Zapadnie doły

Zapadnie Doły in the Iłżecka Forest is a place that has been igniting the imagination of the inhabitants and visitors of this forest full of secrets for centuries.

It is here that the magnificent Maciek Oak has been growing for over 400 years. The circumference of its trunk is about 5 meters. What impresses the most, however, is the height of the tree, which reaches over 30 meters with its branches.

Maciek's impressive height may be due to the terrain - the tree took root in a significant depression in the ground, so it had to work hard to match the height of other trees to be able to fight for every ray of sunshine in the upper part of the forest.

The name of the wilderness is associated with a legend recorded by Jan Długosz, a 15th-century Polish chronicler. Well, in 1372 Polish lands were plagued by invasions of Lithuanians. After plundering the abbey on Łysa Góra, they made their way through the forest of Iłża towards the crossing on the Vistula.

Suddenly, the cart on which the Lithuanians were carrying the abducted relics stopped, and the horses could not take a single step forward. From then on, the Lithuanians began to be plagued by misfortunes, which ended only when they returned the relics to their rightful owners.

It is possible that the legend and the name "Zapadnie pits" came from the fact that the ground actually collapsed here as a result of numerous karst phenomena. They consist in the fact that water dissolves soft limestone rocks under a few meters of sandy soil.

This is how valleys, sinkholes, sinkholes and ... glooms are formed. These are mysterious places where water from periodic streams seems to disappear into imperceptible underground cracks.