Bicycle trip along the Manors and Palaces of Northern Kashuby (day 1)

Thematic cultural trail

Trail “Manors and palaces of northern Kashuby”

was created primarily with cyclists in mind, but for several years it has also successfully served hikers and motorists, or simply those who want to relax in a quiet place with a historical accent. There are about fifty places with a manorial character in this area.

All palace and manor buildings along the Pomorskie route can be divided into four groups:

• The first group includes well-kept, renovated buildings housing accommodation facilities, hotels or agritourism farms.
• The second are places adapted as company headquarters or residential buildings by private or state owners.
• The third are public places, usually related to culture and education.
• The last, fourth group are, unfortunately, places that are deteriorating and often give the impression that they were abandoned by the last owner.

Thanks to the diversity of functions, the different states of maintenance of individual objects, as well as their different histories and even architectural values, the trail is intriguing and tells a different chapter of the history of Kashubian families in each subsequent place visited, each time leaving a different reflection in the tourist who visits it. If we only assess the distance between Kashubian manors and palaces, only two or three days will be enough to stay in northern Kashuby. However, if you want to take a closer look at the places you visit, you can plan a stay in this original seaside land of up to two weeks.

CHECK OUT OTHER ATTRACTIONS IN WEJHEROWO

The best place to start and end the trip is Wejherowo – due to easy access by regional trains and the Fast Tri City Train, but also due to the ease of finding a place to park your car. It is worth using a short stay in the city to see the well-kept, green market square in Wejherowo and go to the nearby palace of the Przebendowski and Keyserling family.

The beautifully arranged City Park is adjacent to the Wejherowo palace, which houses the Kashuby-Pomorskie Writing and Music Museum. Aleksander Majkowski, and with him the famous Wejherowo Calvary.

The first part of the trip already gives a positive feeling about traveling around northern Kashuby. This is a joint route with the Reda-Reba Valley trail, starting at the outskirts of Wejherowo near the Specialist Hospital named after Floriana Ceynowa and ending before Orle. A gently undulating, beaten forest road saves us from driving through the urban area of Wejherowo. The distance between the forest trail and the railway station or the beautiful Wejherowo market square is less than one and a half kilometers.

The most impressive palaces in northern Kashuby include the current property of the Orlex development company from Wejherowo – the palace in Chynow, one of the first buildings to which the manor-palace route leads. Built in the XVIIIth century by the von Rexin family, whose name appears in the history of many buildings in the area, it is currently one of the palace gems of the region. Around the main building there are also restored old farm buildings and one of the largest local palace parks with a landscape character. Even though it is a private facility, it can be viewed quite comfortably from the road running next to it.

Selected owners of Kashubian palaces and manors willingly show how their properties have changed after the renovations they carried out. In the manor house in Lisewo, which is currently an accommodation facility, you can see an album showing the condition in which the new owner took over the manor house. Turning the pages, it is hard to believe that these attractive objects, which are part of the history of Kashuby, have been reduced to such ruin.

A charming landmark of the trail is a small manor house on Salino Lake in Salino. Its unique rural image is given by its characteristic shape with alcoves (protruding rooms at the ends of the building) with a mansard roof and a half-timbered (skeleton) structure. Today, the building situated by the lake is privately owned and operates an agritourism farm. It was built in the XVIIth/XVIIIth century by the then owners of the village, the von Rexin family, originating from the Slupsk region, which included soldiers serving in the army of King Augustus II the Strong. Salino is among the oldest known locations in Pomorskie thanks to the Xth-XIth century stronghold that existed on an island in the lake. In the XIVth century, the village belonged to the oldest hospital in Gdansk –  the Holy Spirit Hospital.

Hel Peninsula by bike

The object located furthest from Wejherowo is the palace in Sasin, which can be the destination of the first day of the tour along the palace trail. Currently being renovated, it will soon be available to tourists again – today you can only look at it through the lens of a drone. While many Kashubian manors in their post-war history were the seats of state farms or agricultural cooperatives, the palace in Sasin served Red Army soldiers for three years after World War II, which resulted in the devastation of the palace rooms and farm buildings.

See also: Bicycle tour of the Manors and Palaces of Northern Kashubia (day 2)​

See also: Bicycle tour of the Manors and Palaces of Northern Kashubia (day 3)​

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