The best cycling routes around Dam Starina

It's better to go down than up

The Greek Catholic wooden church in the village of Kalná Roztoka was built in 1750. It is dedicated to the feast of the Nativity of the venerable and famous prophet of the Lord, the forerunner and baptist John. The wooden temple in Klaná Roztok was built in log style. The temple consists of a sanctuary, nave and vestibule. The vestibule has a tower with a dome and a three-armed cross. The shrine has a three-armed cross on its roof. The temple tower and the temple roof are covered with wooden shingles. This temple is unique in that its wooden walls are plastered inside and out and painted with lime in an attempt to protect the temple from adverse weather.

Wooden church of St. Michael the Archangel was built at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in the village of Topoľa. The temple of a log structure on a stone foundation is built on a slope and is surrounded by a cemetery. The three-room wooden church once stood at the lower end of the village, but in 1780 it was moved above the village of Topoľa, from where there is a beautiful view of the surroundings. The wooden temple has a massive roof in the shape of a truncated pyramid and has only one tower with a three-armed cross. The church bells are currently located in the brick church. The iconostasis from the middle of the 18th century is extremely valuable. It has a four-row architecture and a variety of colors. Part of the area is an empty wooden belfry, which was built in the 20th century. In the vicinity of the church there is a military cemetery that was established in 1917. 240 soldiers of the 44th Infantry Division of General Ziegler's 2nd Austro-Hungarian Army are buried in the cemetery.

Approximately 200-300 m of asphalt exit to the Slovak side. Then a road paved with flat stones begins

The cycle path ends before Snina. Here you can cross the river

Ruské (until 1927 Slovak Ruská; Hungarian Zemplénoroszi - until 1907 Oroszruszka)[1] is a former village in Okres Snina (Prešovský kraj) and today a cadastral municipality of Stakčín in eastern Slovakia. It is located in the Bukovské vrchy Mountains below the main Carpathian ridge in the source area of the Cirocha River and near the state border with Poland. The former town center lies at an altitude of 486 m above sea level, the distance to Snina is about 26 kilometers. The Pľaša National Nature Reserve extends to the east of the town,[2] the cadastral municipality as such lies entirely in the Poloniny National Park. The end of the town came with the construction of the Starina reservoir on the Cirocha further downstream in the 1980s. Although it was far from the flooded area, an extensive drinking water protection area meant that all villages in the upper Cirocha valley, including Ruské, had to be evacuated. In 1986, the displaced village was incorporated into Stakčín. Today, only the municipal cemetery, the military cemetery from the First World War, a chapel on the site of the demolished church from 1789 and three houses stand on the site of the former village. A stone road from 1861, the so-called Porta Rusica, leads to the Ruské sedlo saddle on the border with Poland.[5]

Porta Rusica stone road On the cadastral area of the former village of Ruské, in the area of the Starina reservoir, there is the Porta Rusica stone road, which has been declared a cultural monument. This road was built between 1861 and 1865 and originally led from Michalowiece through the Russian border crossing Sattel to the Polish town of Baligród, from where it probably continued to Lviv. The Porta Rusica stone road thus connected Hungary with Lesser Poland. It is the only road that has survived from this period in the territory of Slovakia. The Porta Rusica stone road is still preserved today on a section with a length of 4 km, with 16 bends and a height of 247 m. On the Polish side, it is only a short section, about 200 m long. Porta Rusica is also part of the tourist border crossing with Poland - Osadné - Balnica.

Starina (Slovak: Vodná nádrž Starina) is a reservoir in north-eastern Slovakia, north of the town of Stakčín in the Carpathian Mountains. The reservoir is located on the Cirocha River within the Poloniny National Park and was developed between 1981 and 1988. It has a surface area of 311 hectares and a capacity of 59.8 million m³ of water[1] and is an important water reservoir for eastern Slovakia, mainly for the cities of Prešov and Košice. The long-distance water pipeline is 134.5 kilometers long. Most of the town of Starina - today still part of Stakčín - was flooded as a result of the dam construction. Starina gave the reservoir its name. The six villages located above the reservoir - Dara, Ostružnica, Smolník, Ruské, Veľká Poľana and Zvala - were designated as drinking water protection areas and were therefore also depopulated. A total of 3,463 residents were relocated and 769 houses demolished.