Days 23-25 – The Not So Harsh Polish Winter: Görlitz to Wrocław

Days 23-25 – The Not So Harsh Polish Winter: Görlitz to Wrocław

Tuesday January 27, 2015, 178 km (111 miles) – Total so far: 2,067 km (1,285 miles)

Day 23: Görlitz to Woods outside Prusice – 92.8km

After the big effort of yesterday I really struggled to get out of bed and pack up the bike. Still feeling sleepy I stepped outside into the rain which woke me up pretty quickly. At least it was good for one thing. I walked my bike along the cobbles through the old town. I had only found out the night before that the old town was used as the main shooting location in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (if you haven’t seen it before it is well worth a watch.) As I walked around I could see why they chose this location, the old cobble streets and grand architecture were the perfect setting.

Once out the other side of the old town and back onto tarmac I cycled a couple of hundred metres to the bridge which marked the border between Germany and Poland. I propped the bike up against the border post for a quick photo before making my way to one of the exchange booths and switching my Euros to the Polish currency, the Zloty.

Once this was sorted I got on the bike and set off on my journey to cross Poland. The change between Germany and Poland was noticeable immediately. The cars were a lot older here and in worse repair than Germany and there were a lot of large grim apartment blocks here which were a rare sight in the towns I passed through in Germany. It’s amazing the way things like this can change so quickly right after you cross the border.

I made my way out of the first town and ended up on a main road heading north. This road joined up with the motorway in a couple of kilometres. Therefore the traffic consisted mainly of fast moving trucks, my favourite! The rain was really teeming it down and with the trucks passing by me quite close at speed it was a fairly miserable start to Poland. It reminded me a lot of my start in France, at least I didn’t have any strong winds to deal with on this occasion.

I passed the turn off to the motorway and expected a lot of the trucks to turn off here but a large proportion of them were continuing straight on along the road I was aiming for. Things weren’t getting any less miserable so I turned off into a petrol station here and decided to shelter from the rain for a while. I was soaked through already and starting to get pretty cold. I waited here a while but the rain wasn’t letting up so I just got on with it. The next kilometre or two was pretty bad, I was getting covered in the spray of the trucks as they flew by me. Luckily though after this a lot of the trucks vanished into a service station (which must have better prices due to being a bit further from the motorway) and the road got much quieter.
I continued along this road for a good 40 kilometres, the traffic was a bit manic so I cut onto back roads at the first chance I had. These were much nicer and I was able to relax as I passed through small villages. The road surface wasn’t great in places but it was a minor price to pay to be away from the main road to Wroclaw.

As the day drew on I had to start thinking about where to spend the night. Surprisingly after crossing the border from Germany I had seen barely any snow. In addition to this the temperature wasn’t bad at all, hovering between 3 and 4 degrees all day. These two factors meant that wild camping was on again. Checking the map I noticed that there were some woods only a kilometre or two off my route on a minor road after the village of Prusice.

Before I got to Prusice I stopped off in a shop in the last major town to get some food for the night. This shop had all of its items behind the counter, this is the way most stores are set up in Eastern Europe. Seeing as I didn’t know any Polish I had to point at what I wanted and then hold my fingers up to say how many I wanted. Through this process I managed to get some bread and ham (my usual dinner these days) and some snacks.

Unfortunately for me I had forgotten to learn the basic Polish words (please, thank you, goodbye etc.) The only word that I knew was Hi. This meant that in this interaction (and in several more interactions with other cashiers in shops/petrol stations throughout the day) I came across as pretty rude. Whenever I went to pay I would say Czesc (Hi) but would then remain completely silent. When they handed me my money back I couldn’t say Thanks, I just had to look at them in silence. And when I was leaving I couldn’t say goodbye either so I would have to walk away in silence. Sometimes they would say goodbye to me but I never quite caught how they said it so I would just have to walk away and leave saying nothing. I’d say I came across as a right ignorant bollix! I’d have to make sure to learn these words once I got to Wroclaw to avoid any more awkward scenarios like this!

It ended up getting dark quite early so I had to switch on my lights as I left the back road I was on to reach the village of Prusice. Once here it was only a short cycle to the woods. The woods were set on some steepish hills so I had to do a bit of looking around until I found an okay spot. Unfortunately for me it lay up a very muddy track. Usually when making a dash off the road so that traffic won’t see me it only takes a couple of seconds until you’re out of sight, here it took a good minute. When I got a gap in the traffic I had to sprint up the muddy track pushing my bike which was getting clogged up with mud. With a bit of effort I got there and set up my tent in the darkness.

Day 24: Woods outside Prusice to Wroclaw – 85.2km

I ended up having a pretty bad night’s sleep. Due to the cold and the slope I was camping on (which was causing me to slide towards the bottom of the tent!) I kept waking up every hour. Due to this and the fact that I had an easy day ahead of me I decided to have a bit of a lie-in in the morning.

With it starting to get quite late I finally emerged from my cocoon and started packing everything up. It was 3 to 4 degrees outside so nothing too bad but my hands still gave up on me packing up the tent. I had to do the usual routine of warming them periodically before taking another part of the tent down/packing it away. Due to all of this it was 11:30 before I was all ready to go and on the road again. It looked like I would have to push hard to make Wroclaw before dark as it still lay 85km away.

I had a good bit of downhill to start with so it wasn’t too long until I reached the small town of Jawor. The only thing that slowed me down was the amount of mud on my tyres and wedged in my mudguards from the muddy track I had to walk the bike back down. It took a bit of work but I finally got rid of most of it which allowed the wheels to roll freely.

I stocked up on some snacks in Jawor before following more back roads out of town. My main snack so far in Poland was the chocolate croissant. This is essentially the Polish version of the Pain Au Chocolat. It is a croissant with Nutella stuffed inside it and is sold in virtually every shop in the country. These were the perfect fuel for cycling so I was packing them away worryingly fast during my two days from Gorlitz to Wroclaw.

These back roads brought me through small Polish villages. These were always empty and very quiet except for the dogs, the dogs were very loud. They were always locked in a garden luckily so they couldn’t get at me. In some villages a dog would run after me along the inside of the garden fence until he reached the boundary between that garden and the next. At that point another dog would be waiting in that garden and he would take up the chase until he reached the end of his fence. It was kind of like a movie reel!

Another thing that stood out about these villages was the quality of the roads. Nearly every village was full of potholes which took a lot of maneuvering to avoid. Progress was significantly slower on the back roads of Poland compared to other countries due to this.

I was making good progress due to a huge tailwind which was behind me so I was able to motor along at 25km/h when the road surface was of decent quality. Even with this tailwind though I was still under pressure to reach Wroclaw before dark. In addition to this my left knee was complaining a bit from all the hard cycling. The outside of the knee had been causing me some pain on the longer more intensive days of cycling. Today was the worst it had been so far which was probably caused by the lack of a day off the bike since Luxembourg. I did my best to ignore it though and just pushed on with the task at hand.

I arrived into the outskirts of Wroclaw just as it was getting dark. I had forgotten to take down the address of the hostel I was hoping to leave my bike at so I had to look for some Wifi. There was a McDonalds located on the way into the city so I rather sneakily cycled over to the side of it and connected to the Wifi network from outside. I was able to take down the location of the hostel here and sneak off, a bit cheeky but it had to be done.

There were good cycle lanes most of the way into Wroclaw so it was no problem cycling into the city in the dark. I arrived at the hostel in the city centre and asked if I could leave my bike there for the night. My plan was to take a rest day tomorrow. I had been planning to visit the city of Łódź for a while (which lies a good bit north of my route through Poland) so I planned to leave my bike in Wroclaw and take a bus north from here this evening and spend the night and the next day around Łódź before getting the bus back to Wroclaw and staying at the hostel where I had left my bike.

With this all set I left for Wroclaw bus station. I had brought along an Ortlieb pannier backpack adapter with me on the trip which allowed me to convert one of my panniers into a backpack. I looked absolutely ridiculous walking around with a bright red PVC pannier on my back. I was okay with looking like a bit of an eejit though as it made getting around a hell of a lot easier.

Finding the right bus to Łódź ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be. Trying to find the right bus when you can’t speak the language is difficult enough but the fact I couldn’t even pronounce the city I was traveling to correctly made things a hell of a lot more difficult. Łódź as it turns out is not pronounced as Lodz. A Polish friend back in Ireland had told me that it was pronounced differently but I couldn’t remember for the life of me what the correct pronunciation was. After a bit of work someone in the tourist information office guessed what city I was rambling on about and I was told exactly where I needed to go.

In case anyone wants to know it’s actually pronounced as “Woodge”. Three of the four letters in Łódź are special Polish characters which made it impossible for me to pronounce properly originally.

The bus to Łódź ended up being surprisingly good. It was quiet, there was free Wifi and a woman would come along every so often offering drinks and snacks. It beats all the bus services back in Ireland by a mile and it’s only a fraction of the price compared to them. I arrived into Łódź late enough and made my way to the hostel. It was noticeably colder up here compared to Wroclaw where there had been barely any snow or ice on the ground. It looked like my cycle route was escaping the worst of the Polish winter for the moment.

Day 25: Rest Day in Łódź/Wroclaw

The next day I met up with a friend of a friend who showed me around Łódź. Although it’s a very industrial city, the city centre is still quite nice and has a lot of architectural gems. In one area it has embraced it’s industrial past by converting a huge old redbrick factory into a sprawling shopping centre retaining a lot of the old features of the factory. Before getting the bus back to Wroclaw I took some shots of the more interesting buildings in the city centre.

Back in Wroclaw I returned to the hostel where I had left my bike. I had arranged to meet a friend from my old University (who was now working in Poland, albeit further south than my route) in two days time. We had agreed to converge on the city of Katowice on Saturday evening so we could meet up, grab some food and go for a good old Irish drinking session. I was looking forward to seeing a familiar face along the road and having a good old fashioned session so I was all set for the next two days which would see me aim for the city of Katowice.