Stanczyki bridges

We arrived at the northeastern edge of Poland. We drove to the Stańczyki village to explore the historic Stanczyki bridges, also called the Aqueducts of the Romincka Forest.

Before coming to Stanczyki we passed the village of Kiepojcie. There is a much smaller and less famous bridge, but it is also worth seeing. Under the bridge is a dirt road, and trains used to run on the bridge, 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, the Stańczyki bridges, are 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 the Gołdap - Żytkiejmy railway line, which no longer exists. They are among the highest bridges in Poland.

The location of these bridges is puzzling. If the railway had gone a few hundred meters further south, it could have bypassed 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 transport 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.

Fun fact: although there are two bridges, trains only ever ran on one of them, the northern one, from the opening of the line in 1927. Tracks were never laid on the southern bridge.

Today, the bridges are a tourist attraction and are used by extreme sports enthusiasts, for example for 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 walk across 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 Stanczyki from Gołdap, a long (15 km) stretch of the new cycling road was being built along the existing road. Great initiative!