Queen Jadwiga Gorge

Loess is wind-blown silt laid down during the ice ages, and where it is thick it behaves in a specific way: it holds a vertical face without collapsing, so where water or a track cuts into it the result is a ravine with near-vertical walls and a flat floor. Sandomierz sits on a loess plateau riddled with these, and Waw Krolowej Jadwigi is the accessible one - about five hundred metres long, walls up to a dozen metres, with hornbeam and lime growing on the rim and their roots exposed and hanging down the faces where the soil has washed from under them. It is named for Queen Jadwiga, who by local tradition walked it to the Dominican church; the historical basis is thin. It is dim, green and cool, and it takes twenty minutes to walk through. The same loess under the town has produced an underground route of merchants' cellars that is the other Sandomierz attraction.

What you actually see

• Vertical loess walls - wind-blown silt holding a face where anything else would slump.
• Exposed roots - hornbeam and lime roots hanging where soil has washed from beneath.
• A five-hundred-metre cut - dim, green and cool, walked in twenty minutes.
• A thin legend - the queen's walk being tradition rather than record.

When to go

April to October; after rain the light through the leaves is best. An hour.

Honest expectations

The floor is muddy and the walls shed after rain. It is short - twenty minutes end to end. The name's story is not historically supported. It works as part of a Sandomierz visit rather than alone.

Nearby

Sandomierz old town and its underground route are east.