4.30am alarm. Dress. Coffee. Taxi. Bus. Luton. Plane delayed due to mechanical problems. Fantastic. Bar staff delayed due to incompetence. Abort. Abort.
We eventually arrived in Katowice where Mal’s brother was waiting to pick us up. It was 120k and 3hrs drive from there to Makow Podhalanski not 80k like Mal thought. Whoops – we had a dentist appointment to make!
We were only five minutes late in the end and Mal had called ahead so we were cool. We both had some fillings done and I had an x-ray on my ‘missing’ tooth. Apparently I have generally fantastic teeth for my age which is nice to hear. After that we finally made it to Mal’s parents house or was it their pub – I can’t remember but the tweet went “First few Tyskie have gone down well. Weather is ace. Pub renovations are great. CX bike arrived but I’ve not built yet. Zakopane tomorrow?”.
Short of cash, I’m made to work for my beers..
We decided to head to Zakopane on the train (10Zty) then catch a minibus (10Zty) and walk up to the lake “Morskie Oko”. It took about 1hr40min to get to the lake from the park entrance (2Zty). This is what it looks like in summer.
The great thing about climbing up to it in April was that it was very quiet (it’s swarming with tourists in summer). What we didn’t factor in was that the lake was actually still frozen over so there were no reflections of the surrounding mountains. It was still a fantastic scene.
The next day, with aching legs from the walk, I put together the Focus Cyclocross bike that I’d bought in London and had shipped over before we’d left. Mal and I then rode to nearby town Sucha Beskidzka taking a very hilly detour in the process that had poor Mal pushing her hefty MTB up the road, cursing.
The next day I went for a solo ride with the only goal being to climb over the largest hill in the town – Makowska Gora. I think it topped out at 600m after a winding road past the Church including a stop to photograph a local snake (an apparently poisonous Adder – “pfft!”, mocked the Australian).
After that I just kept on riding through lots of little villages in one direction, until I hit a major road (S7) where I turned south for Zakopane on a service road. I saw some roadies using this as I stopped to buy some water in a little store. Being Easter and Poland being very Catholic, a lot of bigger shops were closed but I always found somewhere to buy food/drink. I wasn’t going to ride the 60k to Zakopane today so I turned west and rode through Jordanow towards home, but not before a detour up to Zawoja. Around 100k today.
When not riding we were going to the church (it’s ok, it’s all in Polish so they can’t brainwash me) or drinking at the pub or eating the lovely food cooked by Mal’s folks (Easter cake overdose!). We visited Sucha again, using the bus, but almost everything was closed. We did manage to get an ice cream at the little cafe before it closed.
Since everything goes quiet in Poland over Easter I decided to head to Zakopane on Easter Monday. As suspected the roads were nearly empty. The ride kicked off climbing through and out of the little ski resort town-esque town of Zawoja over a 1500m high bump. After a patchy descent it totally flattens out into open plains. One of the traditions on Easter Monday is water-bombing or, soaking with water, the single girls in the village. This seems to mean, soaking anyone you can find. I was lucky and all the attempts were made on other people or cars nearby and not myself (not that it mattered in the end). At Jablonka it was a sharp west as I headed for the Slovakian border via Lipnica Wielka. Being Australian, there’s something truly fascinating about crossing into other countries by land and I do it whenever possible. It seemed to take forever to find evidence of a border (I was worried it wouldn’t be marked) but sure enough there was a deserted border crossing building and then shortly after the sign indicating I was in Slovakia!
After some photos I retraced back to the S7 and then turned off this and headed east on the continuation of the 957. It was a bit grim here, skies starting to darken nothing much to see and a headwind until Czarny Dunajec where I turned south once more. At the funky wooden village of Chocholow (I’d been here a few years ago – all the houses are the same – traditional style totally wooden construction) it really started to tip down along with some thunder and lightning. Not knowing how long I’d be riding, how cold it would get and only having summer road kit on I decided to sit it out for a bit in a bus shelter until it at least died down.
It stopped raining and I carried on along the 958 towards Zakopane, buying some Snickers and a Coke at a little Polski Sklep.
Zakopane was pretty quiet and mostly just tourists being hosed down by locals. The coffee shop I was dying to get into wasn’t open so I rode around until my Garmin GPS said I’d made it to Zakopane, took a photo of the shoddy train station and turned around, buying some more Snickers and Pepsi, before retracing along the 958 through Witow and Chocholow up to Czarny Dunajec where I continued going north on 958, rather than going back along the 957 through Jablonka. This took me over the plains and then through Raba Wyzna and smaller ups and downs rather than one big climb like in Zawoja. It was raining again now and this rain got heavier as the day went on. I think I got a bit lost in Rabka-Zdroj but eventually found the 28 road which took me into Jordanow and back to Makow along the same route I’d done a couple of days ago. By the time I arrived home I had been soaked through many times over but I was pretty happy with myself for actually making it back with just the GPS base maps and minimal food. All up, around 195k with 2000m climbing in 7.5 hours on a CX bike with knobby tyres fuelled by 2 ‘nanas, 3 Snickers, a Coke and Pepsi.
The next day we had a fantastic rafting trip along the Danube (Dunajec) which borders Slovakia and Poland near Pieniny.
For such a polished (pun intended) tourist activity why is it so hard to get to using public transport?
Lots of rude jokes from our raft master
Aww..
Beautiful surroundings – I’d love to come back and walk a lot of this national park.
The day before we left I headed out on the bike again. This time I was only going to ride to Zywiec (where the beer comes from) and back. I got a bit carried away and after making Zywiec I ended up climbing another large bump in order to cross the Slovakian border in a different location (told you I loved crossing borders!). 125k, 1500m climbing all in great weather this time.
Zywiec, just down the road from the massive brewery (and museum I’m yet to visit)
2nd Slovakian border crossing, this one near Korbielow
Drinking Zywiec is the only possible way to finish a ride to Zywiec
Big thanks to Malwina, Maria, Marian and Michal for a fantastic trip.