With the long Independence Day weekend looming, I decided to revisit a place that Moni and I had been to with our friends Krzysztof and his daughter Zosia in May 2007. Zagroda Lepiarzówka is superbly located, right at the top of a twisty dirt track climbing a mountainside, a stone's throw from the Czech border. And with views like the one below, looking down on Szarotka, a village on the Polish side.
Now that we're in Schengen, as long as we have ID with us, we can wander across into the Czech Republic and back again at will, and not just at the border crossing points. Below: Looking down towards the town of Jablunkov across the border.
Zagroda Lepiarzówka itself is a wonderful place (external view below). The restaurant and bar, heated and lit by a large log fire in a stone fireplace that dominates the room which is entirely made from wooden beams, carved in the local style. The menu is heavy on fatty pork, pickled cabbage and potato dumplings (a must-try here are kluski soszowskie, a local delicacy - potato flour dough encasing tiny cuts of finely chopped bacon with onion, rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Just the thing to set you up for long walks in the mountains. With hot sauerkraut, pork shoulder or black pudding (kaszok).
Because of limited daylight (its dark at half past four), we would not go as far into the Czech Republic as we would have liked. Below: Quarter to four and the sun is sinking fast, casting an unearthly red glow on the soil. We have half an hour's walking to make it back into Poland before darkness falls.
What we did see was reminiscent of the old days; a gone-to-seed Pioneers' Hotel (below) that would make a superb location for a low-budget remake of The Shining, a beer-and-dumplings restaurant with adjacent poorly-stocked grocery store ('Closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays'). A place in this condition in Poland would be unthinkable; if left empty it would be vandalised and stripped bare in days - but in any case it would be sold off and put (with the help of EU money) to good use, like Jodłowy Dwór in the Świętokrzyskie hills that Eddie and I visited in July, another old communist-era tourist asset.
But the Czechs we met along our way were friendly, genuinely helpful, good-humoured, though slightly comical to the cosmopolitan eye. Certainly a nicer lot of people than the few Slovaks Eddie and I encountered in August. And what struck me was that the Czechs we met all understood and spoke some Polish, and accepted Polish currency, which made life in Schengen all the more comfortable. Below. The fellow on the left was very helpful in talking us through our options of getting to our destination. The chap on the right was on his way back from picking mushrooms (note full basket and rucksack with empty beer bottles).
We were blessed with four days of remarkably beautiful weather for mid-November, clear skies much of the time and temperature up to +17C. We made two ascents of Wielki Stożek (954m), the last half kilometer of climb being quite gruelling, even for our teenage daughters who had to rest every few minutes. Below: The hard climb starts here; even harder to descend. Note the border marker; I'm on the Polish side, the signs on the other side are in Czech.
At the top of Wielki Stożek (Velky Stoźek in Czech), there is a mountain shelter and restaurant, dating back to the 1920s. In the inner hall, there's a wall map (below) from communist days, notable for its depiction of our southern neighbours (CSSR - Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic) as a terra incognita - no towns, villages, roads, tourist tracks - nothing. Simple message: do not stray across the border. The shelter restaurant is good on mountain food - cabbage soup, pierogi, fried liver, mulled beer, hot chocolate with rum.
This time last year:
My father's house
Across the fields to Falenty
Sowing with as many oxen as he shall have yoked in the plough
It's Independence Day
Another new house for Jeziorki
An evening's stroll offered a taste of what was in store for the morning - a long walk into the Czech Republic. On 31 December this year, Poland and its two southern neighbours will join the Schengen countries and their mutual borders will effectively disappear - it will become like crossing from England into Wales. But today, there's still the frisson of excitement - will there be armed guards lurking behind the trees, like there are on the Polish-Belarusian or Polish Ukrainian borders? Will our documents be in order?
In the photo above, the border runs along the path. To the right of that post is the Czech Republic, to the left is Poland. The mountain in the distance is 
Aesthetically, the Czech incursion was a success. Walking through giant silent forests shrouded in dense mist put me in mind of primordial scenes; hundred-foot high Permian horsetails and three-foot dragonflies. Recent history is also interesting. I recalled a British TV drama about Czechoslovakian dissidents making their way to the West German border, getting across, being greeting by US soldiers and debriefed by the CIA - only to discover that it was all a set-up entrapment plot and that in reality they had not left Czechoslovakia at all...
With such thoughts in mind, we rambled on following the tourist tracks until we came across a very CSSR-type establishment, a village shop that was virtually unchanged since communist days (apart from the modern selection of confectionary on display and the shopkeeper's friendly manner). We stocked up on chocolate and wafers and headed back up the mountainside towards Poland, climbing onward and upward until we made the border as planned at Stożek Mały.
Once again, the border crossing point (below) was unmanned. Notices stated that from between 06:00 and 22:00, there should be an official present to ensure that locals crossing the border do not exceed their quotas of alcohol, tobacco or meat products, that their motorcycle engines do not exceed 50cc, or that their agricultural produce is only for local consumption. We were relieved that the booth was empty; in eight months time it will be history. 
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