Had a reasonable night in our grotty motel, well we didn't seem to catch anything which counts as a real success!
Passed on the supplied breakfast and did our own thing. This involved sparking up 'Big Thunder' on our balcony (ooooerr, very posh. Errrr, no) to boil water for tea and solids were cereal with dried milk and local Jaffa CAKES
Fuelled up, we wheeled Disharmony II out of her overnight lair and started out at around 09:30.
Today's plan is for us to reach Jedrzejow, Poland en route to Krakow. This will (hopefully) be our last stop before reaching Krakow on Sunday.
This will be a major double milestone as arriving in Krakow will be halfway through our planned number of days and we will log our 2000th mile during the day's cycling. Woot bloomin woot!
We easily found our way out of Opatow, picked up Route 74 and travelled due west towards Kielce 30 miles away.
The weather today was very hot and sunny with no repetition of the afternoon storms of the past couple of days.
The first 30 miles seemed to take forever. The scenery was lovely and traffic very light. However, an aspect of this did slow us down and that was the blimmin hills.
These plus a very gusty cross wind and too many miles in our legs from the past few days, had us crawling along (or so it seemed).
Eventually we reached Kielce and rapidly found our way through the town and out of the other side.
We had our second stop of the day on the outskirts of the town and refuelled with pop and choccy. We were drinking more fluids as temperatures were much higher than of late.
Sadly neither of our two stops yielded the much needed daily ration of CAKE.
Back on the bike, we then turned due south along the E77-7 heading for Jedrzejow.
The turn had the benefit of the wind moving around onto our backs and we now had the mother (and father) of all tail winds.
Unfortunately, this only lasted 20 or so miles before we arrived at our destination for the day.
We slow cycled through the town looking for the day's digs and ended up biking straight out of the other side for a mile or so when we came across the hotel.
First impressions were good, though it looked deserted/shut. This suspicion proved unfounded and we booked into to a very sizeable suite and settled down for the remainder of the day.
Things got a little busier later when a Polish wedding party arrived to celebrate the happy couple's nuptials.
We felt a little out of place, so walked back into the town for yet more pizza. Seems the only restaurants open in these parts serve pizza, pizza or pizza.
After our Billy Bunter spread, we took a quick spin around their branch of Tesco (no kidding, just like the real thing) then walked back to the hotel where the party was now in full swing.
Today we knocked out an extremely hot total of 63 miles and 560m of ascent. Total trip 1953 miles.
More Southerly ramblings to follow.
Back soon. Miles & Tracey.
