Dylew Hills

A walk through the Dylew Hills is the most mountainous landscape you will find in Warmia and Masuria: moraine hills cut by ravines, beech forests and Dylewska Góra at 312 m above sea level — the highest elevation of north-eastern Poland. The whole area is protected as the Dylew Hills Landscape Park, and its fringes reach the vicinity of the Grunwald battlefield.

The roof of Warmia and Masuria

Dylewska Góra stands out with a prominence of 194 m — impressive proportions for a lowland. At the summit there is a wooden viewing tower; in good weather the panorama reaches as far as the Russian Kaliningrad region, although trees block the western and northern directions. About 150 m from the top rises a 37-metre concrete fire lookout tower of the State Forests, and 100 m further a glacial erratic lapidarium was laid out in 2015 — stones carried by the glacier from Scandinavia some 15 thousand years ago, each labelled with its place of origin.

Ravines, a lake and boulders

2 km from Dylewska Góra lies Lake Francuskie (Sałk) — a tiny nature-reserve pond of barely 3 ha, which legend says is named after French soldiers drowned here. In Glaznoty it is worth seeing the railway viaduct from the early 20th century, the grandest of the dozens of bridges on the rolling railway line, and the Krąg Kultur by the former Evangelical church — contemporary stone sculptures telling of Celts, Goths and Prussians. In Kraplew a historic half-timbered church awaits, usually open to visitors.

In practice

Convenient bases are Ostróda (17 km) and Olsztynek (23 km) with its open-air museum. The „Góra Dylewska” nature trail runs through the hills; the terrain is best covered on foot or by bike — the roads are narrow and the climbs steep.