Baidar Valley is one of the most beautiful places in Crimea, located in a natural amphitheater — surrounded by mountains on all sides. The height of the valley is about 260 meters above sea level, length 16 km, width up to 8 km.
The Chernaya River flowing through the valley was blocked by a dam before entering the Chernorechenskaya Gorge. The result was Chernorechenskoe reservoir, which feeds fresh water to Sevastopol and Foros. In especially dry years, there is not enough water in the reservoir, and then an artificial canal with Dnieper water comes to Sevastopol’s aid.
Each era has left its trace in Baidary: menhirs with a thousand-year history, standing at the entrance to the village Rodnikovoye, the famous unique Skelskaya cave, and dolmens in the village of Novobobrovskoye, Baidarskie Gates Pass with the beautiful Foros Church (Church of the Resurrection of Christ), and the famous Devil’s Staircase.
And in addition to this there is also an amazing beauty Uzundzhi Canyon (Rodnikovoye village), and a spring in the village of Orlin (mentioned by Pushkin), and roads paved by Roman legionaries about two thousand years ago.
And what is worth the protected Chernorechenskij canyon, which the Black River broke through, breaking through to the sea or its antipode, a miniature canyon near the village of Baga (Novobobrovskoye). The lovely waterfall Kozyrek and the waterfall on the ancient pass road.
Behind the dry phrases lies a valley of insane beauty, through which in the recent past passed the only possible roads from the steppe Crimea to the South Coast of Crimea. In times immemorial, these were numerous hunting trails, which were later replaced by roads for trade caravans. A little later it was the famous ancient Roman «Kalenda Trail», which ran from the village of Podgornoye (former Kalenda) through the «Devil’s Staircase» to Mukholatka and connected the two fortresses of Chersonesos and Kharax on Cape Ai-Todor.
In the XVIII century, the Sevastopol-Yalta road was built through the mountain pass of the main ridge of the Crimean Mountains — Baidar Gate, leading from the Baidar Valley (called the Crimean Switzerland) to the South Coast of Crimea. This old highway was built in 1837 — 1848 on the initiative of Count Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov, the Governor-General of the Novorossiysk region. The Baidar Gate Pass or simply Baidar Pass is located between Mount Chelebi (657 m) in the west and Chhu-Bair (705 m) in the east. The height of the pass is 503 meters above sea level.
Baidar Gate is an architectural monument. It was built in 1848 according to the project of Yalta architect Karl Ivanovich Eshliman in honor of the end of the construction of the highway Yalta — Sevastopol. The propylaea gate is a massive portico made of blocks of local limestone with a complex cornice, flanked by semi-columns and covered with an entablature. To the right and left of the portico are rectangular pedestals made of the same material, giving monumentality to the classical model of the structure. In the right bollard there is a room (about 30 square meters). A flight of stairs leads to two viewpoints at the top of the propylaea. These vantage points offer a panoramic view of the village of Foros and the Baidarskaya Valley.
And only in 1974 a new highway appeared through the Laspi tract.
The most famous monument of primitive man in the vicinity of Sevastopol is here, in the center of Baidarskaya valley, in the village Rodnikovoye (former Skeli). Cult astronomical constructions of the Stone Age — Skel menhirs, vertically placed stone blocks in the form of obelisks — are the oldest example of conscious human construction activity, the first example of architecture. If other archaeological monuments are scattered in the Baidar valley and surrounding mountains (cave sites, remains of ancient settlements, burial grounds), then the menhirs of the Skelski menhirs are not only easy to find and examine, but you can even touch them with your hand, mentally transported to the frightening abyss of bygone centuries. They stand right at the entrance to the village of Rodnikovoye near the first house (this is the village club).
There are two menhirs, they are monolithic blocks of marble-like limestone covered with cracks, mosses or lichens. The largest one rises 2.8 meters, with the dimensions of the average cross-section of 1 m by 0.7 m, it is quite slender, approaching the type of a modern obelisk. The second one is massive and squat, its height is almost twice less, about one and a half meters, with a width of 1.2 m and thickness of 0.55 m.
Menhirs were described by the famous archaeologist N.I. Repnikov in 1907, he also reported their local name — «Tekli-Tash» (in Turkic — «placed stone»). But in his time there were not two, but three. The third was a fragment of a menhir, only 0.88 m high (in cross-section 0.77 m x 0.55 m). It was excavated in the 60s of our century during the laying of a water pipeline. A simple calculation shows that the weight of the largest menhir is about six tons.
There is nothing like a quarry nearby — it was delivered from the mountains and, apparently, from afar.
These places are wrapped in legends and history. People have settled in the Baidar Valley since time immemorial. There are remains of ancient settlements, cave sites, ancient burial grounds. Here lived Karaites and Scythians, Romans and Goths, Taurians and Greeks. Traces of their stay can still be found in the valley. The old names of villages (Ukrusta, Baga, Savatka, Sahtik, Haito, etc.) of the valley are mostly untranslatable and do not belong to any of the known languages. It is clear that they were inherited from the peoples who lived here in very remote times. This is the memory of some «fore-language», possibly Taurian, and maybe even more ancient.
The climate of Baidar is ambiguous. Sometimes clouds coming from the north could not overcome the Outer Ridge and hovered over the valley for a long time, bringing moisture with them. Sometimes in summer, when the temperature on the southern coast of Crimea over +30, in Baidary was about +15. This climate, in the recent past, allowed to grow a huge amount of vegetables in Baidary. And in Soviet times, excellent varieties of tobacco were grown in the Baidarsky collective farm.
You can see the whole valley by a ring road, which starts in Orlinoye and, passing around the reservoir, returns to Orlinoye through Peredovoye and Shirokoye.
And I think that Baidary will captivate you with its beauty and will make you come here again and again. Maybe in some of your visits you will walk along the «Kalendskaya path» to Chertova lestnica.