were driving to the Stanczyki we saw it near Gołdap, the new cycling road along the existing street. Great initiative!