Developing professional cross - country skiing routes in the Góry Stołowe National Park as a trigger for the development of enterprise along the border of the Radków and Police communes
Although currently professional cross-country skiing in Poland is mainly associated with Jakuszyce, both Poles and Czechs will soon be more likely to choose Karłów near Radków in the Góry Stołowe range for recreational skiing with a beautiful landscape in the background. This is thanks to an INTERREG project.
After the huge success of Justyna Kowalczyk, the winner of the overall 2008-09 Cross-Country Skiing World Cup, the discipline is likely to grow in popularity. The municipality of Radków wanted to do something for its entrepreneurs and ordinary inhabitants. The town has always been a popular summer holiday destination (the Góry Stołowe, the Sanctuary in Wambierzyce) with a good choice of tourist accommodation options, but the place was rather forsaken in winter; until recently, the Góry Stołowe were only accessible in the summer.
‘We thought it would be a crying shame to keep on wasting this potential; and so, with the arrival of the INTERREG we began to look for foreign partners,’ says Tomasz Pawłowski the head of Cultural, Sports and Tourism Centre in Radków, and he then enumerates projects, completed or in progress, delivered within the scope of various programmes. The list is long: new cross-border tourist products, the building and modernization of roads and car parks near the border, establishment of a children’s ski-jumping section, a cycle race, a new open-air stage with a sound amplification system, equipment for a music and art section. Most of these initiatives have been run in partnership with the Czech Republic.
The willingness to co-operate with our southern neighbours is impressive. ‘After all we have a common interest: to revitalize our small towns and villages. Practically, there is no language barrier; it is only when we establish detailed specifications of the project or fill in the application for a bid that we resort to translation services,’ adds Mr Pawłowski.
Among the achievements of the project are the opening of well signposted cross-country skiing routes with a total length of 50 km (near the Czech border in the Góry Stołowe National Park), the construction of a new Tourist Information Centre building with rental of winter sports equipment (Karłowice) and the purchase of a snow groomer. All these make the region attractive for winter tourists as well. The Pablo* Cross-Country Race is now going to be a regular event. Local entrepreneurs from the tourist and catering businesses on both sides of the border are now kept busy also in winter.
*Franciszek Pablo to whom the race is dedicated was the first official guide in the Góry Stołowe.
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