Metravel city quest
City Yelnya Bog (Miory District): free walking route “Yelnya Bog Quest: Bells from the Quagmire” along the sights. 6 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests and
There is a place in Belarus that is older than the Egyptian pyramids. Yelnya Bog began to grow after the last glacier retreated: it is about nine thousand years old, and all this time it has lived its own separate, slow life. Today it is the largest raised bog in the country and one of the biggest raised-bog massifs in Europe: 25 301 hectares, an area more than twice the size of Paris, with 118 lakes hidden inside it. The nature reserve here was established on 18 November 1968, and since 2002 Yelnya has been a Ramsar site, that is, a wetland of international importance for which the country answers to the whole world.
But people from the surrounding villages told a different story about Yelnya for centuries. That a church once stood at the edge of the bog and one day sank into the quagmire whole, with its cross and bells, and since then in still weather a muffled bell ringing can be heard from under the ground. That ozernitsas live in the window-lakes: water maidens who comb their hair at sunset and lure travelers off the path. That on Kupala night, somewhere deep in the bog, the paparats-kvetka (fern flower) blooms, and whoever finds it will understand the language of birds and beasts. And also that the bog knows how to hide: in dark times whole villages went into it, and no stranger could find the secret trails through the swamp.
Today you will not need secret trails. An honest path has been laid across the bog for people: the Ozeravki-Yelnya eco-trail, the longest and widest in Belarus, a kilometer and a half of boardwalk across the open swamp to a nameless little lake. Along the way there is a tower from which the bog can be seen to the horizon, a crooked “drunken forest” and those very window-lakes. In autumn thousands of cranes cry above Yelnya, in season people rent bog-walking shoes here and go off to pick cranberries, but our route works at any time of year.
Remember one rule like a spell: do not step off the boardwalk. Not one step, not for a beautiful shot, not for a berry. What looks like a smooth green meadow is a floating carpet of moss over water and silt, and the legends of a bog that “does not let go” did not grow out of nothing. Keep to the path, and Yelnya will show you everything itself.
How to get there: from Miory it is about 10 kilometers to the village of Konakhi, then the reserve’s signs lead to a parking area at the edge of the bog, and from it it is about half a kilometer along a field track to the start of the boardwalk. Press “Start quest” and listen: will it ring beneath your feet?
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Here it is, the border between two worlds. Behind you is an ordinary forest on solid ground, shelters with a table, the reserve’s information stand.
A few steps from the start of the trail stands an observation tower; climb it before you head deep into the bog.
Walk deeper along the boardwalk and look at what is happening to the forest on both sides. The trees here seem bewitched: crooked, twisted, leaning in different directions, and some are real dwarfs.
About halfway along, the path offers a chance to rest: beside the boardwalk stands an information stand about the bog’s inhabitants. Stop here; this is the place for the most serious of the local stories.
Further along the path the bog begins to open its eyes. On both sides of the boardwalk, windows of water glint ever more often in the carpet of moss: ozeravki, small bog lakes.
And now the boardwalk takes its last steps and ends at a small lake. It has no name, on maps it is just one of many bog windows, but it is to this lake that the whole path has run a kilometer and a half across the swamp.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.