Category: Poland

On a lovely sunny day, a delightful, easy, flat ride through gentle countryside ending in one of Poland’s most vibrantly rebooted, and confusingly pronounced, cities. From woods to, well, Łódź. (Granted, that doesn’t really work if you don’t know Polish orthography.) I’m on my trekking bike for this trip. It was a clanky, heavy old…

I enjoyed my morning shower in the hostel just as much as I enjoyed the one last night. Not at all, in other words, as there was still no hot water. But warmed up by an Aldi pastry on the outskirts of town, I headed north out of Częstochowa along the busy 483 for the…

This was what most of today’s riding was like (pic), with the shared-use cycleways that ran officially or unofficially for most of the route. It was a day of railway station coffee, petrol station hot dogs, drippy woods, puddled roads and wet feet. At least heavy morning rain had meant I didn’t have to feel…

I’ve been to Kraków several times, so didn’t feel the need to sightsee: I was keen to get on the bike, especially as heavy storms were forecast for late afternoon. I even got a rather dramatic text message warning me of power outages, floods, and the inadvisability of sheltering under trees: it didn’t state the…

The promised day of sun and downhill proved one of drizzle and tedious climbs. Neither accuweather, nor the BBC website nor yr.no got the weather right. However, Polish TV seemed on the money (and I was pleased to see my rule of thumb vindicated: the worse the weather forecast, the more the presenter smiles, as…

A delightful day of local wildlife such as frogs (ish), storks (ish), dinosaurs (ish) and elephants (ish), fine scenery that could have come out of Scotland, and plenty of pleasant downhill riverside cycling. This was where I stayed last night (pic): a lovely, cosy little wooden chalet hostel in the woods on the edge of…

I found out last night that there’s a local bus for €3 from Poprad up to the Polish border (48km, 950m of climb) that takes bikes free, so a decision made itself. Eastern Europe seems pretty casual about bikes on things: there was no special area but nobody seemed concerned that a large amount of…

A day off in pleasant Poprad today, before the bike ride starts tomorrow. I spent it doing an easy but very scenic hike in the Tatras in the fine company of Dewi, my hostel inmate. These are the High Tatras (pic): 2650m peaks in a compact range just a few miles across, and conveniently accessed…

This post summarises the three weeks before starting the Polish End to End, making my way up from Albania by train and bike. I’d been planning the Polish E2E schedule when my friend Tim (who I cycled Taiwan with in 2017) proposed a get-together of friends in a villa in Montenegro to celebrate a special…