When we set out to put together a Slowhop guide to the area around Poznań, we had to decide where exactly to draw the line. It quickly became obvious that we could not leave out the Lubusz Lake District, with its deep forests, its many lakes, the beautiful spot where the Warta flows into the Oder and its small family vineyards. It is the distilled version of what you love most: doing very little, a long way from the noise.
Monks started growing vines here in the middle of the 12th century. Today the Lubusz region has more than 50 vineyards covering 170 hectares (about 420 acres), which makes it, with Zielona Góra at its centre, the biggest wine-producing area in Poland.
Ride the Lubusz Wine and Honey Trail and try the local Regent, Saint Laurent or Pinot Noir, all of which are very good. Do ring ahead to arrange a visit or a tasting.
The hosts at Pod Lubuskim Słońcem will set up a picnic for you. You lie in the quiet among the vines, drink wine and work your way through a plate of local cheese. If you want something more polished, there is the vineyard at Pałac Wiechlice, which also has a smart restaurant serving Polish cooking at its best. Anyone serious about wine should come in autumn for the harvest and the cheerful feasts put on by Winnica Łukasz.
And if what you really want is to stay in a working vineyard and watch its steady daily rhythm up close, go to Marlena and Paweł at Winnica Stara Szkoła in Karczewek.
The Lubusz Lake District is known for some of the loveliest paddling routes in Poland. For an unhurried day out that suits just about anyone, we suggest the Paklica, which combines nature and history beautifully.
You start by drifting slowly through meadows. Then come a few bends near a blown-up bunker belonging to the Międzyrzecz Fortified Region. On Lake Paklicko Wielkie, stop for a swim at one of the wild beaches. At the very end, the towers of the Cistercian abbey at Gościkowo-Paradyż appear out of nowhere in the middle of the forest. After all that paddling, rest in the monastery gardens.
Birdwatching is apparently one of Gen Z's favourite pastimes, a generation tired of consumption, social media and the arrival of AI. How does this sound: a few hours tucked into a tower above the floodplain, watching skeins of geese? A white-tailed eagle circling for prey, and the call of a thousand cranes? No phone. Nothing to say. Nowhere to hurry to and nothing to struggle with, just giving yourself over completely to what is happening in the sky? Get yourself a Bird Republic passport and get to Warta Mouth National Park before it gets as crowded as Venice in August.
Muskau Park was the fantasy of the extravagant Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, who imagined the largest English landscape park in this part of Europe, with trees and shrubs shifting through colours in every season. The idea bankrupted him, but the dream was finished in the end, and it is still here for us to look at.
The Neisse river runs through the middle, splitting the park between Germany and Poland. A bike is the best way to see both halves, because the whole thing covers 728 hectares (about 1,800 acres). Spread a blanket on the immaculate lawns and picnic with a view of a fairy-tale castle. Bad Muskau, the charming town on the German side, is worth a look too.
Łagów, set between two lakes, hosts the oldest feature film festival in Poland, the Lubusz Film Summer. There is no red carpet here, no glamour and no camera flashes. What you get instead is interesting, ambitious cinema from central and eastern Europe that never reaches the streaming services.
At the start of every summer there is an amphitheatre, the smell of the forest, an international crowd and long conversations with the filmmakers about what actually matters. Łagów itself is a lovely little town, and a favourite of Czesław Niemen, one of Poland's greatest singers. Between screenings, locals suggest dropping into Cafe Stolarnia for apple cake made with fruit straight from the orchard, and hollyhock tea.
Kalina and Artur Kubiak are the hosts at art-Młyn in Wystok, which National Geographic named one of the 12 best farm stays in Poland in 2025. Their mill stands at the edge of the forest on the river Ilanka, which you can see and hear from almost every window. The nearest neighbours are roe deer, beavers, red deer and, of course, birds. The Ilanka valley is a nature reserve and a Natura 2000 site. Inside the house are tapestries and paintings by Kalina, who trained in the studio of the sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz at the University of the Arts in Poznań.
The hosts recommend the places in the region they happily go back to themselves. The first is the Pompeii of Kostrzyn: the ruins of the old town and the fortress. Over a few days at the end of the Second World War, both were destroyed completely. You can read their history straight off the ground, in stretches of tram track, scraps of glazed tile in the ruins of the Renaissance castle, and a lone wooden cross standing where the church used to be. The new town grew up next door, at the point where the Warta comes in, which means Kostrzyn nad Odrą, "Kostrzyn on the Oder", actually sits on the Warta.
The second is the Zagroda Młyńska museum in Bogdaniec: a restored half-timbered mill with a working wheel, a reconstruction of the miller's home from around 1900, and an old orchard with beehives and a bread oven.
The third, at the luxurious end, is Pałac Mierzęcin, with its Grape SPA, vineyard, park and farm buildings, which are what gave Kalina and Artur the idea for their own veranda.
"We are always fixing or building something here to make the place a little better," Kalina laughs. "We get out around the area far too rarely. Often it is our guests who tell us their stories, and we end up discovering the Lubusz Lake District all over again with them."
If you dream of growing things on a patch of land of your own and have no idea where to start, Kalina will point you to Anielskie Ogrody. It is an inventive organic smallholding run by Kamila and Bogdan Kasperski. In summer, ring ahead and arrange a time and they will show you round the place. They will explain how to grow good food, show you the raised beds and the dome greenhouses and all the clever solutions that make a gardener's life easier. Over herb tea and homemade cake, you can plan the better world we might leave behind us.
