Bieszczady Road Trip from Rzeszów: Łańcut, Sanok, the Połoniny and the Great Bieszczady Loop in 3 Days

The Bieszczady are the mountains in the far south-east corner of Poland, on the borders with Slovakia and Ukraine. Their highest ridges, up to Tarnica at 1,346 m, lie in Bieszczady National Park, created in 1973 and the third-largest national park in the country. This trip starts at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where car rental companies such as Enterprise and Sixt have desks inside the terminal. From there Sanok is about 95 km by road; from Kraków it is about 239 km, so starting in Rzeszów saves you some 290 km of motorway there and back. You see Łańcut and Sanok first, then drive the southern half of the Great Bieszczady Loop (Wielka Pętla Bieszczadzka) to Wetlina and Ustrzyki Górne, and come back over its eastern half through Ustrzyki Dolne and Lesko to Lake Solina. It makes about 435 km in three days.

The whole loop, from Lesko through Ustrzyki Górne and back, is about 150 km of mountain road. Poland has no vignette, and this route uses no toll motorway. Inside the national park you pay a small entry fee for each trail, and the park car parks are paid too.

Day 1 — Rzeszów-Jasionka, Łańcut and Sanok (109 km)

Pick up the car at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport and drive south-east to Łańcut Castle. Stanisław Lubomirski built it in 1629–1641, and the Lubomirski family and then the Potocki family owned it for more than three centuries. Its stylish interiors are famed for their unusual richness, and the former coach house and riding hall hold more than 100 horse-drawn vehicles. Every winter the castle, the stables, the coach house and several other exhibitions close for two months, from mid-November to mid-January; the park, the orchid house, the former orangery and the riding hall stay open.

Then drive south into the hills to Sanok, on the river San. The Museum of Folk Architecture, the town’s open-air museum (skansen), has more than 180 wooden buildings from the 17th to the 20th centuries: Boyko and Lemko cottages, churches, a manor house and a copy of a small-town square from Galicia. Inside the houses you go only with a guide. On the night of 15–16 August 2026 a fire destroyed the 17th-century wooden church from Bączal Dolny. The museum reopened on 20 August 2026, except the part of the site where the fire was. From 1 November to 31 March it is open from 9:00 to 14:00, and on Mondays from 8:00 to 12:00.

Above the old town stands Sanok Castle, built in 1523–1548 and enlarged at the command of Queen Bona. It is now the Historical Museum, and its south wing holds the Beksiński Gallery, opened in 2012. Zdzisław Beksiński was born in Sanok in 1929, and the museum inherited several thousand of his works, from photographs and drawings to paintings; you also see a copy of his Warsaw studio. Sleep in Sanok.

Day 2 — Turzańsk, Cisna and Wetlina to Ustrzyki Górne (110 km)

Drive south through Zagórz to Turzańsk. Its wooden tserkva of St Michael the Archangel was built in 1801–1803, with a bell tower from 1817, and has been Orthodox since 1963. It is one of 16 wooden tserkvas in Poland and Ukraine on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2013.

Continue past Komańcza to Majdan, just before Cisna, the station of the Bieszczady Forest Railway (Bieszczadzka Kolejka Leśna). The narrow-gauge line was built for timber and opened in 1898; since 1997 it has carried visitors. The trip from Majdan to Balnica and back takes about 2 hours, with a 30-minute stop. It runs only in the season: in October 2026 trains left at 9:30 from Tuesday to Friday, and at 9:30 and 12:00 at weekends, with no trains on Mondays. Check the timetable before you plan on it, especially in November and winter.

Then follow the loop road east to Wetlina and on to Brzegi Górne, where the paid national park car park sits between two of the park’s grassy ridges, the połoniny. To the west rises Połonina Wetlińska, a long ridge of open grass above the forest. On it stands Chatka Puchatka, built in 1952 as a military lookout and a mountain shelter since 1965. To the east is Połonina Caryńska. The quickest way onto Połonina Wetlińska is from the Wyżna pass, about an hour up. Pick one ridge: a climb and the drive fill the afternoon. Drive on to Ustrzyki Górne, where the park has its headquarters, and sleep there.

Day 3 — Smolnik, Ustrzyki Dolne, Lesko and Solina to Rzeszów-Jasionka (216 km)

Drive north on the loop road to Smolnik. Its wooden tserkva of St Michael the Archangel was finished in 1791 and is one of the few Boyko-style churches left in the Polish Bieszczady. After the Boyko villagers were forced out in 1951, it was used to store hay, and its painted walls were whitewashed. It was restored in 1969–73, is a Roman Catholic church today and is part of the same UNESCO site.

Continue through Lutowiska and Ustrzyki Dolne and down the valley to Lesko, where the loop begins and ends. From Lesko drive to the Solina Dam, which holds back Lake Solina, a reservoir of more than 22 km². The dam was built in the 1960s, is about 82 m high and about 664 m long, and you can walk along its top. Tours of the inside of the dam and the power station need a photo ID. Then drive back to Rzeszów-Jasionka.

Costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your dates. Poland has no vignette, and there are no tolls on this route: cars pay only on a few concession motorway sections, such as the A4 Katowice–Kraków, which you do not use from Rzeszów. In Bieszczady National Park, a one-day trail ticket costs 11 zł in 2026 (reduced 5.50 zł), and a car pays 30 zł a day at the park car parks in Brzegi Górne, Ustrzyki Górne and Wołosate. There is little internet coverage at Brzegi Górne, so buy the ticket online in advance. Budget for accommodation, fuel for about 435 km, car rental, and tickets for Łańcut Castle, the Museum of Folk Architecture, the Historical Museum in Sanok (30 zł from May 2026), the forest railway and the inside of the Solina Dam. Poland has no law requiring winter tyres, only a minimum tread of 1.6 mm, but they are the sensible choice here from November. In winter, trails on the połoniny can be closed for ice, snowstorms or avalanche risk; the park posts closures on its website.

This trip is also in the free Roadcut trip planner: change the number of days and where you sleep each night, pick your vehicle to see the fuel cost, check the weather on the road, and open each day in Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze.