20th May - A long haul up to NE Poland

Today was about covering some distance to get close to Lithuania.  I had originally intended to go via Gdansk but that would have added another day and a lot of miles.  So I decided to make this day just about getting north as easily as possible (Poland is a big country to traverse).

The area I had decided to stop in (as it looked nice) included a couple of national parks and was located just south of the border between Poland, Lithuania and the Russian enclave of Kalingrad.  It was about 360 miles by the most direct route, ie Highways where available.  I played around with various minor road routes but it turned it into a 2 day journey which I didn't want to do.

So I said goodbye to Krakow and joined the rush hour traffic heading (slowly) out of the city through the myriad of roadworks.

It took about an hour to clear the city environs and traffic and get onto the main highway (dual carriageway) heading for Warsaw.  Although straight an boring this was a relatively new road and carried little traffic for its size.  Warsaw itself presented no problems as the road skirts nicely around it and continues out the other side, in total I was on the highway for about 4 hours but covered some useful distance.  My SatNav then alerted me to a 60 minute delay in major roadworks ahead and so I headed off the highway to continue the rest of the journey on minor roads - much more pleasant if not as direct or ‘ground covering’.

Some of these minor roads were very well surfaced, but increasingly large sections were pretty rough with the occasional major pothole (12 inches deep) to keep an eye out for.

The centre of Poland is largely flat and roads, whether major or minor, follow predominantly straight lines, curves and inclines were to be savoured if they came along.

As I got to within an hour or so of my destination the landscape improved and became quite picturesque, all the villages seemed to be harbouring a population of Storks (baby boom ahead?).

There was also normally a small memorial(?) at the entry or exit of to each village.

My chosen stop for the night proved to be a very good value find.

  The equivalent of £26 per-night including breakfast and then a really nice meal in their restaurant for £4 - £5 including the beer.  Top value!

The owner kindly let me put my bike in a barn for the night.