Subich

Someone cut the year 1734 into the rock here, in Cyrillic numerals, forty metres above the Dnister. Twenty-five metres southwest of the caves another hand left a line of Church Slavonic — Boh Hospod yavysia nam, God the Lord has appeared to us — and inside there are small crosses scratched on the walls and two monkish signatures, KIV and KIYARIL. That is close to everything the Subich cave monastery says about itself. A parish priest, Yosyp Sulkovsky, was writing it up as early as 1887; the archaeology is still thin.

The village around it holds 291 people and sits where the Dnister swings through a long bend between limestone walls, the far bank already Chernivtsi oblast. Two things bring visitors: the cliffs, which people who have driven the whole river rate the best views between Kamianets and Bakota, and the monastery cut into them. Neither is signposted the way Bakota is, and that is much of the point.

Forty metres of limestone

The Subich rocks are a wall of limestone dropping straight to the water, part of the Podilski Tovtry and inside the national park, with natural platforms along the top that serve as viewing points. Tracks through the village lead to the main one; a second, a short way south, is better, and the people who come back use it. From either you get the bend of the river, the cliffs of the far bank, and Podillia running flat and open behind you.

Two seasons are worth planning around. In late autumn the slopes go red and gold along the whole gorge; in spring the fields inland turn yellow with rape, which does something odd and rather good to the colour of the view. Come early — by late morning at weekends there can be a queue for the main rock, and the light is better before them anyway.

Three chambers in Monastyryshche

The monastery occupies the hill called Monastyryshche and amounts to three small chambers. The first is natural, its arched mouth four metres wide and barely over a metre high. The second was cut by hand — 1.8 m high, 1.1 m wide, five rectangular icon niches still in the wall. The third is a niche with a portico, seventy metres northeast. Scholars date the built work to the 18th century, though monks are mentioned in these caves from the 16th, and a few argue the first cells go back much further.

Getting to them takes eight hundred metres of narrow path under the cliffs, past a spring the monks drank from, with a steep drop at the end that does the atmosphere no harm. Path and chapel are both recent and both local: a Subich man, the military doctor Mykola Semeniuk, cleared the route with a village schoolteacher and neighbours, put up the chapel at the forty-metre mark and raised the white cross that stands over the water. The Subich rock monastery is much the smaller of the two on this stretch of river; it and Bakota are often called brothers, this the younger.

The village itself

Subich is documented from the 15th century and had a priest of its own by 1578, and the built fabric has changed less than almost anywhere on this bank. Many houses are real mazanky, wattle and clay under whitewash, and most of those now stand empty. Fences and gates carry painted geometric patterns; some yards are guarded by stone posts shaped in a way that echoes the Zbruch Idol, the 9th-century figure pulled from the river Zbruch in 1848 — a southern Podillia habit you start noticing once someone points it out.

An old cemetery with worn stone crosses sits just before the village, and the shop doubles as a small museum. The lanes take half an hour, and people tend to remember them second, having come for the cliffs.

The road is the obstacle

Subich is roughly thirty kilometres from Kamianets-Podilskyi, near Bakota and Kytaihorod, and a car is effectively the only way in. From the Stara Ushytsia road there are about ten kilometres of poor surface, with the Subich turning on the right just before Kalachkivtsi. The worst of it is inside the village: broken in places, hard work for a low car after rain. The viewpoints and the monastery are at the far end, so you cross the whole of it. Without high clearance, budget extra time and expect to walk part of the way.

Nothing here is set up for you. Boots rather than trainers: the path to the caves is steep, the ground near the cliffs stony and slick. The edges are unfenced and the drop is sheer, which matters with children. No shop or café within reach either, so carry water and food, and take your rubbish out.

Where to sleep, and the rest of this stretch of river

Nobody stays in Subich; there is nothing to stay in. Bakota is the base for this corner of the Dnister — the drowned village and its own rock monastery, a bay to swim in, boats and paddleboards — and the beds around it are farmhouse rooms and private lets. For hotels proper you want Kamianets-Podilskyi, an hour away.

From that base Subich becomes half a day rather than an expedition. Kalachkivtsi is next door, on the meanders of the Studenytsia, which people compare to fjords with more enthusiasm than accuracy and which repay the detour anyway. Kytaihorod has the Ternava gorge, Kamianets the fortress. Strung together it makes a weekend, and Subich is the quietest thing on it.