Category: Places

9th July – 18th July 2024

Our meanderings thus far have been fairly logical, but now a degree of back tracking was upon us. There was a very good reason for this. We were heading back towards Budapest to take advantage of a fortuitous happenstance of geography. My Mum and step-dad, Cliff, who live in Australia, were flying into Budapest on the 13th July in order to join a Danube river cruise two days later. As we were going to be ‘in the area’ we had organised our route to meet them there and spend a day or two pottering. Although we had seen them in Australia only four months ago this was an opportunity too good to be missed. They were booked into a smart hotel in the centre of town on the river and we had booked a space for five nights at a city camp site that was only a 15 minute ride away on the door-to-door tram line. Perfect!

We had a few days in hand and it was still roasting hot. There was only one thing for it. A few days on the banks of Lake Balaton. This is enormous. The largest lake by area in Central Europe, measuring 77 x 14km at its greatest dimennsions. It is not very deep having an average depth of only about 3m and a maximum depth of only 12m. It takes two years for water to move through the lake. At this time of year it is warm and murky but in winter it freezes and is covered with up to 20cm of ice. Hard to imagine. We were recommended a visit to the lake by my brother, Jon, who had come here on a European interailing camping trip as an 18 year old school leaver. We trusted his nearly three decade hence, youthful, possibly not too sober recollections and were not disappointed. We found a camp site right on the lake shore in a place called Badescony and settled in.

The mercury was consistantly 34-36 deg C in the daytime so the urge to do anything that didn’t involve water was non-existant and the most we exerted ourselves was to inflate the paddleboards (which to be fair, is quite hard work). We spent the next three days sitting, sweating, walking the 20m to the lake, soaking in the lake, walking back to the van, drying off, sweating again, carrying the boards to the lake, paddling up-wind, floating down-wind and generally just loafing about on the boards. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was a perfect spot to be in the oppressive heat. Apparently there are lots of interesting things to see and do around here and an great cycle route that circumnavigates the lake, but we wouldn’t know, and didn’t care. Too hot. The most we managed was a 500 meter 9am shuffle into the village to buy a watermelon.

After 3 nights here it was time to drag ourselves away and head to the big city. The forecast showed no signs of the heat abating, in fact it was going to get hotter. We contemplated our options and came to the decision that it would be a marvellous idea to book an air conditionned room in the city for a couple of nights respite. We found a decent sized studio room in an old building only 100m from Mum & Cliff’s hotel for only €120 for the two nights. A (possibly too-good-to-be-true) bargain. It was going to be our first ‘dry land’ nights since the 3rd May and we were very excited!

The Budapest campsite was a rare slice of prime real estate that had been preserved for the utility of city centre camping rather than earn real money from housing or commercial building, and long may it last. Getting to it involved an urban thrash through traffic in Davide, dodging trams and roadworks, but we arrived in one piece and then for the major task…finding a spot with some shade. This campsite had a ‘park where you like’ policy, so it was all a bit free-form, but we managed to secure a place tucked into the northern shady side of a massive cypress hedge. Some respite from the melting death rays of the sun. There was no pool, but there were some strategically placed outdoor showers visited by a constant stream of swimsuit clad campers dousing themselves with cold water. Us included.

The campsite had a busy, chaotic tent area, filled with a mixture of car tourers, bike tourers, walkers, and school groups and next to that was a small bar. We were lured here on our first evening by the music from a Hungarian folk band. This was a group of five gentleman of a certain age and dimension who, despite the persisting heat were throwing themselves into seemingly limitless, well practiced, energetic numbers. And the beer was only 990HUF, £2 for 500ml.

In the morning the next day we shuffled to the nearby shopping centre for a few supplies. Here I saw a hair salon that looked okay, so I jumped on the chance to book a haircut. With short hair a gap of ten weeks between trims means that there are some serious ‘sasquatch’ weeks. A date with some scissors was long overdue. The receptionist spoke English and an appointment made for a few days in the future. Later we packed our overnight bags, locked up Davide, and headed into the city centre to find our accomodation on the very convienient tram.

We were still a little sceptical that it was all kosher, given it’s bargain price, but we had all the details for the address and lockbox code. We killed a hot and hungry half hour before check-in time in – don’t judge – Macdonalds, (it was an oasis of cool, iced drinks and a snack burger each), and happily we successfully got into our room. It was exactly as advertised. A spacious, comfortable studio with a kitchenette, great wifi, a clean bathroom and AIRCON. It was delicious. We chilled (literally and metaphorically) out for a few of hours then went to meet Mum & Cliff at their hotel for drinks.

I love meeting people I know in random places. A rendezvous with antipodean-based parents at a hotel terrace bar on the banks of the Danube entirely fits the bill! They were tired,as expected, Mum was feeling a little digestively challenged, which was a shame, but on the whole they were doing ok seeing as they had been travelling for 48 hours and only arrived six hours previously. Long haul travel is a b!tch at any age, but it is definitely not one of the things that gets easier as you progress through life. It was so great to see them again and although modern technology means that connection with far away loved ones is easier and almost free, it is no replacement for seeing them in the flesh and giving and receiving big hugs. We chatted, had a few drinks and then had dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant around the corner. This was hearty, comfort food that in Western Europe we tend to eat in the cooler months of the year, but which the Eastern Europeans seem happy to chow down whether it is 3 deg C or 33 deg C. Summer goulash soup, anyone?!

The next day we had imagined that we would have a day sightseeing together. Mum and Cliff have visited Budapest before, but there is always something else to see, or to see again. It was very apparent that we were not going to be going very far from our hotels as the temperature was headed up to 37 deg C that day. We came to this conclusion halfway across Chain Bridge, one of the oldest connections between Buda and the Pest side, where we were staying. We did an about turn and then the main focus was to find a spot to have a cold drink out of the sun. We were successful in our mission and killed an hour whilst rehydrating in our individual chosen ways sat outside a grand old dame of an establishment, Gerbeaud. Here cakes and confectionary are the thing, but we resisted. I then forced a short walk on my companions to see the impressive St Stephens Basillica.

The route there took us past the slightly odd Michael Jackson Memorial Tree, and once we arrived the crowds and the entrance fee kept us outside and heading back to our airconditionned private Idahos. Mum and Cliff had run out of steam and we were happy to hole up in our room and watch the Martin Freeman show that we were in the middle of.

In the evening we repeated the routine of hotel apperitifs and then had another meal at another very nearby restaurant that did traditional food with a modern flair. It was only 6pm, but we were the only customers for almost the entire meal. An unexpected private dining experience. The food was amazing and served in enormous quanties. We were happy piggies! After dinner we headed up to the rooftop terrace of their hotel which had a fantastic view over to the grand buildings in Buda. There was a welcome breeze up there and the view just got better and better as the sun set. It was a special spot. After a digestif or three we said our goodnights.

At 10.30am the next morning we found the folks who were being hurried onto a waiting bus to be taken to their vessel. A very brief farewell but the Danube waits not for sentimental goodbyes. Afterwards we vacated our place, stored our bags for a few hours and went for a wander. It was still very warm, so this was a super slow paced affair. We found the main tourist drag and followed it down to the market hall, found an amazing gin shop, then wandered back along the river.

On our way along the river we walked past a river cruise boat of the company that I knew Mum and Cliff were using. I messaged Mum, yes, it was their boat. They were just finishing lunch and waiting for their room to be ready. Mum popped out onto the gangway and we had a final little catch up and a better goodbye. Another random rendezvous!

By now we were getting heat fatigued and so headed back to the campsite via collecting our bags. Gone was the aircon, we were back to outdoor showers to stay cool. The next morning was haircut day. I realised that I had forgotten to ask the English speaking receptionist if the stylist spoke English too. Perhaps a rather important detail. The answer was no, not really. It is a testatment to a glorious combination of her cutting skill, bilateral sign language, some translation by the receptionist, the searching for images of hairstyles on line and a bit of Google Translate that I walked away with a pretty darn good haircut. Latest in a long series of ‘half decent haircuts in random places’. Long may it continue!

We decided that no more sightseeing was needed, but instead we needed to find some water to cool down in. One option was to head to the grand Szechenyi Baths, one of Europe’s largest thermal spa complexes. It has an amazing Neo-Baroque building housing 15 indoor thermal pools and 3 large outdoor pools. This is Budapest’s most visited attraction. We did not go there. Instead we headed up the river to Margaret Island, via tram and bus, and visited a more municipal version, Platinus Pools. Here there were some cooler pools and a bit more elbow room. It was also half the price. It was still understandably busy although as we exited our respective changing rooms and surveyed the expanse of water in front of us, we noticed that all the pools were empty and everyone was sat around on the grass and loungers. What? It then became apparent that there was a dark, ominous cloud in the sky complete with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. We were possibly in the direct path of a storm and the lifeguards had evacuated the pools until they knew which way the cloud was going. Hmmm. This was a long way to come to LOOK at water and then get rained on. We filled the next half hour with another junk food lunch from one of the many concessions by which time the cloud moved on in another direction, the all clear was given and the mass of humanity was able to re-float itself in the waters. As did we. We lasted an hour, which I think was pretty good for us!

On the way home we stopped off at the very impressive parliament building, which apparently was modelled on our own Houses of Westminster. It stands alone on its own concourse rather than being crowded out by lots of neighbouring buildings, making it appear bigger and better. Security was very scanty compared to what I perhaps was expecting, but I imagine that parliament is not sitting at this time of year, and we know that the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is currently on his one-man diplomatic tour of dictators. So not much to defend here at present.

Just south of parliament is a very thought provoking memorial called ‘Shoes on the Danube Promenade’. Installed in 2005, this series of metal cast shoes, positioned on the wharf-side as if left there by their owners – men, women and children – is to commemorate the massacre of 3500 people, 800 of them Jews, by a facist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party between Dec 1944 and Jan 1945. Here the victims were lined up on the river bank, ordered to take off their shoes (of value and saleable), leave other valubles and then they were shot. Their bodies fell into the river and were washed down stream, thus saving the executionners the task of disposing of their remains. Another unbelievable tale of human depravity.

This was our last night in the country and our thoughts turned to the complete spend up of our remaining forints, a currency of no use to us beyond Hungary, in too small quanties to be convertable to Euros. We did a pretty good job, leaving ourselves with, when all coins counted, 1930HUF. Just over £4. Where could we spend this loot? The campsite bar, that’s where! Unfortunately the cost of two beers was 1980HUF, so we had to shamefully negotiate with the bar tender to serve us a short pour on the second beer to compensate for the 50HUF (11p) shortfall. The embarrassment of this exchange could have been avoided entirely as I have since discovered a rogue 100HUF coin in the depths of my handbag. Typical.

So my thoughts on Budapest? It is an epic city that we unfortunately we didn’t get to explore fully as it was roasting whilst we were here. The public transport system was amazing and cheap, all supported by a fantastic app. The buildings we saw were massive and grand and gave the city an air of solidness and permenance. The river is magnificent and is the heart and soul of the city. It is busy with tourism, but has the space to accomodate the crowds. It can be expensive, like any major city, but bargains are to be found. Would we come again? Definitely, but perhaps in the depths of winter. This feels like it would be a great city to wander around in a big coat and a thick scarf.

Next stop? Back to Slovakia, my good friend! It must be a good few days since we crossed a border, wrestled with another currency and learnt/relearnt a few local words. Our last visit here had unfortunately been scuppered by 4 or 5 days of awful weather and we hadn’t really seen the best of it. Now our trajectory was to take us to Bratislava and the weather was glorious. The capital of Slovakia, a direct neighbour of Austria and Hungary -it is the only national capital to border two other sovereign states- and a budget flight destination for many-a UK stag do. We found a campsite on the edge of the city that was co-located with a large, municipal, recreational lake, complete with a wakeboarding park, peddalos, a large protected swimming area, a beach and a large grassy sunbathing area. There was also a large Tescos and a tramstop on a direct route into the city within 5 minutes walk. AND there were shade trees. All in all, a pretty darn perfect spot. On checking in the chap at reception said, yes, we could stay for two nights, but not three. It transpired that in three days time the campsite would fill up with over 500 AC/DC fans, the band playing a gig within walking distance of here at the weekend. He also encouraged us to check out early on that day to avoid the melée. I’m not sure what the collective identity and behaviour of hundreds of camping rock fans is, but I imagine it will be messy and likely noisy. We filled the remainder of our (peaceful) afternoon with a lake-side sunning and some swimming.

The next morning we headed into the city centre on the tram. A ticket buys you ‘ride time’ and the system is manually policed by inspectors. We bought 30 min tickets and this got us exactly to the far side of the old town. Just as we were trying to get off an inspector got on and made a beeline for us to check our tickets. There was a 10 sec window for us to find our tickets, present them, him to calculate our ride-time, give us the all clear, and us to exit the tram before the doors closed. Phew. A close run thing!

I thought we’d start the day with a climb up to the castle. Note the first person singular decision making, a fact that was mildly held against me as we trudged up the (must have been close to) four million steps in (what felt like) 439 deg C to get up the hill where said castle was located. Described by Lonely Planet as ‘magnificently rebuilt in Reneissance style, (it) looks as though it has been transplanted from a childrens picture book’, the castle is very photogenic and handsome from down below, but I forgot to take photo. This is the picture I got of it. Not so picturesque.

From the castle wall there were some good views of the funky bridge that has a restaurant that resembles a UFO at the top of its single pylon. It is apparently the world’s longest bridge to have only one (single plane) cable-stayed pylon. I know. The facts just keep coming.

We obviously didn’t spend any money,or time, touring the inside of the castle, but headed back down to the old town centre to blather about, as is our forte. There were the usual offerings of narrow cobbled streets, churches, old houses, ancient apothacaries, multiple restaurants and drinking establishments and the less usual attractions of sculptures of sewage workers emerging from manholes and stone carvings of well endowed munchkins in wall niches.

Bratislava is also on the Danube, and is the next stop after Budapest for most of the river cruises going in the up-stream direction. Consequently there are lots of tour groups roving the city and it was funny to think that Mum and Cliff had themselves done a tour here only yesterday. After a very tasty lunch at a small and classy place that we happened upon down a back street we caught the tram back to our lake-side idyl and spent another couple of hours sitting in the sun and dunking in the very pleasant water. What a place!

The next day it was time to escape the camp site ahead of the AC/DC chaos and exit Slovakia again, next stop the Czech Republic. Time to get the phrase book out again….

1st July – 9th July 2024

There are a few places in the world that seem to be situated in a sweet spot of location, climate and geography. Where seasons deliver reliable summers and manageable winters, geography delivers beaches on which to enjoy the sunshine and mountains that make the most of the winter snow. Where landscapes of beautiful forests bathe the eyes and where thermal springs warm up alpine lake waters so that one may bathe the body in comfort. Slovenia is this place. It is smaller than Israel in land area and has only a 2.1 million population. It is affluent, the people delightful, and, in short, it is a thoroughly nice place to spend some time. This, of course, given the perils of mass tourism, may also be its ruination in the future.

Yet here we are.

Ljubljana, its capital city, was about 180km from our coastal starting point at Rovinj, in Croatia. The border crossing into Slovenia was the only place so far where there has been an official checking passports. Despite being a member of the EU and Schengen Area since 2004 and borders technically being defunct, the traffic was slowed to single file and we had to wave our passports through the window. Not sure what this achieved, or who they were looking for, but it obviously wasn’t us. We continued our trundling, enjoying the increasing mountain vistas as we approached Ljubljana. Our mission for the day was to see if we could get Nick’s paddleboard repaired before we got to our next lake stop. The only chap in the city who I could find that did repairs was too busy, so we dragged around a few outdoor/watersport type shops to see if we could source some glue. None found. We ended up in a hardware store and purchased some adhesive that looked like it might do the job. The boards are elderly now and it is obvious that they are on a limited lifespan. We just need to coax them through this summer without spending too much money on them. It will be a DIY job.

Our stop in Ljubljana was about 6km out of the city centre in a combination motorhome storage and overnight stay facility. It was basic but cheap and there was a dedicated cycle route from here into the heart of the old town. Suited us fine. The camp was quiet as it transpired that there was only us and one other van over-nighting.

The next day we cruised into the city on the bikes, which was a pleasure. The cycle lanes were well marked and separate from the pedestrians. Traffic lights controlled the flow of cyclists as well as vehicles, everyone was courteous and patient and lots and lots of people were on bikes. This is evidence that ‘build it and they will come’ works when done well. A half arsed attempt to cordon off some bits of road to make cycle lanes that don’t link up or don’t go anywhere useful does not encourage folk out of their cars.

Ljubljana is a very pretty city. It has its fair share of castles, churches, old buildings, a scenic river, handsome bridges, and squares in the old town, but it also has some great modern architecture which dilutes the enevitable communist brutalism building of the Soviet Era. The man responsible for much of the design of Ljublijana is the renowned architect Jose Plecnik (1872-1957). He also designed a lot of buildings in Vienna and Prague and his influence here is comparable to Gaudi in Barcelona. It is also sits at the base of some mountains, offering a handsome backdrop, and handy ski slopes close by for winter fun.

We had our usual day of mooching around the city. We climbed up to the castle on the hill, admired the view, then walked down again. There were lots of bridges that criss-crossed the River Ljubjanica, most noteably Plecnik’s Triple Bridge, as the name suggests, a bridge with three spans. For some reason.

There was a Dragon Bridge. Legend has it that that Jason (of Argonaut fame) was the founder of Ljubljana, and that he and his Argonauts killed a dragon. This is one of the four dragon statues that flank the bridge. According to other local legends, when a virgin crosses the bridge, the dragons will wag their tails. There were several fountains and even a ‘rain machine’, which created a small zone of inclement weather in one of the squares. For some reason.

There was a market, lots of restaurants, icecream shops and winebars. We obviously weren’t the only tourists in town and around every corner was a city tour guide leading a gaggle of disciples, preaching amplified teachings in various languages. One Spanish group engulfed us as we were stopped by a bridge, Nick trying to chat to one of his brothers on the phone. They relentlessly filled the gaps as he tried to distance himself from the group so he could hear himself think. Otherwise it is a very charming and civilised, and an utterly pleasant place to spend a day.

Our Ljubljana warm and fuzzies may have been enhanced by our wine intake on this day. We had a very delicious shared lunch of sardines and chips and mackrel and naughty, buttery potatoes that we washed down with a very drinkable 500ml carafe of house white wine, then for ‘afternoon tea’ (not that long after lunch if I was to be very honest) we stopped to sample some of the famous Slovenian ‘Orange Wine’. In my ignorance I thought this had to do with its flavour, but my learned friend educated me that it is to do with its colour, which yes, is orange. This orange colour is caused by white grape varietals being left in contact with their crushed skins and seed for one to six months. This exposure to the tanins of the seeds and skins gives the wine its colour and a really robust flavour, more like a red wine. We tasted a couple on the recommendation of the chap in the winebar that we stopped at, and then had another glass of the best one. The ride home, with a detour to check out a local park, was both warm, and may be a bit fuzzy!

Our next destination was a stop-gap. We had a night to fill before our next booked campsite and we had the paddleboard to mend. We found a glorified car park on an industrial estate that was designated for motor homes, and arrived early enough to find it empty and able to bag the best spot. This gave us a space next to the grass to do our work. After setting up we inflated the board, much to the bemusement of the Post Office workers that were arriving and leaving from the depot that was right next door. We spent the next 4 hours slowly peeling off the rest of the deck using my travel hairdryer as a heat gun, cleaning off the residue with white spirit and then re-gluing it down. It felt like a job well done! We rewarded ourselves with a trip to the nearby ‘camping supplies’ shop and bought a bunch of things we needed: camping toilet paper (twice as expensive as normal loo roll, designed to disintegrate just with the power of thought), loo chemicals (designed to make living with a cassette toilet bearable), replacement elastic rope (designed to attach things to paddleboards), mozzie candle (designed to keep Sara from being eaten alive by blood-sucking pterydactyls) and a second small -rechargable- fan. This, I thought, was not entirely necessary, but I was proven so very wrong in the coming weeks. Fan (designed to stop humans living in a tin can during a heatwave from melting and to make wife grateful that husband sometimes ignores her).

Our next stop, only one hour away, was the iconic Lake Bled. You may not know the name of this place, or where it is, but many will be familiar with it from its photos. It is a very popular place for a very good reason. It is gorgeous. The pristine waters of the 2.1 km long lake, set in the Julian Alps, are heated by thermal springs, making it much more pleasant to swim here than it should be. There is a very picturesque island in the lake, apparently Slovenia’s only natural island, upon which is built a church and there is a castle perched atop a rocky cliff, overseeing the lake and the town. A 6km walking/cycling track around the lake gives a perfect way to experience the lake from all angles, with several swimming beaches on its perimeter. There are walks up into the surrounding forested hills to lookouts and all the usual tourist activies of boat trips, SUP and rowing boat rental. The lake also is the site of the Slovenian National Rowing Centre, being just long enough to accomodate a regulation 2000m course, the lanes marked out with bouys.

We had pre-booked our site for 3 nights here, the only place with lake access, and just as well, because it was a’jumpin’. Despite that the campsite was spacious and didn’t feel overcrowded. It was expensive but from here we could walk our paddleboards down to the beach and then had the whole lake at our disposal, which was priceless. It is an amazing spot, and is now peak season, so ya gotta pay the money!

So what did we do here?

A lap of the lake on foot. Our campsite was at the opposite end of the lake to the town of Bled, which to be honest, wasn’t the most beautiful of places. Mid to late 20th century town planning hasn’t been kind to the aesthetic of the waterfront here which is a shame. I guess when you are looking out of the window of an ugly hotel, the view is still gorgeous. So we walked through Bled and back to camp again, which as I mentioned before, was a very pleasant 6km stroll.

We walked up to Bled castle. This sits atop a rocky precipice, looking down onto the lake and is apparently one of the most visited tourist attractions in Slovenia. First mentioned in 1011 it is obviously very old, like a lot of stuff in this neck of the woods, and must have some amazing views… I say that as if we didn’t see them. Which we didn’t. The climb through the forest up to the castle is steep and definitely a cardiovasular work out. To tackle it on a 30 deg C day also makes it super sweaty. We arrived at the castle entrance to find that the only views were from inside the walls, and the entrance fee was a hefty €17 each. We assessed this as ‘too expensive for a view’ seeing as we had no real interest in seeing the castle itself, or all the old sh*t inside, so we opted out and walked down again. My erstwhile travelling companion may have uttered some profanities on the pointlessness of the whole episode and was not comforted by my pointing out of the beneficial effects of the exercise that he had had.

We walked up to a proper lookout. This 1.5 hour round trip was another hot & sweaty endeavour that we undertook having omitted to take any water with us. It was silly steep and treacherous underfoot in parts and it was quite a surprise to get back in one piece. The view was, however, very worth it.

We did lots and lots of paddleboarding. Our repairs to Nick’s board were not brilliant as our chosen adhesive was obviously not the right stuff, but it was usable and that was good enough for now. Bled Island is a massive draw for most people that come here and one can get there by either taking a trip on a traditional wooden boat called a ‘pletna’, which is rowed forward from the rear by a standing oarsman, or by hiring a row boat or paddleboard. At peak times it is chaos and the island is mobbed, so we just dodged the other craft, did a lap and paddled on without making landfall.

The prevailing wind was against us going up the lake, which was ideal. We powered our way up towards Bled town and then after a loaf, ‘sailed’ back downwind. There were some very cool beach clubs with protected swimming and grassy sunbathing areas and some impressive large lakeside houses but on the whole the lake shore is underdeveloped and unspoilt. Nearer home we tied up to a buoy and soaked up some sun, had a swim and watched the world do a variety of the same. The water was lovely. Clear and a beautiful temperature. Give me lake swimming over sea swimming any day! Another day we did a similar route but the wind turned through 180 degrees just as we turned to head for home, meaning a significant workout both ways. Life can be so cruel!

Football was everywhere. A small band of tiny, soccer mad kids were relentlessly kicking balls around, loose shots bouncing into all surrounding sites. They were more interested in playing than watching the Euros games, and they were in equal measure amusing and annoying. Hard to chastise them when they were very cute and overtaken by such immense passion, but it would have been better for them to be using their own families’ camping equipment for their rebounds rather than everyone elses, and if their parents had actually paid attention to the fact that they had been told many times to go and play elsewhere by many people. There was a large bar/restaurant on the lakeshore that was playing all the games and many people around the site were streaming the games. Most of our fellow campers, as usual, were German and Dutch, so there were two important games for them whilst we were here. There were many simultaneous audible groans as Germany were knocked out by Spain, and the Dutch had a camp-wide, co-ordinated celebration of their late game equaliser winner against Turkey.

We sampled the local delicacy, kremna rezina or kremšnita. This is a vanilla cream pastry slice of which there are similar itterations in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Romania and The Balkans but this one was designated a protected dish of designated origin in 2016 by the Slovene government. The current ‘official’ local receipe was created in 1953 by the manager of the Hotel Park in Bled and its in-house patisserie has made an estimated whopping 12 million slices of kremšnita over the past 60 years. There is even an annual festival to honour it. Can confirm: is delicious.

Being at Lake Bled was like inhabiting a reality version of a land of fairy tales. It is just so achingly beautiful. The tourism here is just about under control and I hope that it stays that way otherwise the magic that is here will be lost.

From here we continued east, driving through the mountains to our next stop, the city of Maribor. This is Slovenia’s second largest city and sits on the Drava River. It is another place with a long and complex history, changing hands between various empires multiple times, being the site of fires, plague, seiges and many conflicts. Now it was a well located stop for us and we found a river side place to park for a couple of nights. This was the carpark of a restaurant which was happy to provide free overnight stops to customers. It was a lovely scenic spot but although the river was so close, it was not swimable here. This was shame as the weather was starting to get very hot, reaching the early to mid 30s. The car park was on a riverside cycle path so I did a satellite view search to see if I could see a swimming beach further up or down the river from where we were. I didn’t find a beach but what I did find was this….. An open air swimming pool complex on a river island only 500m away! We packed a bag and after a short five minute walk, after paying only €4 each, we were immersed in cool water. Admittedly surrounded by half the population of Maribor, but it was Sunday afternoon in a heatwave so what could we expect?! It was an unexpected treat.

We ate in the restaurant that night. A long and arduous 20m walk away. It was wholesome, robust, unfussy food as is their forte in this part of the world and we ate far too much. As is our forte.

The next day we headed into Maribor on the bikes. The heat was bearable whilst we were rolling, thus creating a slight breeze. but when we tied up the bikes on the edge of town and strolled around on foot, it was less bearable. Of note in Maribor is ‘the oldest vine in the world’. It still produces fruit every year from which they make wine and it has been ratified by the Guiness Book of Records. There was a massive long square (so, I guess more for a rectangle) with a marble monument in the middle. This is the Plague Column, the original one was errected in 1680 to celebrate the end of the epidemic that killed a third of the town’s population. This one is a 1743 replacement. Maribor had a limited array of things to see, so we had lunch in a shady spot (very good turkish wraps) and headed home. Our route was a bit circuitous as we detoured via another hardware store to get some better glue for the paddleboard re-repair. A nice employee offered to help us, but then realised that our Slovenian and her English weren’t up to the job of working out what we needed. A random customer offered her translation assistance and eventually we walked away with four packets of two-part epoxy adhesive and some sandpaper. I think this will be far superior! By the time we got home, although it was still hot, it was a bit too late to consider a trip back to the pool, so I set up the outdoor shower, we put on our swimmers, doused ourselves with cold water, pulled out our camp chairs and then sat in the shade on the riverbank. All overlooked by the early doors restaurant customers. Aren’t we classy!

We headed off the next day, back into Hungary. We had by no means seen all the good bits of Slovenia, but enough to know that it is a special place. Can recommend.

21st June – 1st July 2024

We had another ‘long’ day on the road (ie, nearer four hours than the usual two) and moved out of Hungary and into Croatia. Our border crossing felt the weirdest of them all so far. In most of the Schengen Area the formal border posts are so long abandoned that they have either been fully dismantled or are boarded up and covered with graffitti. Croatia is the newest member of the EU and Schengen Area, only having formally joined on the 1st of Jan 2023. The border infrastructure is all still in place and looks pristine, but it is entirely unmanned. The signs say “Free Passage” and there are no barriers but it was as if all the staff were having a simultaneous tea-break and would be back any moment. Driving through without stopping felt somehow naughty. Croatia also took on the Euro when it joined the big European club and so we put away our remaining Forints and got the Euros out again. We were back to sensible money again. The day was destined to be the hottest of the summer so far as we headed to our next stop, Zagreb.

Given that this is a major European capital city, most of the campsites are on the outskirts of the metro area and seeing as this is a major European capital city there are great public transport links so that is not a problem. Our place was about 14km from the centre with a train station a short bike ride away. As the thermometer climbed up towards a high of 37 deg C we were grateful for the large shade tree nearby. It was busy and we were also glad to have pre-booked. This was not a day to be serching for somewhere to stay. Up until now we have not had to do much planning ahead with regards to booking places to stay, but we realise that the summer season is in full flow and if we want to go to popular places we have to be organised. I don’t like it as much as ‘winging it’. The campsite was on a small lake but not the swimming kind. That was a shame as it got unbearably hot and humid in the afternoon. We did very little, drank gallons, ate a cold dinner, had cold showers and sat outside until about 11pm, when finally we could even consider going to bed. As I said at the beginning of this trip, weather matters when you are camping. Cold and wet: bad. Cold and dry: OK. Wet and warm: OK. Warm and dry: excellent. Searing hot and humid: not good. Apparently the whole area was suffering and there were widespread powercuts at the coast and in the nearby Balkan nations as the simmultaneous firing up of air conditionners broke the electricity grid.

Three nights here gave us two full days in the city and the next day being fractionally cooler, only 32 deg, we could consider peeling ourselves off our chairs and going to see some sights. We unleashed the bikes and whizzed down to the local station to get the train into the city. The station was a bit shabby and apart from a small group of daytime drinkers, fairly deserted.. The only other bikes left here seemed to be old and rusty and definitely not electric, so as we chained ours to a railing we weren’t entirely sure that they would be here when we returned. We took a photo of them in situ to aid any potential insurance claim/police report and caught the train. It was a Saturday, but we soon discovered that the day was a public holiday: Anti-Facist Struggle Day. (‘Observed on the 22nd of June in rememberance of the formation of the First Sisak Partisan Detachment, a Communist-led guerrilla unit during World War II in Yugoslavia on 22 June 1941, and in general the uprising of the anti-fascist Croatian wing of the Yugoslav Partisans against the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and their puppet state―Independent State of Croatia’. Thanks, Wikipedia) What this meant practically was that most of the shops would be shut.

The train took about 20 minutes, cost peanuts and soon we were in downtown Zagreb. It is a bit discombobulating to visit so many epic places in such a compressed time frame. The names of these big cities are so familiar to us, yet we know very little about the places themselves. If I didn’t keep a daily journal and write this blog there would definitely be a blurring and overlapping of the memories of all the ‘fine, historic, European cities’ that we were seeing. So Zagreb? Capital city of Croatia, about 1 million population in metro area. Very old. There has been a settlement here since those blimin’ Romans were all over Europe like a rash. Made up from from the almagamation of two separate original neighbouring settlements of Kaptol (est. 1094)and Gradec (est. 1242) the City of Zagreb was only formally established in 1850, thus bringing to an end many centuries of conflict, squabbling, frequent looting and the occasional massacre. Fire and the plague caused devastation in the 17th and 18th centuries, It became an important transport hub in this part of the world in the late 19th century, as well as suffering a large earthquake in Nov 1880. This destroyed many buildings but apparently only one person was killed. The, now rebuilt, old town is divided into the upper and lower areas, linked by a funicular which of course we only discovered after walking up the hill and steps to get to the upper old town. We saw the main square, site of the city’s main football Fanzone for the Euros, and which sports a statue of a chap on a horse.

Here we happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness a small parade of historically garbed soldier types which I presume was a re-enactment of something to do with the Anti-Facism Struggle Day. They looked hot. We were entertained by watching the ‘selfie brigade’ jostling at the front of the rapidly amassing crowd, trying to get themselves, pouting and posing, into photos with the parade in the background. I’ve never understood the school of thought that dictates that EVERY SINGLE ONE of your holiday snaps of something worth taking a photo of needs yourself in the foreground, sucking your cheeks in, pulling the V-fingers, or looking whistfully off into the distance, but perhaps that’s just me being excessively Gen-X.

Next we saw the ‘colourful and bustling historic daily open air market’…. Obviously not trading on Anti-Facism Struggle Day.

We opted not to visit the Hangover Museum, The Museum of Broken Relationships or the New Wave Rock’n’Roll Museum, but it seems there is something here for everyone.

We took in the cathedral, apparently its twin spires make it the tallest building in Croatia, but currently it is shrouded in scaffolding as the spires are being rebuilt, the recent 2020 earthquake having damaged them, and many other heritage buildings in the city.

Old town meanderings past towers, decorated churches and bits of old city wall continued but the heat and resulting thirst prompted a mid-afternoon pitstop for a re-hydrating beer/water/Coke Zero in a shady bar/cafe slightly removed from the madding crowd. We descended from the upper town to the lower town and scouted out a restaurant for late lunch the next day. Although town was quiet from a retail point of view as all the shops were shut, the eateries all seemed open and busy and we booked one that looked good and had good reviews. The heat was sapping so we called it a day and headed back to the station, a 1km slow stroll. Perhaps we should have checked the train times, perhaps we should have walked just a little bit faster, but we missed our train by about 30 seconds. We killed the hour until the next one with a cold beer at another shady bar just next to the station, so perhaps it didn’t matter after all. Our fears that the bikes would have been purloined were unfounded and we headed home.

Back at the ranch Nick talked me into cutting his hair for the first time ever. I have resisted his requests to shear his tresses with his beard trimmers for years. Even in the long, shaggy-haired months of lockdown I didn’t cave. My worry was that I would stuff it up and that he would hold it against me. But for some reason I acquiesced this time. Perhaps it was the heat that addled my brain. I prepared the salon and set his expectations low. The final result was suprisingly acceptable. He has definitely had better haircuts in the past, but by the same store, he has had worse too. Apparently I am now his personal travelling hairdresser.

We repeated our voyage into the city centre the next day and started with another trip to the ‘ vibrant and bustling open market’ that surely would be a feast for the eyes on a Sunday, having had a day off for the struggle against facism, or is it the struggle against anti-facism? That would be a matter of emphasis and punctuation. Alas, not. There were only about seven stall holders, so no eye-feasting for us. Having seen most of the main sights yesterday we decided to head a little way out of town to see the Mirogoj Cemetery. Given the heat, and the fact it was 2km up a hill, we opted to get the tram. This was the princely sum of 53c each, our tiny paper tickets bought from a stern looking lady in a tiny kiosk next to the tram stop. The tickets needed validating on board the tram, but we could not for the life of us work out how to do that. There were only machines to validate modern travel cards and we had arrived by the time we had decided to stop worrying about it.

The cemetry park is built on a huge swathe of land that was purchased by the city in 1872 from the estate of linguist Ljudevit Gaj after his death. Because it was city owned, not church owned, it permitted interrment of people from all faiths and is the final resting place of many noteable Croats from all religions. The orignal design features a chapel and a majestic 500m long expanse neo-renaissance arcades topped with 20 domes. These were also damaged in the 2020 earthquake and were sadly cordoned off. There are over 300,ooo graves here ranging from grand family mausoleums to simple headstones. There are several war memmorials, sculptures, beautiful mature trees and a maze of paths and avenues. It would be very easy to get disorientated here but I can think of worse places to get lost. We finally found our way back to the main entrance and ( I having braved a porta-loo in the 32 deg C heat) we set off on foot back down the hill towards the city centre again. We took our time, hunted out shady sides of the street and arrived slightly hot and thirsty a good hour before our restaurant booking. This time vacuum was filled quite admirably by another trip to our well situated, shady bar of yesterday and imbibing some rehydrating fluids.

Our lunch was at a small, but perfectly formed, blissfully airconditioned restaurant called Ficlek which served a small-plate menu of Croatian classics. The unexpected standout dish was a bowl of the local delicacy, cottage cheese, served with some very delicious bread and sliced pickled onions. Yum. Stomachs full we rolled back to the station, successfully caught a train, happily retrieved our intact bikes and returned to base for another slothful evening.

The next day we moved to the beach. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Croatian coast and it seemed the obvious place to go. The drive was a bit arduous as the traffic was bad, mainly due to roadworks and a couple of ‘ghost hold-ups’ where nothing seemed to be the cause. We finally made it to the Istrian peninsua and a campsite just south of a town called Rovinj -prounced Rovin-y(a). This was a Lonely Planet recommendation and turned out to ba a perfect little spot. Our camp was a small, family-owned place about 150m from the ‘beach’ at Vesta Bay. Anyone that has been to this part of the world will know that there are no wide, sandy beaches here. A 3m strip of sharp pebbles is the closest approximation to one, and many places just have a rocky coastline. Sunbathing involves padded matressess, or finding a flat rock, or floating around in the sea on something inflatable. The bay was also the site of a much larger campsite that had loads of amenities, seemed well run and tidy but was very, very busy. A review of number plates showed that most people here were either Slovenian or German. In fact we were wondering if there were any Germans left in Germany currently because they are by far and away the predominant nationality of travellers that we have come across on our travels. We were glad to have found our little oasis of peace and calm even if it meant a short walk to the sea. There was also this nice little beach bar.

It was about a 6km cycle along a well used coastal path from Vesta Bay up to the town of Rovinj. This ran alongside some beautiful shoreline, rocky coves dotted with shade trees, beachgoers cycling to their well distributed, favourite spots, haphazardly parked bikes replacing acres of parked cars. There were the occasional beach clubs, food huts, beach bars, porta-loos and simple changing booths. It felt like a masterclass in understated, low impact tourism.

The old town and fishing harbour of Rovinj itself are gorgeous. Apparently voted in the past as ‘the Meditarranean’s second most beautiful port town’, the old town was built on what was originally an island, a hilly rabbit warren of narrow, criss-crossing lanes and steps with the church of St Euphima sitting atop it.

The perimeter is punctuated by waterside bar terraces and rocky swimming platforms and around every corner there was either a tiny restaurant, a clothes shop selling floaty linen dresses or an artisan craft shop. It was charming, and although reasonably busy, easy to lose the crowds. The fishing harbour is now mostly given over to pleasure craft and tour boats, but still had the essence of its past life.

We had a couple of forays into Rovinj on the bikes, passing the swanky new superyacht marina overlooked by the very James Bond-esque Grand Park Hotel – a black, plant-bedecked delight of low impact modern commercial architecture. During our wanderings we had to go barefoot as we nearly killed ourselves exploring the streets which were surfaced with large ancient cobblestones, hightly polished from centuries of wear and deadly slippy in a pair of flip-flops. I’m suprised that there weren’t piles of broken people at the bottom of each street. We had a lunch at a waterside bistro where Nick might have declared the star of the meal was the the large salad of tomato, cucumber and feta, not the shellfish medley. It apparently looks amazing at sunset, but after a sunset comes darkness and that makes a coastal path bike ride (after wine) a bit of a liability, so we just had to imagine it!

Otherwise most of our time was spent paddle boarding. Having spent nearly two months driving the blessed things around we finally had chance blow them up and use them. They are entering the twighlight phase of their existance, having given us years of good service in NZ, but are still a fabulous way to get out onto the water and loaf about. There were lots of boats and moorings in the bay and a small island a few hundred meters off shore, so plenty to see and somewhere to head to. A mooring bouy is a great place to tie up to and watch the world go by whilst catching some rays and keeping cool by swimming. Highly recommended. The combination of age and the heat is causing the glue on our boards fail, and by the end of this week, Nick’s was in need of some serious remedial work.

Our campsite was amazing. Run by a local couple who live on-site and were on duty for 13 hours a day, seven days a week for the whole 5 month season, it was friendly, sociable, had a central bar area, live music at the weekends and felt a million miles removed from the gargantuan campsite down the road. Our host, Zoran, definitely ran his business on his terms, valuing quality over quantity when it came to accepting guests. He had no interest in accepting single night stays and anyone that turned up without a booking was instantly vetted and he would make a decision on the spot whether or not there was a free space. Got to admire that. We had a week here, pre-booked, happily acceptable to the management. Zoran was also a polyglot, switching between Croatian, English, German and Italian. Very humbling.

One of the highlights of our stay here was a(nother) evening meal out at a local ‘restaurant’ recommended to us by Zoran. Arka was a 2-3km cycle inland, down a dusty gravel road and I use the inverted commas because it wasn’t so much a restaurant as it was a collection of picnic tables under a pergola in the garden of an older Croatian couple’s garden at which they mainly served only fresh fish, fries made from home grown potatoes and salad from the garden. Bookings can only be made within 24 hours of the meal when they know if there is fish available from the fishermen, A small hand painted sign gave us a clue that we had arrived and we hesitantly made our way into the garden area, being the first to arrive for dinner, calling out our hellos to make sure we were in the right place. We were. Madam was a delightful tall, thin, wryly stern lady of somewhere north of seventy who spoke excellent German and Italian, but no English. Luckily for us she did have some functional French, so that is how we communicated and the evening unfolded to be one of the most memorable moments of our travels to date.

The menu was another (badly) handwritten sign hanging from a bush. Wine, red or white, was sold in 500ml carafes. We were presented a selection of fresh Dorade fish on a plate by Madam and chose our specimens to be grilled up by Monsieur, whom we never saw. She then disappeared into the vegetable patch and emerged brandishing a courgette and we agreed that we would have some of that too. Chips- pomfrits- of course. A simple salad. And why not some salty anchovies with fresh baked bread to start? They will make you drink more, she joked.

By the time we were tucking into our dinner two other groups had arrived. Italians, with whom Madam spoke fluent Italian, and Dutch, with whom she spoke in German, but with whom we spoke with in English, their menu explanations with Madam definitely requiring less sign language than ours had. The food was simple, fresh and delicious and at the end of the meal we were ‘forced’ to try some shots of the local schnapps and a shot each of a honey based liqueur that was sweet and sticky and ‘for the children’, Madam advised us, with a glint in her eye. After settling our bill (that did not feature any charges for shots) and saying our goodbyes, to her and our co-diners, we headed back along the rural gravel lane towards camp in the fading light. This only involved one missed turn and a 1km back track, but who cared? This evening had epitomised all that is great about international travel.

This is a magical part of the world, although we only saw a very small slice of it (because we are lazy travellers and don’t need to do lots of daytripping to enjoy somewhere). It is definitely on the short list of places we would come back to, perhaps to stay in that big swanky hotel next time!

13th June – 21st Jun 2024

Not long after leaving Spiš Castle we entered northern Hungary, with yet another language and more funny money. Here the Hungarian forint (HUF) is worth about 0.002p, or conversely £1 is about 460 HUF. This makes numbers quite big and scary at first glance. Our first stop was the small city of Eger. This charming town had a great mix of architecture in its well preserved old town, courtesy of its various inhabitants over the centuries and a couple of big aces up its sleeve.

Ace Number One: Eger sits on a thermal spring area and has utilised these to create an amazing thermal bath complex. The original facility is a Turkish Bath where the oldest pool was constructed in the early 1600s during a spell of Turkish rule. The’medicinal waters’ here are lauded for their radon content, which apparently can benefit rheumatic and chronic inflammatory conditions if one marinates onself in it. One can even get subsidised treatments on the health service here. This is contrary to the fact that chronic exposure to radioactive radon gas is widely accepted to cause cancer and its discovery in bed rock below homes can slash the value of a property. Go figure. The Turkish Baths are co-located with a huge outdoor facility with numerous (radon-free) hot pools, a lap pool and a leisure pool with a slide. Interdispersed between the various pools are numerous food trucks and icecream sellers and large grassy areas with shade trees and rentable loungers. It felt like the pool area of a large mid-budget coastal mediterranean resort hotel, not the city centre municipal pool of a land-locked small Hungarian city.

We set aside an afternoon to ‘take the (radioactive) waters’ and having walked the 2km from camp to baths (very slowly, as it was quite warm) we paid the princely sum of 3500 HUF (£7.50) for a three hour visit to the Turkish Baths. We opted against the myriad of massage options available and headed to the pools themselves. The largest, and oldest, pool was beautifully decorated with mosaic tiles and sat under an impressive gold embossed dome. It was also empty, and not very hot. We spent about 30s in that one then explored the five other smaller baths to see if we could find an actual ‘hot’ one. Only one could be described as anything slightly toastier than luke warm so we spent a whole five minutes in that one, at the end of which we still had the place to ourselves. We came to the conclusion that the Turkish Bath experience wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and perhaps the cool radioactive water had put off everyone else too. Luckily our ticket gave us access to the outdoor baths too, so we headed outside through the connecting door to check it out. Here was everyone else! And here were some actually hot pools. We found a shaded area in a pool that was in the Goldilocks zone and spent the rest of our time soaking, sunning, soaking, sunning. At one point our general ‘people watching’ revarie was punctuated by the sight of a pair of face painted soldier, armed with machine guns, one dressed in fatigues and the other in camouflage gear, patrolling the pool area. This seemed a little extreme given the fact that we were pretty sure that there were no increased national security levels, and also slightly odd as they stood out like sore thumbs amongst the swimwear clad crowds. We thought it was unusual that they were happy to pose for photos with all and sundry until we went for a walk and discovered that the pool complex was hosting a ‘Military and Emergency Services Community Fun and Exhibition Day’ that included local TV coverage. It was all coming to an end as we discovered this, so no idea what else it involved. I was too embarrased to ask for a proper photo, so got an ‘on-the-hoofie’ instead.

Ace Number Two: The Valley Of The Beautiful Women, aka The Szépasszony Valley. Not only does this small wine region produce some of Hungary’s finest wines but the small picturesque horseshoe-shaped valley which hosts the cellars is situated an easy 1km walk from town (and fortuitously, only a mere 200m stroll from our camp). There are 200 cellars in all, carved into the rock sides of the valley and nearly 50 are open to the public, offering a myriad of wine tasting, wine drinking, wine buying and food eating options. The mature trees and steep sides of the valley offer shade on a sunny evening and it is perhaps the most genial and accessible wine tasting experience I have had to date. It was also a bargain. Six 100ml glasses of wine and three bottles to take away cost us only £30. The famed wine of the region is Egri Bikavér, aka ‘Bulls Blood’. This bold and robust red wine is always a blend of multiple varieties with Kékfrankos (no, I’d never heard of it either) as a major component. The ‘Bulls Blood’ name apparently originates from when the Hungarians unexpectedly and miraculously won a 16th century battle against the Ottomans. The legend says that the soldiers got their strength from drinking wine into which their womenfolk had mixed bull’s blood, and the name stuck. They also do a mean rosé.

The old town area of the city was very lovely and again was another place that was clean, tidy and well cared for. The city’s grandiose cathedral basillica, completed in 1836 and sporting some impressive Corinthian columns is apparently Hungary’s second largest religious building.

There was also a well preserved 17th C minaret, one of the three left standing in Hungary and one of the most northern remaining minarets left from Ottoman rule in Europe. Its associcated mosque no longer exists, but in 2016 a Turkish Muslim resident of Eger was permitted to call the Muslim prayer from its balcony, 327 years after the last call. Eger also sports the requisite castle on a hill. In 1552 it famously managed to resist attack and seige by a Turkish army of 35,000-40,000 soldiers. Despite being defended by a mere 2,100-2,300, the siege failed and the Turks suffered heavy casualties. A total of 1,700 of the defenders survived. After that Turks besieged the castle again in 1596, resulting in a Turkish victory. They had to have the last word, obviously. On our wanderings we criss-crossed the main square a few times and on one occasion happened upon the tail end of some sort of ceremony that I think had something to do with the high school graduating class. All the boys were in white shirts, black ties and black trousers, the girls all in white ballgown-style dresses. They had been doing some sort of dancing, which we missed, and then there were some speeches and many photos taken by proud parents. All around town there were USA-style ‘Class of 2024’ framed photo boards proudly displayed in various shops and office windows. It was great to see this milestone observed and celebrated by the whole town.

We had a very delicious meal out at a nationally renowned restaurant called Macok (pronounced Mah-chock, so not smutty at all). It is apparently Hungary’s 12th best restaurant yet our meal only cost the same as a decent pub dinner. There is a lot to love about Hungary.

After three nights in Eger we headed south to a place called Tiszaszölös. There was a National Park near here, Hortobágy, but it had limited camping and was more the sort of place one drives to and through to appreciate. There was a heatwave forecast for the next 4-5 days, so with temperatures between 32 and 37 deg C expected we decided to find somewhere to stay with some access to water. What we found was not a rustic lakeside or riverside camp, but a tiny private campsite with a very beautiful swimming pool.

It was not really close to any major attractions but we thought that a couple of days sat by the pool whilst it was uncomfortably hot would be a splendid way to waste our time. Owned by a Dutch couple called Rueben and Aneta, who had a very adorable dog called Benke, the property was about 2 acres, space for five vans, three B&B rooms in their house and two glamping trailers.

The place definitely had a ‘camping-in-Rueben-&-Aneta’s-garden-during-a-lazy-house-party-weekend-where-you-arrive-knowing-no-one-and-leave-two-days-later-than-planned-with-some-new-friends’ vibe. Our first evening on site co-incided with our hosts’ weekly Goulash Soup Evening.

Cooked over an open fire and served with bread at a long table, it was a great opportunity to meet our fellow campers. It was an international affair with Dutch, Belgians, Swiss and Germans as the other guests. They all spoke excellent English, the Dutch also spoke German, the German-speaking Swiss also spoke French as did the Flemish(essentially Dutch)-speaking Belgians and the conversation gloriously swirled around multiple languages, jokes being told several times in different tongues with us all appretiating the variously repeated punchlines. Sign language and wine helped too, of course. We managed to struggle out for a bike ride on our first day, taking in some of the epic paved bike path loop that circles the nearby Tisza river and lake.

The sleek surface of the path was to be commended, but there was a 2km, pot-holed, gravel road to get to it which majorly rattled the teeth given our suspension-free machines. After that outburst of activity, and with the heatwave established, we opted out of all physical activity/sightseeing/exploring and opted to sitting by, and in, the pool for the next few days. It was bliss.

Rueben had discovered a ground fridge cellar in his garden when he bought it several years ago. This brick built, bunker style room, half underground and covered with sod and grass would have acted as the family’s cool room in the past. He had restored it, converting it into his wine cellar where he also hosts wine tasting evenings. This was a thoroughly marvellous place to spend an hour or so at the end of a hot day, sipping wines and sharing stories. Rueben had learnt that, when she was a very young girl, his neighbour’s mother had been one of about 100 local people that had used the bunker as an air raid shelter one night to protect themselves from a Russian bombing raid. She was too old to visit it now that it had been restored, but she was very pleased that it was being looked after given how much it meant to the people of the village.

As well as the pool area, the site also had a great communal area for socializing, equiped with fans and mosquito nets and a beer and wine stocked fridge with an honesty system of payment. To (mis)quote Kevin Costner’s 1987 movie, The Field Of Dreams, “Build it and they will come”. Our hosts built it, we came and enjoyed it, we struggled to leave it. But eventually all good things must come to and end, so armed with the contact details of some new friends: Robert and Christine from The Netherlands, and Benedikt, Susanne & family from Germany, we said our goodbyes to everyone on site and begrudgingly drove away.

Our next stop was Pécs (pronounce Pay-ssh), Hungary’s fifth largest city. We had made this a long driving day (for us) and schlepped the 350km to the south west of the country. In doing this we had come close to, but not stopped, in Budapest. We had plans to return here in several weeks for a rendezvous with my Mum and Step-Dad, so we bypassed it this time. Our stop in Pécs was pinned on one important factor. Two weeks ago I had semi-randomly chosen the main post office here as the postal address for our 4th of July UK general election postal ballot papers to be sent out to. Bums we may be, but bums with a good sense of civic duty are we. We only had one night here, so our ability to vote rested on the efficiency of the UK and Hungarian postal systems….

We finally arrived at our campsite mid-afternoon, heatwave ongoing, and melted whilst we checked in with the grand-daughter of the family run business, Katinka. Luckily there were lots of mature trees so we selected a shady site and got settled, whilst continuing to sweat. The city centre was only a few km away so we opted to cycle in as this was going to be much cooler than walking or faffing around getting a bus. We easily located the post office, which was actually a rather grand old building called the ‘Postal Palace’. It was beautifully cool inside and devoid of any other customers. A variety of inactive clerks were sat at various windows which were arranged in a huge semi circle of counters. We approached one, had a difficult initial conversation using Google Translate, and were told to take a ticket at the entrance. Ticket taken we waited 30s then were called back to the same window that we had first approached. Comforting to know that idiotic beaurocracy reigns supreme wherever you are! We then attempted to have the same conversation with the same clerk, who then disappeared and returned with a colleague who could speak a little more English. After 10 minutes of us trying to explain that we had had two letters sent to this address post restante (a fairly internationally recognised concept) they advised us that we could arrange to have letters sent to this address to collect. Bingo! Now we just had to explain that we had done that 2 weeks ago. Finally, we understood each other and they disappeared for ten minutes to a back room with our passports in hand to check if the letters were there.

No they weren’t.

Oh well, we tried.

We then spent an hour or so exploring the centre of Pécs which was quite delightful. The ancient Old Town was another unexpectedly lovely mix of architectures, squares, old buildings, churches and mosques. The country’s oldest university is here as well as it being one of Hungary’s cultural centres. We went up to the cathedral which was another picturesque offering of pale, newly cleaned, stone overlooking a small square. We arrived just as a service had ended and as the cathedral emptied the square filled up with another batch of young people with their families. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and many of the girls were carrying bouquets of flowers. Again it looked like something to do with high school graduation. We waited for ten minutes or so for the crowds to clear before going inside. Unfortunately the man with the keys was turning lights off and ushering the stragglers out before he locked up, so we got no more than a quick peek of the interior before we were evicted.

We continued our wanderings a’bike but it was too hot to do much more than find a bar with shady outside spot with some breeze and sample a glass or two of something cold.. So we did that instead. Compared to the offerings in Germany, Poland and Slovakia, the Hungarian beer had been a bit underwhelming. Until we got to Pécs, where the local brew was very refreshing and revitalising. This late afternoon pit-stop gave us time to reflect on our failed attempt to vote, the unexpected beauty of this lesser known place and the opportunity to do a bit of people watching. The bar was hosting a book signing (genre unknown) whilst we were there and this seemed to attract an influx of student-types. They congregated self-consciously in a loose large group near us (despite oodles of space elsewhere), moving chairs, moving positions, moving tables, in fact doing anything except seemingly buying drinks or buying books. Oh, to be young!

We whizzed home with the warm wind in our hair and stopped at Lidl to get stuff for a cold platter dinner. No way any cooking was happening in this heat. In the morning our previously shady site had become a roasting inferno of morning sunshine so we ate our breakfast under a tree nowhere near Davide and awaited the arrival of the boss, her Grandma, whom Katinka had advised us yesterday would be around to collect our dues before we left. Grandma apparently spoke good German, as well as her native Hungarian, but no English. She did indeed arrive and then tried to charge us more than Katinka had quoted us, which was 500 HUF more than the exact money that I had brought to the office. I fixed her with a steely stare, showed her my fistful of Forints and said “Katinka” to her. That seemed to get the message across in a very un-British and brusque way and she aquiesced. Looking back, I realise that I was quibbling over £1.08, which is a bit tight, so I hope I didn’t get Katinka in trouble!

Pécs is quite close to the Croatian border, and that is where we headed next. It seemed a short stay in Hungary, but to paraphrase the well known words of Herr Schwarzenegger: ‘We’ll be back”.

9th June – 13th June 2024

Population about 5.5 milllion. Lots of mountains. Strapped to the Czech Republic in 1918. Various changes in status and a bit of Soviet communism between 1948 and 1989. Velvet Revolution ended communist rule of Czechoslovakia in 1989. Amicable ‘velvet divorce’ from Czech Republic in 1993. Joined EU and took on the euro in 2004. It’s word for ‘Hi’ is ‘Ahoj’ pronounced ‘Ahoy’, which is jolly. It is the the world’s largest car producer per capita, manufacturing 1.1 million cars in 2019. Who knew?

Our trip through Slovakia was brief and a bit of a blur. Brief as Slovakia is not a very big country, especially in the north-south dimension, and a blur because for much of our time here it rained cats and dogs. Our run of weather luck had come to an end. We were happily back to using Euros, but unhappily had another language to contend with. More unpronouncable words with a lack of vowels and odd accents. We started our Slovakian visit with a stop just on the other side of the Tatra Mountains, in small village called Stará Lesná. This whole area is criss-crossed with world class hiking trails and there were several close enough to our camp to be able to do some good loops. That, and the views of the mountains from the camp were (allegedly) amazing….

Nope.

We arrived in the rain, set up in the rain and spent the rest of the day sat inside looking out at the rain. The mountains were hidden in the low clouds and never made an appearance. The next day was no better, the forecast awful and any prospect of doing any hiking over the next few days was out of the window. The campsite was actually quite expensive (due to its location and ‘views’) so there seemed little point staying here and we left after only one night. Our next planned destination was a national park not far away called Slovensky Raj (Slovak Paradise). This is an area of the Carpathian Mountains with lots of forest, gorges and waterfalls and is another hiking hotspot. We hoped that it would live up to its name.

On the way there we stopped for provisions at a very familiar place: a Tesco superstore. It was huge compared with any supermarket that we had seen so far on this trip, it sold everything and anything, and compared to a UK version, it was deserted. It seems the Slovakians need yet to be trained to use shopping as a recreational activity. We restocked our supplies with plenty of familiar products, many in the same packaging as they have in the UK. Nick was optomistic, but then very disappointed to find that ‘HP sauce’ is not one of Tesco Slovakia’s stock lines.

Our next campsite was in a small national park settlement charmingly called Podlesok. The road in was narrow and it had been a job to avoid the ditches when confronted with fast moving oncoming traffic. We arrived in a dry weather window and although we had planned to stay for two nights the chap behind the desk would only let us pay for one night initially. Due to all the rain the grassy sites were waterlogged and all but one of the hiking trails were closed due to dangerous conditions. Hmmm. This was sounding ominous. We found the least boggy patch of grass to park on, plugged in and put the awning out just as our weather window closed.

The rain was back and the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. The coats, jumpers, jeans, socks and boots were back in service. We were ok, tucked up in our comfortable space, but we felt for the groups of tent campers, all in tiny pup tents. One group was a bunch of blokes who had rigged up a shelter using a tarpaulin strung between two cars. They were just drinking through it. The other was a group of families all with toddlers. They were grimacing through it, wishing they could drink.

The camp site had a laundry, so I decided to kill some time by washing the bedding and towels. This was a great idea until I discovered that on this wet, miserable and cold day the (only) (condenser) tumble dryer was not working. By then our only set of bedding was washed and, like everything else, decidedly damp. The drum of the dryer was turning, but not generating any heat. I walked the 200m down to reception in the driving rain to see what could be done, and the chap said that he would come up and look at it once he had a lull on the desk. I walked back to the laundry (in the rain) to wait for him, where I discovered that the machine was now seemingly functioning correctly, so I walked back to reception (in the rain) to give him the good news. It was working, but as anyone who has ever used a condenser tumble dryer will tell you, they are rubbish when it is very humid as they attempt to not only extract water from the clothes, but also from the adjacent 5km radius of atmosphere. It took the rest of the afternoon, and a fistful of euros, to get everything in the vicinity of ‘dry’ -Here endeth the protracted laundry tale.

The plus side of my faffing around was my discovery of the ‘Beer Machine’. Here, on the veranda of the camp kitchen/laundry area, was a machine that dispensed beer to anyone who wanted it, whenever they wanted it. €1.80 bought 500ml of very respectable quality pilsner and it accepted both cards and cash. There was a small home-printed sign sellotaped next to the machine which advised that alcohol was not to be bought by those under 18 years of age..that’ll stop’em, I’m sure… The rain finally eased in the evening and the beer machine helped everyone on the campsite cheer up a bit.

The next day we sat out some light rain in the morning with the prospect of the front clearing away by midday. Finally we could get out for a walk. We packed the usual picnic (ham and cheese sandwich with mayo and mustard, ready salted crisps and an apple to share), donned our coats, grabbed the Polskis and squelched ourway in the direction of the only open trail. The rain soon cleared as promised, and the afternoon turned out fine. Our trail started on a small lane, on which we encountered another Beer Machine, and then it headed up the Hornad River gorge, winding its way through a forest alongside the by now raging river. The path initially only gave us muddy puddles to contend with, but soon there were a few rocky sections that had a metal rungs and chain handrails to help us climb past them and then a ladder or two. After an hour or so we stopped for lunch and continued. Then it got serious.

We were confronted with a sheer rocky bluff that had metal grill steps embedded in the side of it, overhanging the river. They wound around the rock face, the curve hiding the extent of the terror ahead. Despite the chain handrail this spooked both of us. Nick, usually the more nervy of the two in these situations led the way slowly but only managed the first three or four steps before running out of courage. His comment was “No way, the next step looks like a grill off a BBQ. I’m not doing it. This is crazy.” I had no more courage than him, so we opted out and turned back. We had a very pleasant walk home and thus our planned 3-4 days of hiking in Slovakia was reduced to a two hour stroll and a ham and cheese sandwich.

That evening we had a very nice meal in the traditional Slovak restaurant next to the campsite. The only other diners left as we arrived, so this was also a private dining experience. Nick had meatballs and mashed potato and I had pork medallions and potato pancakes smothered in a very delectable wild mushroom cream sauce. Both dishes were delicious and definitely elevated beyond the expected rustic fayre. We also had a very drinkable bottle of red wine for the princely sum of €12. Slovaks should all be raging alcoholics given the beer dispensers and prices. Perhaps they are….

Our next stop in Slovakia was Spiš Castle. This hilltop monolith was built in the 12th century and up until 1464 belonged to the Kings of Hungary. It then passed into the hands of various influential families, was extended and modified, finally being destroyed by fire in 1780. It was gifted back to the country in 1945 and has been a UNESCO site since 1993. It looks like the sort of castle we are more used to: on a hill, made of stone, in a state of restored ruin. We free-camped in a carpark halfway up the hill which had a very fine view of the castle and spent a very pleasant hour or two wandering the ruins and its grounds (dodging more groups of school kids who this time all seemed to be armed with wooden swords and intent fighting duels with each other).

Later in the afternoon we strolled down the grassy path from the castle to Spišské Podhradie, the small town at its base. Here we visited a museum in a small historic synagogue which had a great photo exhibition of shots of both the castle from various angles and in various lights and a reportage series from a local Jewish wedding. Otherwise the town seemed a bit run down and there was not much to see so we walked back up the hill and waited for dark. The castle apparently looked great after dark when bathed in the yellow glow if its external uplighters. This unfortunately never happened and it remained resolutely un-uplit. I guess we can’t complain about the lost photo opportunities when we don’t pay the electricity bills.

Our carpark co-hosted a few other vans for the night, including a German couple who had a very cool looking truck camper, a smaller, more rugged version of Big Dave & Tin Can. Nick got chatting to them and had a quick guided tour inside. His verdict was that it was very sexy (and expensive), but lacked a lot of the space and comforts that Tin Can had, and Davide has.

So that was Slovakia for us, for the time being. Our wanderings will bring us back in a month or so, but in the meantime we are now off to Hungary.

6th June – 9th June 2024

The flatlands and benign rolling plains of Poland finally gave way to hills as we reached our final stop in this suprising country, the tourist town of Zakopane. Located in the very south, it is nestled in the shadow of the Tatra Mountains and is a popular hub for walkers in the summer and skiers in the winter. No doubt that this tourit town is busy with weekenders all year round as it is it an easy 2 hour drive, or 3 hour train ride, from Kraków and has about a bazillion eateries, bars, shops and lots of entertainment activities. We were still slightly ahead of the summer crowds so easily found a spot at one of the campsites on the edge of town and it was an effortless cycle down to the main pedestrian area in the centre. Again this place was awash with groups of school children who were maurauding around the tat shops and icecream stalls. Some enterprising street seller had managed to sell high quanties of annoying bird whistles to one group, thus maximising the noise levels of the sugared-up darlings and completely wiping out any residual mental health of their teachers, not to mention everyone else on the street.

We bought a hiking map and scurried home ready for a day in the hills the next day. The weather forecast wasn’t great, with rain and cloud expected in the morning but we pushed on regardless, packed the wet-weather gear, a picnic and headed off at about 10.30am. Our plan was to cycle the 3km up to the gondola base-station, ride the gondola to the top of the mountain and then hike back down. A bit of a cheat’s walk, or so we thought….

At the top of the gondola it was cloudy, wet and windy. All the warm clothes and coats went on and we faffed about for a bit hunting out the (actually quite well signposted) route down. Here at the top is the border with Slovakia, indicated with a bollard. We did the required thing of having a photo taken with a foot in each country and then started heading down hill.

Down, down,down, down, down, down. The weather soon improved, the layers came off and the scenery was beautiful, but the ‘path’ underfoot was harsh. More like small stepping stones than a formed route it required eyes down at all times and soon had the legs crying for mercy. The ‘proper hikers’, climbing up hill, sweaty and breathless, planning to get the gondola back down, might be forgiven for thinking that we were in less pain than them, but they would be wrong. It was brutal on the knees and calves. It took us three hours to get back to the base station and we were very pleased to see our bikes. It was still a great day, but when we got home and after a short rest, we cycled back to town and I purchased a pair of walking poles from one of the many ‘outdoor stuff’ shops. I had been thinking of getting some for a while and the day’s uneven terrain spurred me into action. They shall be henceforth known as the Walking Polskis, obviously.

The next day the sun reappeared and we had plans to do another walk. There was a loop from our campsite which headed up a gentle valley, over a saddle, then down the valley on the other side. It looked far less taxing than the mountain of yesterday. HAHAHAHA. Less taxing if our legs weren’t weak and whimpering for mercy after yesterday’s efforts. Paracetamol, brunch and some limbering up helped slightly, so we boxed on. Our route was quite a popular one, so there was a bit of human traffic, especially on the pleasant, mildy inclined valley sections. The saddle section was a b*&tch! Another offering of large stone steps up and down, hard on the legs and balance, even with my new Polskis. We endured and there might have been some swearing, but of course we had a marvellous time, and rewarded ourselves with icecreams once we had returned to civilisation. The next day the legs weren’t wimpering, they were screaming and for 48 hours we could do nothing ‘leg-orientated’ without involuntary outbursts of ripe language and sobbing. Even turning over in bed was difficult.

It was time to leave Zakopane, and Poland, and with no food in the house and with our sore legs we unsucessfully hunted for a supermarket on the way out of town (main one closed for refurbishment, others down odd one-way streets or with height restrictions/no parking), bought some diesel and LPG with cash to try and get rid of our remaining złoty and headed the short distance along hilly back roads towards Slovakia. With about £20 worth of cash to get rid of we kept our eye open for a shop or eatery as the border quickly grew ever closer and we became ever hungrier. A desperate foray into the last seemingly deserted Polish village on our route brought us to a small pizzeria/grill/bar with a nice big car park. It was just opening up as we arrived at 12pm and it felt like discovering an oasis in the desert. The manager was from Czechia and had met his Polish wife whist working in the UK. His English was excellent. We ordered a couple of breaded & deep-fried, ham & cheese-stuffed pork roll things served with chips and salad, and two coke zeros. ‘Breakfast’ of champions. Our bill, rather embarrassingly, was 2 zł (about 40p) more than the sorry pile of small notes and change that I emptied out of my wallet. We offered to pay the extra in Euros or only have one Coke, but he wouldn’t hear of it. The shame!

The place seemed to function as the local hostelry for the gentlemen of the village, as the two chaps that were there as we arrived were incrementally joined by about seven or eight others. There were convivial handshakes all round with each arrival and civilised imbibing of half-pints of pilsner. All were well turned out and, given that it was Sunday, had the air of a bunch of men given an ‘after-church-pub-pass’ by their wives to go and hang out with their mates from the village for an hour before lunch. After our meal, which was unusual yet delicious, we headed off, now more than adequately fuelled to continue our journey into Slovakia. Just as well we had dealt with our developing ‘hanger’ as I overruled the satnav (which to be fair, is occasionally awful at both the ‘sat’ and ‘nav’ parts of its duties) and sent us down a road that was going the right way, but then indicated a height restriction. This was technically about 10cm taller than we are, but it was not obvious whether this was a bridge or a tunnel, or what our ongoing options for turning around would be. So we bottled it and back-tracked, I ate humble pie -begrudgingly, of course- and we finally entered Slovakia.

Despite our ongoing searing lower limb pain, we had really enjoyed our days in the mountains and it had been a great final stop in Poland. We had had chance to reflect on our time here and the impression this country had made on us. These are our main thoughts:

1. Compared to the UK, Poland is quite big, quite flat, quite rural and quite quiet. Its population of about 36 million people, about half that of the UK, has about 25% more land area than the UK. Compared to NZ, Poland is quite big and quite flat.
2. Poland is very clean and well tended. We saw almost no litter and the homes and public areas all were tidy and well cared for. One day I even saw a council worker wiping bird poop off park benches. They are not big on mowing grass, however, and there are lots of ‘meadows for the pollinators’. It would drive my lawn-mowing enthusiast father insane!
3. Poland has great main roads and motorways. Some side roads are awful.
4. Poland loves block paving and will, if it can, seemingly block pave everything. They are very good at it and it looks great.
5. The Polish diet is vegetable light.
6. The Polish diet is pork and potato heavy.
7. The language is bonkers but most people will make a good bash at speaking English if you ask nicely. They also have funny money.
8. A lot of Polish people seem quite reserved and have ‘resting grumpy faces’, choosing not to engage with spontaneous eye contact or a smile unless forced to by a pair of weird tourists who gaily confront all passing strangers with a jolly ‘Dzień dobry!’ at every opportunity. They will mostly reply.
9. Most Polish men between the ages of 18 and 80 look like they could easily kill you. They are lean, with buzz-cut hair, clean shaven, cold-eyed and all look like they are home on leave from military service, or used to do military service, or wished they were doing military service. May it be noted that none of them made any moves to kill us at all. They were quite nice.
10. A Polish winter may best be avoided, but we sure can recommend visiting this amazing country in late spring.

4th June – 6th June 2024

A journey through this part of Poland would not be complete without coming to the town of Oświęcim (pronounced ‘Osh-vien-chim’), or Auschwitz, as it is better known. The museum and memorial sites of Auschwitz Camp 1, and Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz Camp 2 are not so much ‘tourist attractions’ as they are an essential physical reminder of one of the most heinous episodes in human history and a place that one must come to bear witness. Well that is how we felt, anyway. Up until now we had visited places from which the Third Reich’s ‘undesirables’ (not only Jews, but also political prisoners, Soviet POWs, non-Jewish Poles, Roma and others) had been rounded up and transported away, and read museum exhibits on how they were incarcerated in terrible conditions in concentration camps or exterminated in unimaginable numbers. Now it was time to see the worst of those places in the flesh. A major site of ‘The Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish Problem’. A place where so many innocent people were tortured and murdered. It was going to be a sombre experience.

The weather added to the mood. We packed up and left Kraków in the pouring rain which continued for the hour’s journey across country to the modest sized town of Oświecim, and we had checked in, set up camp and had lunch before it started to ease. Our campsite was the large and well tended lawn area surrounding the ‘Prayer and Dialogue Centre’. This provides affordable rooms and food, conference and meeting rooms to groups large and small, providing a multi-denominational space for discussion and reflection. We had an English language tour of Auschwitz booked for early afternoon and the entrance to the museum was only 1.5km walk from here. The rain fortuitously stopped as it came time for us to set off, but the cloudy gloom persisted.

There were understandably many people visiting the site and except for early in the morning and at the end of the day, all visitors have to join a tour. The groups were about 15-20 people each, so it was still quite intimate and we managed to get some photos without other visitors in them. Our guide, Christoph, was a serious chap of about 35 who delivered his deadpan narration in accented English via a transponder and headsets. I wondered whether doing a couple of tours of Auschwitz a day attracts the serious, whether it creates a level of seriousness in a person, or whether he wasn’t serious at all but that the job requires the appearance of seriousness. Probably a degree of all three.

The original camp, Auschwitz 1, is suprisingly close to the town of Oświęcim. Selected by the Nazis as an excellent location for their purposes, this pre-existing Polish army camp was central to the area of Europe they were hoping to ‘cleanse’ and it had much of the infrastructure they needed already in place. The much bigger Aushwitz camp 2, 2km away in Birkenau was later constructed from scratch once their operation had grown. There was a third camp in Monowice, 12km away that provided forced labour in a rubber factory. The museum is not traditional in the sense of being a building full of exhibits, but uses the space of the camps themselves to tell the story. This is aided by the knowledge of the guides, a judicious selection of amazing large scale photos, collections of the possesions of the victims such as shoes and suitcases, and the most macbre of all, a huge pile of human hair, removed after death. The long hair had a monetary value as it was sold to carpet and mattress makers. Gold teeth were also looted from the dead. One of the most moving exhibits was an urn containing a small sample of the mixed ashes taken from the enormous stockpile found here after the liberation of the camp.

In Auschwitz Camp 1 most of the deaths were caused by starvation and overwork, illness and death penalties metered out for ‘crimes’, such as someone else trying to escape. The unimaginable, large scale extermination of victims occurred at Camp 2, Birkenau. To be stood on the tracks where the trains pulled in, to be present in the space where hundreds of thousands of exhausted, hungry, terrified men, women and children poured off the putrid box cars to be lined up and go through ‘selection’ (by qualified doctors) where it was decided whether they were fit enough be worked to death or to go straight to the gas chamber, to see the ruins of the chambers and incinerators themselves, to experience the sheer scale of the place, it was overwhelming. If I believed in ghosts, the air would have be filled with a million silent screams.

Everyone should come here. However you feel about the holocaust, the reality of what happened here cannot be minimised or ignored or rewritten. Its history needs to stay alive to help humanity from repeating its horror, although it continues be be apparent that some humans seem to be incapable of compassion and empathy towards their fellow man.

We stayed an extra day here, enjoying the serene space of the Prayer and Dialogue centre gardens and soaking up the warmth of the returned sunshine, letting it dry everything out after the rain of the day before. We also took some time to cycle into the town centre of Oświęcim which is an otherwise normal town, occupied by normal people living normal lives. I wonder what it’s like to have a place like Auschwitz, and all its infamy, right on the doorstep?

A few days after we left Oświęcim we watched the 2023 movie Zone Of Interest. This is based on the family life of the Nazi Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolph Höss, his wife, Hedwig and their five children The family lived a fairly idyllic existance in a large house right next to the camp. So much of the movie was based on truth and fact and many of the details resonnated very loudly for us having so recently been on ‘the other side of the wall’ and knowing what we now knew. Their original house still exists as a private residence, although was not used for the filming due to its age. It was pointed out to us on our tour where we could see its roof from the location we were standing in the camp, the specially built gallows where Höss was executed for war crimes in April 1947.

We continue our travels and continue living our lucky lives even more aware and cognisant that happiness, health, peace, freedom and love should not be taken for granted.

30th May – 4th June 2024

For a couple of non-practicing Anglicans, we sure are finding ourselves a lot of Catholic people, places, parades and paintings as we progress through Poland. With about 75% of the population of about 38.5 million identifying as Catholic, it is definitely the dominant religion of the land and there is a seemingly infinite array of beautiful and impressive churches to explore and admire. Our travels are often fairly freeform, taking in some obvious tourist attractions whilst also happily happening upon the less conventional and slightly esoteric places and events.

This is how we ended up in the lesser visited town of Łowic (pronounced Wo-vich). The 30th of May, unbeknownst to us non-Catholics, was to be another big day in the religious calendar: The Feast of Corpus Christi. This is when Catholics celebrate the ‘Body of Christ’ and how mass, communion and taking the sacrament is central to their faith. I think. Sorry to all my Catholic friends if I have misinterpreted it. Corpus Christi is celebrated with a special mass and often a parade and in Poland it is a public holiday. Łowic has one of the most important parades in this part of Poland and as we happened to be passing we decided to stop and experience it. As it is not a classic way-point on the tourist trail the town does not have a formal camping site, but there was a carpark alongside the park where spending the night was permitted. We arrived the day before the celebrations and settled in. We thought that it might be busy as thousands of people reportedly travel to the town for the day, but there were no other campervans here. It was a nice spot, away from the main road, surrounded by parkland and would have been quite tranquil were if it was not, as we discovered the hard way, a popular evening meeting spot for boy-racers, motor bikes and people with loud voices. I slept ok thanks to a damn fine set of ear plugs, but Nick was awake most of the night. In the morning we wandered into town and followed the general drift of people, all dressed in their Sunday best, towards the old square and the basillica.

Here mass was underway in the church and was being broadcast to the gathering crowds by loud speakers. We stood amongst the melée waiting for it to finish and the parade to begin. Finally it did and there was a civilised crush to see the paraders who were mostly dressed in traditional Polish costume and carrying banners. The parade then took off -slowly- around the town, stopping at various other churches for further prayers.

By now it was lunchtime and we had worked up a hunger listening to lots of religious stuff in a language we didn’t understand, so we retreated to find a purveyor of a hot Polish sausage in a bun. Near where we were parked we had seen lots of stalls being set up earlier in the morning. Surely that would be the place! It came as a great disappointment to us that there were NO hot food stalls. All the traders were selling ‘stuff’ ranging from honey to handbags. The only food was a stall selling enormous piles of bagel-shaped breads either by the bag, or mini ones threaded on a string, like a high carb necklace. I suspect there is a traditional aspect to this being the only food on offer, in a ‘bread-symbolising-the-body-of-Christ’ sort of way, but we had hoped for a sausage. We headed back to Davide and made do with a sandwich. There was an schedule of Polish folk music performances in the afternoon, but we decided to head off, thus avoiding a second noisy night, and going to our next stop a day earlier than planned.

We headed south to the city of Częstochowa (pronounced ‘Chen-sto-hova’). This was well placed as a stop, and as that stop was going to include a Saturday morning, it also just happened to be a city with a Parkrun. (My travelling companion is warming to the concept!) We were vaguely aware that there was a church here that was home to a very old painting of The Madonna which had a swarthy complexion, thus known as ‘The Black Madonna’. We knew that pilgrims came to see it. We knew that the carpark of the monastery had a designated area for campervans and that it was cheap to stay here. What we hadn’t realised was that up to 5 million people a year make the pilgrimage to come here to see the painting, thus we accidentally visited Poland’s most holy and popular of pilgrimage sites. The carpark was enormous giving some indication of just how busy it can get here, but on our arrival it was 2/3 empty and all was ordered and civilised. Two night’s camping here cost us the grand total of 20 zł, about £4 in a compulsory ‘donation’, and this included all services and power. A bargain! Every 10 minutes there was an incomprehensible public service announcement over a tannoy, informing the newly arrived of something important, I am sure.

The painting probably originally came from Jerusalem and is likely darkened due to the soot from candles and being hidden for many years. Legend has it that it was painted by St Luke, maybe even on a section of the table of the Last Supper. The painting is here because in 1382, when it was already an important icon, it was being transported to a safe location and en route spent the night in Częstochowa. The next morning the horses pulling its wagon refused to move and so the icon was put in the care of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Paul at their monastery here called the Mount of Light, or in Polish, Jasna Gora, where it remains. She has been damaged and repaired over the centuries, and still has some battle scars on her face.

We walked the short distance up to the monastery on the evening that we arrived on our way out for dinner (more pork and potatoes), and the area was pretty quiet. The next day, however, we had a glimpse of just how busy this place can be. The Madonna is housed in a side chapel of the main basillica and is available to see for much of the day, except for an hour or so in the middle of the day when the painting is covered, presumably so that the monastery staff can have a break. At 1.30pm she is uncovered again and then there is a service in the chapel, broadcast on screen to the ante-chapel and the basillica. This is a popular time for people to visit. There is absolutely no crowd management or organisation of the flow of people anywhere on the premises. It was mild, spiritual bedlam. We got caught up in this rush to find a spot for the 1.30pm unveilling ceremony and found ourselves wedged into a corner of the chapel in the hot crowd. With no view, no idea of what was being said, and no religious feelings on the matter, we extracted and opted to come back later.

We filled the next few hours with a stroll down the 2km long main avenue through the city which links the monastery to the old square. This had a delightful, tree-lined, pedestrianised, central thoroughfare which was clean and well maintained and very charming. We rewarded our kilometers walked with a ‘lody’, which is Polish for icecream. I think that lody comes a close second to Catholisism in Poland. There are stalls and sellers everywhere, and seemingly every third person walking down the street or sitting on a bench will be tucking into a cone. A tall serving of soft scoop is the preference. No flakes or sprinkles required.

Back at the monastery the crowds had eased imperceptibly and we managed to get a peak at the Lady herself. A visit to see her is obviously a major moment in the life of a devout Catholic and it was interesting to witness this depth of feeling and faith in the people around us. There were people of all ages making their pilgrimages but there was definitely a skew to the older age group. There are many that make their pilgrimage here on foot, but, to quote The Lonely Planet, Poland, ‘many, many more come by coach from Kraków’. Boy, did they come by coach. Coachload after coachload after coachload of late middle aged people. It was quite a sight.

In the morning we were all organised to muster early and drive the 15 minutes to the Parkrun location slightly north of us. Unfortunately it was raining quite heavily at ‘decision making time’ and the radar didn’t look very positive for any improvement by 9am. I am no bad-weather-running-hero, so reluctantly opted to stay in bed a bit longer. Shame! Then the rain stopped and the sun came out just as it was too late to get there on time. Rats! We headed off at about 9.30am and had one of the most surreal experiences of this trip so far. Just as we pulled out of our parking spot we were engulfed by the disgorged passengers of a coach, intent on their goal. Not one of them made eye contact with us or made any effort to wait or give us a wide berth. Once the crowd had cleared we headed for the only exit of the carpark, which was the same as the only entrance. By now there were already hundreds of coaches parked up, with thousands of preoccupied pilgrims making their way throught the carpark, none of them acknowledging any (attempting to be) moving vehicles or making any eye contact with us. There were nose-to-tail coaches pouring into the carpark and we were trying to get out. There were no designated pedestrian walkways and absolutely crowd or traffic management. It was ridiculous to the point of hilarious. We finally made it out without having injured a distracted pilgrim or lost a wing mirror to a coach and escaped the city via a stop for laundry and supermarket supplies.

Our onward journey took us on to Kraków. This southern city is Poland’s second largest by population and one of its oldest. Situated on the Vistula River it has been an academic, cultural, artistic and economic hub for Poland and was its capital until 1596. It is also reputed to be one of Europe’s most beautiful cities and its Old Town and Wawel Castle were one of the first sites granted UNESCO World Heritage Status in 1978. Our camp was about 3km from the Old Town, situated on an amazing cycle route that ran along the river directly to the city centre.

After the invasion of Poland by the Nazis in WW2 Kraków became the location for Germany’s General Government and the sizeable Jewish community was forced into a walled zone called the Kraków Ghetto, from which many were transfered to concentration and extermination camps like Auschwitz and Płazow. The city was, however, spared from major bombing and destruction.

In 1978, the same year that the city was granted its UNESCO World Heritage Status, the archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla, was elevated to the lofty status of Pope, and thus Pope John Paul ll became the first non -Italian Pope in 455 years. He is still very much revered in Poland and there are many statues and images of him throughout the country, and many things named after him, like Kraków’ airport.

Wawel Castle looms over the Old Town from its perch on the river bank, and built of brick, as is usual in these parts, has the air of a fortified stately home, rather than a defensive stronghold, which is perhaps why it was repeatedly sacked and vandalised by the Swedish and Prussian armies over the centuries. There are many stories and legends associated with the castle, but its enduring one involves a dragon. It is said that the fearsome beast lived in a cave on the site where the castle is now built, and terrorised the people of the city by demanding offerings of cattle to eat, or eating people if no cattle were provided. There are two stories as to how he was defeated. In one a cobbler called Krak suggested a sheep be stuffed with sulpher and left out for the dragon to devour. The sulphur ignited in its belly, causing it to gulp down gallons of water from the River Vistula and then it exploded. The city rejoiced, Krak married a princess, built the castle and the city was named in his honour. In the other story the dragon appeared during the reign of King Krach who sent his two sons, Lech and Krak Jr to defeat the beast. They also came up with the ‘sheep stuffed with sulphur’ solution, but had a fight amongst themselves as to whose brilliant idea it was. This ended up with Lechs killing Krach Jr, who on his victorious return lied to his father, saying Krach had been killed in the battle with the dragon. The King discovered the truth, however and exiled Lech renaming the city for his Krach Jr. The castle is built atop some limestone caves, which in medieval times were used as a tavern and brothel, but now are part of the tourist trail, complete with a bronze firebreathing dragon sculpture. We opted out of the castle visit, mainly as there are at least five seperate areas all with seperate entrance fees but also as there were large crowds. We just admired it from the outside instead.

Our city-tripping took in the magnificent central square, Rynek Glowny, which at 200m x 200m is Europe’s largest medieval square and The Cloth Hall which is plonked in the middle of it. This started as an open air market and was repeatedly upgraded until its current gothic form was built in 1555. St Mary’s Basillica is on the square and apparently has one of the most spectacular interiors in all of Poland, including a set of colourful wall paintings behind the main altar that were dubbed by Pablo Picasso to have been the eigth wonder of the world. No, we didn’t see those either. Too expensive, too many school children! On the hour a bugler plays a refrain from one of the towers of St Mary’s, stopping mid-bar. This signifies the moment the original bugler was shot with an arrow, apparently. We cruised on around the streets, taking in the old buildings, a few more churches and a tower or two. Where the original city wall once stool the land has been retained as a city park, the Planty. This hugs the majority of the Old Town in a horseshoe shape and is a fine place for a stroll, or would be if it wasn’t raining. We decided to call it a day mid afternoon and cycled home getting a bit wet, but with plans to revisit the city later in the day for dinner.

By 6pm the sun was shining again and we headed back to the Old Town. I know that I bang on about it, but I love to visit places where easy and safe cycling is given equal importance as pedestrian pathways and roading. The drivers were all so polite and patient and the cyclists stuck to the designated trails and observed the specific bicycle traffic signals. It makes getting around a pleasure, especially on our very fabulous little e-bikes. By the time we got back to Ryny Glowny the crowds were starting to sit down to drink and eat and the square was abuzz with outside dining, all the retaurants’ parasols being a uniform cream colour. We procured ourselves beer aperitifs in a sunny spot off the main square then went for dinner in a restaurant that had good reviews for its traditional Polish fayre. If you think that that might feature large quantities of various pork products, two types of potatoes, pancakes and a scattering of perogies, you’d be so very right. We could not resist ordering a ‘platter-for-two’, which of course could have fed four but that we very nearly finished between us (having only failed to eat the enormous pile of pickles and some pancake-type things). The waitress, obviously very accustomed to providing take out containers for the meaty leftovers was slightly astounded that we didn’t need one. The photos speak for themselves and we were far to full to even consider a digestif, so we slowly rode home in the fading light, the city looking glorious and us both feeling very happy.

The only tourist monument that we paid to go and visit in Kraków was the nearby Kościuszko Mound. This is quite literally a mound of earth, built atop a hillside looking down on the city. There is a spiral walking path winding up around it to the top where there are good views of the city. The steep drop-off is unguarded by a rail and people are protected from falling off it by….well, I guess by being careful and not being idiots.

It was constructed by the people of Kraków between 1820 and 1823 to celebrate and commemorate the life and contribution of one of their national heros, General Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817). This man, with humble origins and of small physical stature, was a soldier and military engineer, studied art in France, was a general in both the Polish and American armies, fought in the American Revolutionary war where he also designed fortresses and met presidents, fought in the Polish-Prussian war of 1792 and was architect and Commander-in-Chief of the Uprising in Poland in 1794. He was a a rare beast of his time, not just for his bravery, but also for his committment to equality for all people, regardless of sex, race, class or faith. The mound was built by the people and contains soil brought from the battlefields of the Polish Uprising, and in 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the American War of Independance, it was supplemented by soil from American battlefields where he also fought. The base is now surrounded by a fortress, and numerous restorative efforts have been needed as the mound has suffered from instability after heavy rain. It is however, a fine and unusual monument to a seemingly splendid chap of which the co-located museum taught us all about. Bravo Tadeusz!

We had cycled slowly up the hill to the mound, even with the aid of electricity, and then had an easy freewheel all the way down, trying not to melt our brakes. We headed back into town and beyond the Old Town to nearby Kazimierez. Founded in 1335 this had long been an independant town with Christian and Jewish communities living side by side, but in 1494 King Jan Olbracht expelled Jewish people from within the city walls of Kraków, rapidly increasing their numbers in Kazimierez. They formed a large community in the northeast sector of the town, with the two communities separated by a wall. Over the coming centuries Jews facing persecution in other areas of Poland found safety in Kazimierez and the Jewish culture became the dominant influence on the city and making it the most important Jewish centre in Poland. As previously mentioned the Nazis managed to nearly annihilate the Jewish population here during the war with only a few thousand of the 65000 inhabitants surviving. The area became very rundown after the war but in recent years it has regained some of its Jewish character with kosher restaurants, cultural music and museums. Much of its renaissance was in no small part down to Steven Spielberg choosing it as a location for the filming of Schindler’s List in the early 1990s. Although it was not the setting of the real life events of the movie, Schindler’s factory and the Płazow extermination camp are no more than 6 km from here. It is now a charming area with original cobbled streets, many restaurants, street art, original buildings and not much traffic. We wandered, saw a small area of the Ghetto and found a cafe that served spectacular, freshly filled bagels for a late lunch before we headed home.

Kraków had been an utter delight, with our riverside camp and the cycle path contributing to our enjoyment. Our final night and morning were quite rainy, but nothing that earplugs to aid sleep, and a poncho to stay dry whilst getting ready to leave could not remedy. Onwards, with windscreen wipers.

23rd May – 29th May 2024

History buffs will know how intimately involved the city of Gdańsk was to the start of the World War 2 but many, including me, will not be aware of how focused the Nazis were in their desire to secure this strageic port city as part of their invasion of Poland, or what a pawn it was in the relationship between the Third Reich and the Soviets. It was here that one of the first battles of the war was fought, and in an unlikely place, the main Post Office building. The Nazis, believing (correctly) that it was acting as as a base for the undercover operations of Polish intellegence operatives, attacked it in the early hours of 1st Sept 1939 at about the same time they were hurling shells from the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein at the nearby military outpost at Westerplatte. The 50 ‘Post Office workers’ who just happened to be quite well armed and good at fighting, managed to hold off the detatchments of German police and elite SS units in a seige lasting 17 hours, providing a David and Goliath narrative, but without the victory unfortunately. They eventually had no choice but to surrender and predictably the survivors were executed by firing squad along the side of the building. The facade of the building, which now houses a museum, survives with bullet damage still visible and there is a fabulous memorial sculpture outside.

There are a few other things that we wanted to see/do whilst we were here. The first was to see the famous Gdańsk shipyards. It was here in 1980 where organized resistance first challenged Communist dictatorship in eastern Europe. A strike by 17,000 ship builders saw Solidarity (Solidarność), led by shipyard electrician Lech Wałęsa, recognised as the first non-Communist trade union in the then Soviet Bloc. The move was one of the first successful steps in a campaign of civil resistance that contributed to the eventual collapse of Communism across eastern Europe. He was Time magazine’s Person Of The Year in 1981, was award a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected president of Poland in 1990, being the first democratically elected president in Poland since 1926.( He only stood for election as he was exasperated by the views and allegiences of other candidates and his election slogan was ‘I don’t want to, but I have to’.) He saw Poland modernised, facilitated its membership into NATO and the EU and continued to positively contribute to the country’s future prosperity long after his presidency ended in 1995. Despite an abrasive leadership style and some quite conservative political views, he was the type of leader that today’s world is seriously lacking. He is now 80 and hopefully living out a splendid retirement with his wife.

Seeing the shipyards did not require any sort of special journey as that was where our campsite was located. There was space for about 8 vans lined up on a dockside near a small boat yard, surrounded by a moderately dystopian collection of abandoned warehouses and disused cranes. There were some active docks with large cargo ships being loaded and unloaded and fledgling signs of the revitalisation of some of the dilapidated buildings. Otherwise it was pretty quiet around us, until about 3-4am in the morning that is, when it became apparent to us that one area of warehouses near us has been converted into a drinking & partying district and drunk revellers made their way home past us, laughing, shouting and shrieking as they went. It was otherwise a great spot to watch the shipping channel, the yachts and motor boats coming in and going out of the marina and it was only a fifteen minute walk from the old town. The grittiness was part of its charm.

The other thing to do here is to visit the amazing World War Two Museum. This is housed in a very modern, eye-catching building, although mostly below ground level, and tells the story of the conflict in a way that focuses on the human toll of the war, rather than the military campaigns. It also is incredibly enlightening on how big a price the Polish people payed both in lives lost, its destroyed culture and infrastructure, and the loss of its self governance. The statistic that hit me hardest was the ‘percentage of the population killed or significantly wounded’. USA 0.9%, UK 3%, Poland 21%. It underwent such a program of ethnic cleansing that Poland is now still one of the most homogenous populations on the planet. The museum was incredibly moving and a highlight of the trip so far, in a moderately depressing way.

As for Gdańsk itself, the old town was quite lovely. It mostly escaped damage from Allied bombing but at the end of 1944 almost a million refuges from East Prussia poured into the city hoping to escape the Soviet Army. As the Soviets advanced a final battle raged and 90% of the city centre was destroyed by shelling and fire. It is a testament to the resurrection of post-war Poland that has seen the city rebuilt so impressively. It is hard to believe that most of the beautiful ‘old’ buildings are not original. The most impressive of these is St Mary’s Church, a massive brick construction that commenced in 1343, that is one of the two or three biggest brick churches in the world. Apparently. It is huge.

We had our usual day of ‘walking around a lot’, exploring nooks and crannies. Unfortunately this was interrupted by a spell of rain, for which neither of us was prepared for, so we took shelter in a coffee house. Fortuitously for us this served a fine version of the local cheesecake for whick Gdańsk is renowned. ‘We didn’t want to, but we had to…’ We also partook in our first Polish meal whilst here. The obligatory perogies were sampled (dumplings filled with a variety of fillings, mostly meat and cabbage) and other delicious plates of food involving various iterations of meat, potatoes and cabbage. It was very tasty, very filling, and very good value.

Our day to leave Gdańsk was Saturday and I managed to sneak in another ParkRun on our way. There are two runs here and we got up early and headed to the one to the southwest of the city centre in a suburb called Południe. It was in an area of parkland containing two lakes with the course being one and a half loops around them. The advertised parking was not an option as it was gated residents parking for the local appartments. We managed to find a corner of another carpark nearby to wedge ourselves into and went off to find the start. There were lots of long, lean club runners bouncing around, seemingly doing 3 0r 4 laps as a ‘quick warm up’, thus making me feel quite inadequate. It was hot already by 9am and my performance was no where near as good as last week’s PB in Świnoujście. It was a good job that the route was obvious because here there were no marshalls and no signs at all out on the course!

After Gdańsk we headed south, finally leaving the Baltic coast behind us and heading inland, vaguely following Poland’s most important waterway, the Vistula river, in Polish the Wisła, pronounced ‘Viswa’. We were heading to Malbork, ostensibly an itty-bitty place with nothing to see except it happens to be the site of the enormous Castle of the Teutonic Order of Malbork, the largest castle in the world measured by land area (52 acres), and a UNESCO World Heritage site. So there is definitely something to see here. It was constructed from handmade bricks over a period of 132 years and was completed in 1406, at which time it was the largest brick castle in the world. The Teutonic order were very much like the Knights Templar. Warrior monks who seemed to be creative at combining the teachings of Christianity with battling their enemies for power, territory and wealth. The castle changed hands many times over the centuries being variously occupied by Poland, Sweden, Prussia and Germany. Having undergone a long restoration in the 1800s it was significantly damaged again in WW2, and further by a fire in 1959. Another long restoration spaning 60 years was completed in 2016 and it is now absolutely magnificent.

We took a small detour off our vague trajectory to visit Malbork and it was well worth it. The entrance ticket for the castle included a very good audioguide, which walked us through a quite epic tour, talking us through the vast labyrinth of rooms, staircases and gateways. It automatically moved on to the next passage of information as we moved between stations and even though it was quite busy, everyone was moving in the same direction at about the same pace so it never got congested. Genius. Most impressive was the central heating system. Like the Romans, they had built underfloor heating ducts that were fed by hot air from furnace fires burning in lower levels. Far toastier in the winter than a damp, stone-built Scottish castle with a small log fire in the corner. We had a couple of nights here, our campsite having a great view of the castle across the river, an easy stroll away.

Next on the ‘wandering-south-through-Poland’ section of our travels was the city of Torún. Another place we had never heard of. Situated directly on the sandy banks of River Vistula and home to about 200,000 people, the old town of Torún is one of Poland’s oldest cities. It was first settled in the 8th century and then expanded in 1233 by our old friends, the Teutonic Knights. A lot of history happened, the city passed between lots of different factions and countries and finally was restored to Poland after WW 1. Although its people suffered many atrocities during the war, Torún’s buildings did not suffer any damage as a result of either of the world wars. It is now another UNESCO World Heritage Site with large sections of intact city wall, several beautiful churches, a ‘leaning tower’ (nowhere near as impressive as Pisa) and many surviving Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings, none of which I took any photos of.

Its most famous son is Nicolaus Copernicus. Born in 1473 he was a polyglot, a polymath, obtained a doctorate in canon law, was a mathemetician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, govenor, diplomat and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money, and in 1519 he formulated a key economic principle. But his life’s work was the writing of a book in which he formulated (quite correctly!) that the earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around the earth. The book was published just before his death at the age of 70 in 1543 and it made a pioneering contribution to the scientic revolution. Makes one feel a trifle ineffectual, does in not?

Torún’s other contribution to Polish culture is gingerbread. Made here since the 1300s with excellent growing land for the wheat and a good supply of honey from the surrounding villages, it has become an important part of the history of this country. So much so, that a 17th-century epigram by poet Fryderyk Hoffman speaks of the four best things in Poland: “The vodka of Gdańsk, Toruń gingerbread, the ladies of Kraków, and the Warsaw shoes”. We bought a packet and ate it whilst sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree in the main square. It was tasty but a bit dry and would be much enhanced by a quick dunk into a cup of tea.

This place was also crawling with many large groups of school children, bused in from who knows where. In one tense moment we got wedged between two groups moving in different directions down a narrow side street. It was noisy, there was no room to manouver, none of them were looking where they were going. It’s a miracle we got out of there alive……

17th May – 23rd May 2024

It was only a 30km drive to get to Poland, which was still on the island of Usedom. The only thing that told us that we had arrived was a signpost informing us of the various different speed limits for different vehicles in different areas, in Polish of course. Here was our first exposure to a language of which we knew nothing. Many of the rules of pronounciation that we ar familiar with were thrown out of the window, decorated with little accents, strikethroughs, dots and the odd tail. They have a total of 17 letters and letter combinations that are unknown to English speakers. We were in trouble! Luckily many Polish people speak some, if not excellent, English, and as previously mentioned, having Google Translate is like having a Babel fish. (Google this too if you have never read Dougla Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy). We did not have plans to go very far today, only to the town just on the other side of the border, Świnoujście. Roughly prounounced ‘Schvin-oo-jzay’. Here we initially tackled two immediate tasks. Doing laundry and getting some cash. Laundry was easy. The internet directed us to a nice modern laundrette which took card payments, provided all its instructions in English and had a nice big car park right next door. Perfect. In the meantime Nick had to take a 10 minute walk to find an ATM, and having ‘hunter-gathered’, returned to his washer-woman with his catch….a fistful of funny money. Poland has retained its currency, the złoty (pronounced ‘zwoh-teh’), since joining the EU in 2004. One złoty is equal to about 20p and I have yet to see any coins smaller than that. Change is often a bit arbitary and prices seem to be always rounded up (never down) to the nearest whole zloty if paying with cash. Who are we to complain? How are we to complain???!

Chores done we found a campsite about 2km from the town centre at the marina. It looked out onto the shipping channel which gave access to the town’s rather unexpectedly busy port. Świnoujście is a major ferry terminal for the many massive ferries that cross between Sweden and Poland and many other freighters that carry cargo across the Baltic, thus providing an important link between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. It also has purportedly one of Poland’s best beaches, also touted as it’s largest and longest. The town was always regarded as a health resort, but in recent years it has seen an influx of serious money and the building of many large, global brand hotels, appartment blocks and a rather swanky new promenade lined with restaurants, shops and bars. This new strip is built a block inland from the beach offering shelter from the omnipresent cool breeze coming off the Baltic. It may be sunny, but the wind chill can be significant. We didn’t really know what to expect of this place but found it quietly humming with the small crowds of shoulder season. It was clean and what wasn’t brand new was well maintained and cared for. There were dedicated cycle paths and walkways everywhere and, the yardstick by which all places should be measured for civility and respect, there was zero dog sh*t. I even saw a council contractor wiping bird poop off park benches.

We had an outing to the famed beach and it was quite epic. A vast expanse of white sand dotted with people most of whom either had all their clothes on or who had deployed their wind breaks. The glorious sunshine was not enough to counter the relentless cool breeze. We attempted to ‘relax with a book and soak up some rays’ but it just wasn’t quite warm enough. The locals know this and were still all wearing coats. It was only us tourists, mainly Poles and Germans, who were determinedly willing summer to be here. The Baltic coast does deliver a summer. It’s short and sweet – July and August only. Non negotiable. Otherwise, put your clothes back on and find a sheltered spot to sit in. And whatever you do, don’t even think about going swimming……

Our trip to Świnoujście coincided with a Saturday, and that meant that I was able to do another ParkRun. Number 2 on my ‘Not-A-ParkRun-Tour’ tour of Europe. The course was 2 laps through a section of a rather lovely tree-filled formal park, only a hop-and-a-skip (on an electric bike) from camp. Here there was no helpful welcome briefing in English, no marshalls out on the course and no yellow signs with direction arrows marking the route. Instead the course had been permenantly signposted with some rather subtle ParkRun signs, often hidden in the foliage so it was more a case of ‘follow the leader’ to find the way. I found myself running alongside a chap who was a bit older than me, and luckily knew the way. It soon became apparent that we were matching each other stride for stride and so we struck up a conversation of sorts. He was Polish and spoke some German, but no English, so I murdered some very rusty school level German to try and chat with him. Running with my new pal, Irek, delivered me my ParkRun PB of 31m26s, and at the end he told me (via Google translate) that he was ‘happy that we had found each other in the crowd’ (of 39 runners). I understood his sentiment.

Back at camp there was the ongoing amusement of the constant procession of ferries and ships going by with the added entertainment of watching the tugs and pilot boats doing their work. The ferries were enormous from our conservative distance across the channel but it got quite exciting when one was moored up on the dockside right alongside the campsite. No idea why it was here but it had arrived and off-loaded so I guess it was waiting for a delayed embarkation slot. It was quite a spectacle. No safety barriers errected here, no, just a thin tape to indicate where you couldn’t approach. I’ve been on large ferries and seen cruise ships what I thought was ‘up close’ but being so close to such a massive vessel on the dockside was quite remarkable. Mildly amusing was the fact that just prior we had been watching some fellow campers manouvre themselves into ‘the best’ positions with water views along that section of dockside whilst simultaneously annoying each other in mini battles for territory. The ferry eclipsed it all, and then filled the air with the hum of its generators, even after the engines were turned off. What’s the Polish for Schadenfreude……?

By morning it was gone and the Marine Shipping website advised that it had sailed at 0130. I’m not sure how it left without disturbing us. It was time for us to go too and we continued eastwards along the coast, or the ‘Polish Riviera’ as I have dubbed it. Our next stop was in another beachside resort town called Meilno. Our route there was mostly on a main road that is in the process of being upgraded from a single carriageway that passes through the towns and villages to a snazzy, new dual carriageway. This meant that the journey was 50% fast and smooth and 50% slow and lumpy, with roadworks. There is a lot of freight on this road and in the summer it must also be the route for all the holiday makers coming to the beach resorts. It will be a relief to everyone when it is finished. The final 20km or so of our journey was on a very pot-holed minor road and it felt like Davide was going to be shaken to bits. We did arrive in one piece, selected a campsite with a view and settled in. Meilno is home to another glorious expanse of sandy beach that stretches for miles. As a non-port town it was developed in the post war, communist era as a resort town where ordinary folk could come and have a holiday with state provided accomodation and entertainment. The legacy of that origin lives on as the town has continued to cater to middle-of-the road Polish families and there are countless small holdiay appartments, hotels and cabins. The ‘strip’ was inhabited by a parade of identikit, budget restaurants serving affordable menus of exactly the same food: Kebabs, pizzas, sausage and chips, chicken and chips and fish and chips -substitue mashed potato on request. The tourist tat shops all sold exactly the same plastic chaff and there was a scattering of fairground type rides and some large marquees set up containing arcade games and penny-pushers, or should I say ‘zloty-pushers’? There were a few people around, but again, despite the fact it was a hot, sunny Sunday, it felt quite empty. This is another town waiting for the onslaught of Summer proper. Meilno sits on a narrow isthmus between the coast and a large lake, and this was our view. It would have been the perfect place to break out the paddleboards if it hadn’t been blowing a consistant 20 kph for the entirety of our stay here. Another day.

There was a lovely walking path along the beach front, including a long section of boardwalk, and the ubiquitous bike paths and walking tracks along the lake shore too. This made for a nice loop to walk, and so we did. The beach itself was dotted with a few folk but there was no-one in the water. We tested the temperature.

It was a refreshing 10 deg C. Baltic by name, Baltic by nature. Polish people have a reputation for being quite stoic. This is one of the reasons why, I think. They are made to swim in the sea when they come here on their summer holidays. A highlight of our time here was calling into a roadside seller of smoked fish. The smell lured us in we passed as the smoker was open and cooling and we couldn’t resist buying a few pieces for our dinner. It was delicious.

Next on the journey was the Pomeranian town of Łeba, pronounced ‘Webah’. This is another coastal resort, similar to the others, but it has an ace up its sleeve. It is next door to one of the jewels in Poland’s crown, The Slowinski National Park. This covers an area of nearly 200 sqkm with forest, a large lake and about 32km of Baltic coast. It’s main feature is a large area of sand dunes that are shifting continually east by about 10m/year. It is one of the few places in the world where dunes meet living forest. There is apparently much wildlife to see here, although our only sighting was a slightly mangey fox that had obviously been habituated to humans by being fed.

Less ‘nature-y’ is this area’s history as a site for long-range rocket testing in the war. Along with the V1/V2 rocket program in Peenemünde, there was a lot of impressive ordnance flung off into the Baltic from this bit of coast, its infamy being explained in a slightly tired, open air museum half way along the path to the dunes.

Our stopping place here was the rather euphamistically titled ‘Soul Camp’. It was a (nearly) lakeside, grassy site with several (empty) A-frame type cabins, a (cold) pool, a (closed) bar/foodtruck, an (unmanned) office, an interesting (lock-free) unisex shower hut and space for about eight campers with only one other van here when we arrived. There was a number to call on the reception door, but no-one answered so I sent a text and we settled in. We never did see any staff here. I eventually got a text back to say leave the cash payment in a lock-box when we left, and so, after two peaceful days, we did. The few other Germans that were here did the same thing. Seems a very relaxing way to run a business.

The national park entrance was an easy 5km cycle from camp, and then another 5km through the forest to the dunes along a very elderly and very uneven concrete road (apparently constructed using POW labour). It was very beautiful, although a bit of a bone-rattler as our bikes don’t have any suspension. There are no vehicles allowed in the park except for electric golf cart style buses which made it very peaceful….except for the hoards of children. This was our first exposure to the phenomenon of ‘Polish School Trip Season’. From here and now, whenever there has been something or somewhere of note to visit, there are coach loads of backpack-wearing children, of all ages, being marched around in loose crocodile formations. The young ones are all a-chatter and excited, the teenagers are trying simultaneously to look cool and surly, and naturally group themselves into emos, jocks, geeks and jokers. Kids are the same the world over. We shall henceforth be spending our time trying to avoid them. Also, no German Shepherds were allowed in the park, although a nearby sign indicated that frogs were permitted.

We cruised into the park, past the school groups, who were being forced to walk at least one way, and having stopped to peruse the rocket museum and survived a visit to a porta-loo, we headed to the dunes, where we saw the fox, tied up the bikes, took off our shoes and hit the sandy hill.

They really were quite amazing. The higher we climbed the breezier it got and by the time we reached the highest point with the best view it was quite blowy and not an ideal place for our planned picnic. I guess we had failed to consciously acknowledge the basic concept of the mechanism of ‘shifting sand dunes’ happening as a consequence of a stiff wind. We descended, dodging school children, some unable to resist the urge to roll downhill, and found a moderately sheltered spot in which to eat our sandwiches with a reduced risk of grit b’twixt our molars or embedded in our corneas.

Łeba was bigger and a bit fancier than the other coast towns that we had visited, but again felt quite subdued and waiting for the craziness of summer. I can imagine that in peak season ‘Soul Camp’ isn’t quite so tranquil, and doesn’t have the same ‘let yourself in and make yourself at home’ vibe. After two nights here we headed off. Next stop Gdańsk.