28 & 29 July 2008

Monday 28 July 2008

Rest day in Krakow. The day dawned hot and sunny again, bit of theme developing here.....

Today we had elected to take a side trip to the Auschwitz memorial museum and concentration camps.

Those that have been will know what a harrowing experience it is and how difficult putting this into word is.

Suffice to say, it is very difficult to comprehend the extent of mans' inhumanity to man and this all happened within a generation.

We spent most of the day at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz Birkenau where the majority of the prisoners were kept (read 'processed').

On our return to Krakow, we had a very nice meal at an Argentinean restaurant which we rounded off with Argentinean Pancakes. Be assured, these are just like normal pancakes and nary a mention of the Malvinas!

A very enjoyable day off. Back to the grind tomorrow.

No miles ridden and no height gained. He he.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Today is our last full day in Poland. Our plan is to ride approx. 60 miles south from Krakow to Zakopane on the Polish/Slovakian border.

After a humoungous Ibis breakfast we winched our straining bellies onto Disharmony II and set off at the sprightly hour of 09:00....straight into the Krakow rush.

The day was set in the now familiar pattern of very hot and very sunny.

Throughout we were accompanied by the three H's; Hills, Heat and Horrible Traffic.

We dodged the traffic along the main E77-7 and subsequently Route 47 only stopping for lolly and bum breaks every hour and a half or so.

Today was the hilliest so far and this plus the heat knocked the stuffing out of us. Fortunately, we were fresh from our rest day so were able to still make our planned destination.

As a testament to steepness of the ups and downs, we recorded another trip highest speed today; 46mph!!

We arrived at Zakopane at around 16:30, called into Tourist Info to find where the camp site was and cycled a couple of extra miles to our preferred choice.

YES! We are back in the tent tonight (by choice). Campsite quite busy but large enough to absorb the numbers booked in.

Miles did a bit of tandem fettling whilst Tracey showered. He then spent 45 minutes removing all the post fettling tandem filth.

Dinner was eaten at the site café (quite nice) followed by blogs, notes and an earlyish night.

Tatra's tomorrow, we can feel our collies wobbling......

Today was a real grind with the horrendous traffic, heat and hills. We knocked out a total of 67 miles and 1425m of ascent! Total trip 2070 miles.

More Southerly ramblings to follow.

Back soon. Miles & Tracey.

27 July 2008

Sunday 27 July 2008

Breakfasted at our hotel that was once again deserted after all the frivolity of the previous evening.

On our way down, we heard such a commotion we thought 2 dozen guests were trying to check out and were all querying their bills simultaneously.

Turned out, the 3 hotel kitchen staff were having a very high volume discussion about something obviously very important. This continued throughout our breakfast and had us on our way sharpish with the beginnings of headaches...

Our plan today is to reach Krakow, Poland a ride of about 50 miles. This will be followed by our scheduled rest day which we are both looking forward to as the legs are starting to feel a little heavy.

Weather once again very hot and sunny - scorchio! Wind, either across us or somewhere on our backs.

We easily found our way on to the E77-7 and followed this south westerly all the way to Krakow.

Though the planned mileage for today wasn't particularly high, no one mentioned the flipping hills!

The landscape was very pretty with all the crops ready for harvest, rolling hills and lots of woodland.

The hills were a mixture of short/sharp little tinkers and big grovelling, drawn out monsters. Happily most were followed by fantastic, speedy descents and we recorded our top speed of the trip so far; 41mph!

We made the customary stop after 1.5 hours for the triple delight of ice lolly, choccy and pop. Don't tell our dentists!

This stop was followed by another an hour or so later for more pop and choccy. Sadly, as per yesterday, no CAKE.

After grinding out a couple of real mingers of hills, we arrived at the outskirts of Krakow.

Unexpectedly (for Tracey), Miles pulled over to the side of the road and gesticulated wildly at the cycle computer. No, he had not gone mad(er), we had just clocked our 2000th mile of the trip. Hurrah and double hip hip hooray!

Without too much of a do, we followed the main route into the centre of town, spotted a likely IBIS hotel and checked in. No grief, no aggro just a nice cool, clean room for a couple of days.

This is by far the easiest city and/or large town we have visited yet for cycling access. Minimal pot holes, no cobbles, very few (so far) tram tracks and little traffic insanity. Lovely.

We watched the last stage of the TdeF live (in French for extra atmosphere) then explored the Old Town for a likely suspect for the nights dinner haunt.

We walked along the bank of the river Wista into the Old Town. (yes, yet another Old Town) and onto the Market Square.

Apparently, this is the biggest market square in Europe and it certainly..... was.

After our very quiet journey down the eastern side of Poland when we were often the only guests in the only restaurant or hotel in town, we were suddenly faced with an absolute hubub of people, restaurants and bars.

Wow! What a tranformation, Poland had come alive.

We ate a lovely meal on the square and watched the tastless horse drawn Landau's go past complete with their payloads of tourists.

Later we watched fire eaters doing their thing (obviously hadn't seen the Gaviscon ad on British telly) and then we saw a Romanian Gypsy band performing the closing set of the '10th Crossroads Festival' whatever that was (is).

The music was very much like South American Salsa complete with full brass band section so David P would be happy enough....

After a last couple of (alocohol free) beers on the square, we walkede back to the hotel somewhat happy with our lot.

Rest day tomorrow - happy days....

Today we knocked out another red hot and flippin hilly total of 49 miles and 720m of ascent. Total trip 2002 miles. Ye haw!

More Southerly ramblings to follow.

Back soon. Miles & Tracey.

26 July 2008

Saturday 26 July 2008

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.

25 July 2008

Friday 25 July 2008

Up and at em ready and raring to go at the very early time of 08:30. This was principally due to us skipping breakfast at the hotel and hitting the road without proper early morning fuel. We couldn't stand another altercation with the frosty bint at the hotel.

The plan today was for a 70 miler via Lublin, Poland ending in Sandomierz also Poland. The advantage of this, is it has us using secondary roads for the next couple of days which should help avoid some of the traffic.

Today, perfect cycling conditions; sun, roaring tail wind and few hills (to start with).

Dispatched the 10 or so miles into Lublin and battled through the rush hour and outskirts until we worked our way into the Old Town/town centre.

En route, we had our first altercation with Polish authority when we followed a bus through a no entry/buses only restriction to the Old Town.

Luckily this level of misdemeanour does not warrant 6 months in the Gulag and we were allowed on our way when we promised to walk the tandem through the pedestrian zone.

Breakfast was taken at a pavement café. This was somewhat unorthodox and involved large helpings of CAKE rather than any crappy cereal or whatever

Once complete we found our way to the IT (Tourist Info) bureau for details of accommodation on our planned route.

Horror of horrors, there was not just a lack of room at the stable but no blimmin stable(s) either!

OK, faced with a simple choice, we revised our plan to follow the bigger 'A' roads that we knew would have suitable digs somewhere along them. Unfortunately this also meant TRAFFIC though hopefully this will settle down over the coming weekend.

After spending far too long in Lublin, we hit the road again and battled our way out of the city.

The cycling was pretty straight forward and mostly with a really good tail wind. We stopped a couple of times in the heat for drinks and ice lollies whilst making steady progress towards our revised goal.

All was going well until around 14:30 when the heavens opened, again. There followed a violent thunder and lightning display accompanied by much wind and rain.

Fortunately, Tracey (Michael Fish) Goff, predicted the rain and we were (just about) safely in a bus shelter when the worst hit.

The wind was so bad, a number of trees lost limbs and we had a narrow squeak when a branch fell close to where we had just passed by.

After an hour or so, the rain eased and in full wets, we set off on our way again.

At this stage, we had about 25 miles to knock out before arriving in Opatow We were both feeling the effects of the heat, yesterday's high mileage and the reappearance of those pesky hills.

We dug in and damply dispatched the final miles before arriving at around 17:00.

On first pass, we didn't find any of the accommodation promised during our visit to Lublin IT and eventually we called into an open Pizza joint to track somewhere down.

A nice man 'kidnapped' Miles and drove him off in his car apparently to suitable digs. Tracey was left holding the tandem in the pizza restaurant car park.

In a jiffy, Miles was back and we cycled to the Motel and settled in. 'Luxurious' is not a word one would use, more like 'grim'.....

Dinner was taken in the aforementioned pizza joint and we walked back to our digs for a well earned early night.

Another significant milestone was reached during today's ride when we passed the halfway mark for our planned mileage. It's all down hill from here let's just hope the plan is accurate......!

Today again we put in a very respectable though damp total of 78 miles and 680m of ascent. Total trip 1891 miles.

More Southerly ramblings to follow.

Back soon. Miles & Tracey.

24 July 2008

Thursday 24 July 2008

A pleasant evening was had at our hotel during which Miles made full use of the internerd facilities and Tracey enjoyed Eurosport. Later we both reported in to our respective mission controls in the UK - all seemed well enough at home.

During breakfast we were somewhat bemused when the Polish newscaster was replaced with a humping and groaning couple on the 52" plasma (that's a telly BTW not a porn star vital statistic)! Seems we had a bit of porn 'breakthrough' which would have made Tracey choke on her cornflakes if she had any.

After calming down, we left around 09:00, planning to reach the unfortunately named Polish town of Kock, approx. 60 miles away.

Clearly, our choice of destination had all to do with it's name and we have scoured our maps to plan similar visits to the towns of Tits, Bum and Fanny! Incidentally, we had already tucked away the town of 'Arce', whilst in Latvia. Double points to us.

Dry weather greeted us though rather overcast and very humid. The other major positive today was the reduction in the volume of traffic. This meant we could relax a little and enjoy both the cycling and the scenery.

We belted along Route 19 due south. After a couple of hours or so, we stopped at a roadside services for pop and choccy then later at a café for a coffee and more choccy.

Exchanged pleasantries with a group of Polish HGV drivers who were interested in our endeavours. We managed to conceal the fact that we now consider this breed to be on a par with the anti-Christ!

More cycling followed and we reached Kock around 15:00. We were disappointed to find another 'One Whore Town' that didn't seem to offer accommodation.

We opted to carry on and see what popped up.

A couple of miles later, what popped up on our radar was a very fancy restaurant indeed. We screeched Disharmony II to a halt and the mother of all CAKE fests followed. Fantastic quality CAKE later, we were ready to carry on.

During our feast, we'd been given some info on places to stay in the coming towns and villages.

We carried on, inspected the first recommendation and found it wanting so carried on some more.

This process was repeated a couple of more times until we decided our best bet would be to make for the next 'mega' city; Lublin.

Fuelled up at our recent stop, we got the hammer down and started to grind out the remaining 25 or so miles.

This plan came royally unstuck when 10 miles from our destination the heavens opened. Fortunately, we had just enough time to hide in a bus shelter but we still got soaked by all the standing water when we recommenced cycling.

A hurried plan review was carried out and we dived into the next hotel we passed. Luckily this looked both habitable and quite nice.

This view was somewhat tainted later during dinner when the snooty cow who was serving us decided being very rude was the Polish way to treat foreign guests. Well boo hoo to her!

All these shenanigans meant, today we put in a very respectable total of 91 miles and 345m of ascent. Total trip 1813 miles.

More Southerly ramblings to follow.

Back soon. Miles & Tracey.

Miles taking Disharmony II for a spin in the lobby of the fanciest hotel in Bialystok, Poland

Not the RED phone.......!

It rang, a voice said "Yuk yuk, howdy, Is thay't yooo Mayster Presidant Pootin? George Doubleya here......" etc etc.