Kamianets — Bakota — Kamianets

I 🚲 near Kamianets-Podilsky with 🚲🚲🚲 friends.

Having stumbled upon a well-known Kyiv cyclist near the ️🚂, one of us had shown our route to her, asking whether she could recommend adding something. She had chosen the following answer:

The guy returned to us and shortened her answer to this: «Ann said that...

...»

He used an obscene word, but my parents can be reading this.

We started early in the next morning and 🚲🚲🚲🚲 to the Ustya village. It had unexpectedly terrific scenery.

We made a turn to Tarasivka.

The road there was awful, we descended it and lived — no one fell or punctured.

There was a gravel uphill right after that, and it became clear what to expect during the day:

We passed through Bahovytsia and Stanyslavivka.

Got close to the first water obstacle of Ternava river.

The downhill to which turned out to be one of the craziest things I did in my life.

On my rigid gravel 🚲, I did not fall or break the 🚲 on these granite shards, but got a scar from an acacia thorn.

There was a 🌉, so the crossing was not crazy whatsoever, but the road to that 🌉 was soggy silt due to two weeks of 🌧️.

Then we tasted the first steep non-rideable uphill to one of the most picturesque places of Ukraine — the Ternava river bend near Kytayhorod village.

The sceneries were all kinds of magnificent, making us use a lot of strong words as we proceeded through the day.

You are welcome to come there and try not to swear looking at that nature.

The route went down without any flat road. The downhill was bushes and high grass.

And it led us to the beautiful

bedrock stream called Okun

We crossed this stream, but I would not call it a ford. It was so damn beautiful. It was shallow, so I did not even take my road shoes off.

Sadly, we had to leave this place, and go up another non-rideable path, so steep that nobody even thought of trying to pedal.

What was in the end of the climb, one may ask.

It was a field of summer squash or green zucchini, flat, but not rideable.

So, more hiking bikes ensued. No path was present, only the direction.

Soon, having passed Demshyn, we reached Subych.

Just a village, nothing special. Why did he make that turn?

Oh, okay, he went to this another magnificent place.

The next point of water stock replenishment was Kalachkivtsi, from where we had to keep ourselves from going over the bars on a very steep grassy downhill to Studenytsya river.

We had to cross the ford at Studenytsya. The flowing waters were beautiful and refreshing.

Only to hike bikes on another steep bastard of a road.

It had 160 vertical meters in it. We left a liter of water there as sweat — each.

We were blessed to pass by a water well in Kolodiivka, and each of us had poured a bucket of cold water just over the clothes.

It got dry sooner than we had left the village.

The characteristics of our Kolodiivka exit were the same:

The Bakota bay was not far away now. It turned out to be way less interesting than the route we took to reach it.

The water was warm and had debris floating all over the surface.

We swam and washed the multilayered dirt off our bikes.

The road back was different.

We raced using our emptied legs, the podium being whatever eatery still operational this late.

We are forever thankful to that restaurant that was still working at 22:00.

We rendered our plates as clean as only hungry cyclists can make them, and then we took a couple pizzas with us.

We had plans to ride in another similar place the next day.

That plan was unanimously sent to hell, replaced by an easy ride to the Khotyn fortress and back — to eat and drink in randomly selected places.

This new plan was executed well enough.

We had strong respect to the 🚲🚲🚲🚲, which survived all the battering with zero issues! Dear sponsors, write me up, I'll name the bikes! Have to feed the family, huh.

It was one of the best days in my life