A Riverside Stroll in Węgierska Górka – Summer by the Soła River

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It was one of those Central European summer days that can’t quite make up its mind: warm enough for short sleeves, yet coyly overcast, clouds sliding across the sky like stage curtains. Every so often, the sun would burst through, not unlike an impatient director shouting, “Now! Roll camera!” If you’ve ever tried to photograph shifting light, you’ll know the drill — adjust exposure, recompose, adjust again, wait for that fleeting glow to kiss the landscape, and then, click.

We — Dorota, Monty (our indefatigable Shih-Tzu scout), and I — spent the day tracing the riverside path in Węgierska Górka, a quietly charming town nestled in the Beskid Mountains of southern Poland. The Soła ran ahead of us like a ribbon of pewter, occasionally polished to silver whenever the light returned. Families strolled at an easy pace, cyclists coasted by with that summer-holiday lack of urgency, and anglers occupied patient stations along the shallows — community in motion, framed by mountains and pines.

There’s something about the Polish countryside in summer that resists haste. The rhythm of life seems to move at half speed, as though the land itself insists on being properly seen. The wooden bridges, the scent of pine resin, the faint hum of bees threading through wildflowers — all of it feels like a gentle reminder to slow down and look closer. For a photographer, it’s both a gift and a challenge: so much quiet beauty that one risks forgetting to lift the camera at all.

By late afternoon, the indecisive weather finally leaned towards generosity. The clouds broke open, sunlight poured over the valley, and the river caught fire with reflections. I stood for a long while, camera poised but unmoving, just watching light shift and shimmer — a fleeting conversation between sky and water. Moments like that are why we return to places such as this: not just to take photographs, but to listen to what the landscape has to say.

Some places remind you that peace doesn’t need to be sought — it simply flows beside you. Along the banks of the Soła in Węgierska Górka, time seemed to slow to the rhythm of the river, each ripple catching a glimmer of late-afternoon light. To see all the photographs from this quiet riverside escape, visit the full ‘Riverside Moments: Węgierska Górka – Soła’ gallery.