Day ≥17: Berlin

After a few days mixing writing work with exploring Gdansk, I still had five days to spare. So I took a train to Berlin. I had no plan, but I had a bike, which is all you need. This post covers those five days.



The first morning I cycled across Tempelhof, on possibly the world's widest cycle path (pic). At over 100m from side to side, it's wider than some Sustrans routes are long. Certainly smoother. It's probably the only cycle path visible for space. It's even, as my hardline cycle-campaigner chums might describe it, almost wide enough.

The mighty breadth is down to its being a runway. Tempelhof was an international airport (the destination of the famous Air Lifts) until its closure in 2008. The entire area is now a vast (and well-used) leisure park, runways, access ways and all. It's a strange feeling, taxiing along on your bike and turning into the wind ready for take-off.

I also collected a few of the postcard sights from the saddle, such as Brandenburg Gate (pic).

It's a focus of national unity – playing a heavily practical and symbolic role through the splitting up and reunification of Germany, for instance – and was the place where the German football team staged their victory ceremony after winning the World Cup in 2014, so obviously there's no English equivalent.

However, my main project for the stay was to cycle the Berlin Wall Cycle Path. It traces the course of the barrier which separated East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, and – astoundingly – it's just over 100 miles long.

I took three leisurely days to do the route, mindful of maximising my chances of morning kaffee und küchen from Germany's tempting bakeries. Coming back from the stage ends, and returning the next morning, was easy thanks to Berlin's underground trains all taking bikes.

Fares were very reasonable, especially as sometimes the ticket machines didn't work at the non-barriered stations and there was no onboard staff to buy a ticket from.

Very few sections of the Wall are left. Some is preserved at the Wall Memorial on Bernauerstrasse, which also has one of the two or three remaining watchtowers (pic).

It's hard to think that, for most of my early life, this street was a scene of wretched separation, oppression, and shoot-on-sight paranoia.

About the most traumatic thing that happens here these days is Chinese tourists photobombing your selfies.



The longest stretch remaining is at Mühlenstrasse, called the 'East Side Gallery' because of the murals (pic). I liked this one of Karl Marx. Personally I'd have used his witty 'I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member'.

In the urban parts of the Route, the position of the wall is often marked by a double line of bricks (pic).

But that was only the final obstacle: the 'wall' was actually a double wall, consisting of a first fence or wall, then perhaps 100m of flat floodlit ground full of booby traps, trip wires, anti-tank devices, soft earth, upturned spikes, before the final 3m high wall.

The old joke about the East German Pole Vault Champion becoming the West German Pole Vault Champion, though a good gag, wouldn't quite work in practice.

As soon as the athlete vaulted the first wall, they'd land in the strip, and would have been shot dead by the dozens of guards.

So, not very funny, really.



Most of the Wall wound its way through quiet countryside, and you can vividly see where the 'death strip' was (pic). For perhaps 80 of the 100 miles, you cycle along flat, smooth tarmac, following the old service road: it's very much like a railtrail, apart from the 90-degree bends here and there where it had to follow the arbitrarily drawn East-West border.

The patrolling GDR soldiers must have been bored out of their minds watching for escapees. At least they had each other.

To watch, I mean: soldiers tried to escape too. And, in this paranoid dystopia, they were being watched in turn, by secret police.

Add in your networks of paid and unpaid informants, and it seems half the country was spying on itself. No surprise they didn't get round to tarmacking those patrol roads. In a few places it's still the original cobbles (pic), and if they could only go as slow as me when they were chasing fugitives, it's a wonder more didn't escape.



To the south-west, round Potsdam – clearly an agreeable sort of place – the Wall had to wiggle round various lakes (pic).

This is the nicest bit of the whole trail, popular with leisure riders; round here the Wall was sometimes only a few rolls of well-guarded barbed wire, sealing off grand old villa houses in the East from the edge of the lake and its Western water, which must have annoyed those who had a boat out on the jetty that they couldn't reach.



There's more picturesque waterside cycling along the route north of Spandau (pic). (A whole generation can't think of that place without mentally adding '...Ballet'. I'm not one of that generation.)

This was an utterly delightful part of the route. I was filled with a sense of tranquillity, as well as with coffee and cream cake from a friendly Sunday morning cafe back in the town.

Well, that's about it for this trip. I have a final day free in Berlin tomorrow, which is just as well, as I have a ton of admin to do before flying back home on Tuesday, so I probably won't be straying far from the hostel.

I've had a wonderful time and many memorable experiences, making my way ‐ with my bike ‐ from Albania, to Montenegro for Tim's birthday gathering; from there by train and bike through Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia; cycling the Polish End to End; and finishing here in cool, vibrant Berlin, by cycling the Wall Trail.

The trekking bike proved exactly the right choice for the trip, given the range of surfaces I had to cycle over, and made it through everything with no punctures, mechanicals or significant problems.

It may be heavy and slow, it may be stiff and creaking a bit more than it used to, it may be old, cheap and unfashionable, but by gum it works, it's reliable, and it does the job perfectly well.

Funnily enough, all that applies to me too.

Day 16: Hel

With the business part of the trip completed, today was a fun add-on: a trip to Hel and back.



Hel is a resort village at the end of a 30km long sand spit that juts out south-east from Poland's northern coast into the Baltic. On a map the spit resembles Spurn Point, my favourite place in Yorkshire, and hence the world. It's much larger though, and with the benefit of a road, segregated cycle path and railway line all the way to the end (pic).

So don't worry about being stuck: there are many ways out of Hel, including three dozen trains, several buses and the odd ferry, every day.



The village itself is pleasantly touristy, with plenty of promenade places to eat and drink. I'd originally planned to cycle out and get the train back, but with strong south-easterlies forecast, it made sense to get the train there and cycle back. Not before I'd explored the very end of the spit, though (pic), which gave fine views of a dim blue-grey smudge on the horizon which might have been Gdansk, or possibly Gdynia, or maybe gdirt on my glasses.



There are several cycle routes marked on tracks through the woodland on the spit's bulbous end, and apparently a leisure route for recreational tank drivers too (pic).



The road to Hel is paved not with good intentions but pinkish-grey setts, making a much-recommended cycleway all the way along the spit (pic).

The southern half goes through woods, without any sea views, and gets a bit gravelly, but the northern half is pleasant enough. Today it was very busy with cyclists, most of them evidently under-researched, labouring the other way into the headwind.



I stopped for refreshment at a little seaside lody ('ice cream') stall en route (pic). I suddenly felt the need for a couple of scoops on a cornet. I'm not sure what gave me the idea. Something subliminal perhaps.

Back on the mainland I got a train down to a baking hot Gdansk (pic), where I'm about to hole up for a couple of days to attend to writing commitments.

Yes, I do actually do some work sometimes.

Miles today: 22

Day 15: Gdynia to Jastrzębia Góra

The final day of my Polish End to End was the hottest, sunniest day of the trip so far. It started with yet more miles of mostly decent urban cycleways, continued with rough and unready tracks through country parks with lots of other leisure cyclists, and finished up at Poland's most northerly point, overlooking an azure Baltic.



Setting out early from the hostel I happened upon the start of the Gdynia Gran Fondue 2019, or perhaps Fondo, with thousands of cyclists competing over 80km or 134km.

The various category starts, excitably counted down by the compere, were great for my Polish numerals. Though some of the numbers are so long they obviously have to say them very quickly to get through them in time.



Route-finding out of the city wasn't too bad, thanks to the mostly good network of cycleways (pic), but road closures for the Fondue and haphazard signing complicated things. Shops and bakeries were closed for Sunday morning too, even the branches of Żabka.

To judge by the many services that had dozens of congragation members standing outside, the staff were all at church.



The signed bike route took me through several places that tourists never usually see – building sites, car parks, derelict factories – and gave me glimpses of local fishing villages too, such as Rewa (pic), where you could amuse yourself by hunting for the signage that you obviously missed somewhere because you'd come to a dead end.



Eventually I recovered the route, R10 indeed (pic), which wound its way prettily through various conservation areas and wildlife zones. The tracks were very bumpy – dirt roads, uneven concrete-slab access ways, gravelly farm lanes – so after an hour I decided to go back to the tarmac alternative. Unfortunately they were even worse.

Finally, at Puck, I was on good quiet roads, and even a good railtrail for a few miles.

And I collected another for my series of 'amusing Polish warning road signs': this one (pic) of a car experiencing the unlikely mishap of collision with a steam locomotive.

(There are still, amazingly, some normal mainline scheduled steamers still running between Wolsztyn and Poznań, so there may be a potential Mr Toad/Ivor the Engine encounter there.

But sadly, they look like they'll be phased out at the end of 2019.)



And so to the end of the trip, at the resort of Jastrzębia Góra, Poland's most northerly settlement, on cliffs overlooking the Baltic coast. It's the obvious finishing point of an End to End, as it has a monument (pic), the Gwiazda Północy ('North Star'), marking the official furthest-up bit of the country, as determined by the maritime office in Gdynia in 2003, evidently.



Here's my bike as far north as you can go in Poland (pic) without seriously compromising the drivetrain. It's the official end of the End to End...

...though not the end of this trip of course. I glided from Jastrzębia Góra 10km along a good cycleway, downhill and with a tailwind, into Władysławowo, my accomm for tonight.

Tomorrow I'll cycle to Hel, partly because it's a lovely and much-recommended ride 20 miles to the end of a narrow sand spit, partly because well, who could resist a Journey to Hel, knowing that there's a range of trains, buses and ferries out of the place?

But for the purposes of this post, that's the...
END OF THE POLISH END TO END.

Well done bike! No mechanicals, no punctures, no problems. It's been another highly enjoyable trip: often quiet and scenically mundane, as I expected.

But often there was surprisingly good cycle infra, pleasant people in ordinary little villages and towns who were mildly amused at my enthusiasm for their country and language, cheap beer and cheap places to stay (often of very good quality – the places to stay, not the beer), and some beautiful historic town squares that were an utter delight to sip a lager or two after a day's ride.

I'll always remember Zakopane's scenery, Kraków still stunning in the rain, Częstochowa's piety, Łódź's vitality, Toruń's elegance, Chełmno's lovely square, Gdańsk/ Sopot/ Gdynia's bike-friendly buzz, and the elation of completing.

Thanks bike, thanks Poland. Dziękuję bardzo, do widzenia. I'll be back.

Miles today to Jastrzębia Góra: 35
Miles today total: 45
Total miles from Polish border (Łysa Polana) to Northern Star (Jastrzębia Góra): 570
Total number of days cycled: 14
Wildlife spotted (alive): Eagle, deer, hares (x2), storks (x3), fleas (x lots)
No of punctures: 0
No of sunhats lost: 1
No of cartons of 'Danio' vanilla gloop for dessert: 12
Total cost for 15 days inc all travel, accomm, food, expenses: £425
Value: Priceless

Day 14: Starogard Gdański to Gdynia

The penultimate day of the End to End, and the day I finally set eyes on the Baltic. Today started with yet more flat, easy miles on quiet back roads through woods, and finished with an extraordinarily 35km-long run through bike-friendly Gdańsk on segregated cycleways. I knew I was close to the sea when I saw a sign for 'Baltic Restaurant', but I must be missing a good curry: I thought at first it said 'Balti Restaurant'.



This was the sort of thing for the first half of the day (pic) – similar to most of the days so far, but with the addition of a few slopes. In the hilly North York Moors, they don't bother to signpost hills anything less than 25%. In Poland, inclines are so unusual they even sign ones of 5%.

Poland is making great progress in putting in cycleways, and most cities I've been through have really pretty good segregated infra easing you into or out of the centre. (They haven't got the hang of dropped kerbs though.)

However, there's often puzzling bits too, which start or end nowhere (pic), presumably awaiting further expansion.

Unless the councillors here have been inspired by factfinding missions to the UK.

Many road signs can be puzzling too, unless you know a little of the language.

Wypadki is Polish for 'do not attempt to give motorists the V-sign while doing a wheelie'.*

Gdańsk prides itself as Poland's 'cycling capital', with good reason. For the last half of the day – over four leisurely hours, including refreshment stops, and about 35km from Pruszcz to Gdynia via Gdańsk and Sopot – I was entirely on good quality segregated cycleways: not single metre on road.



From Pruszcz I was on this canal towpath (pic). I didn't even know Poland had canals, never mind towpaths, but it does. Those high concrete sides and fencing don't make the waterway especially picturesque, but it prevents people fishing, which makes cycling a lot more pleasant...



The path took me right through central Gdańsk, past the main station (pic). I've visited before, and I'll be spending a couple of days here next week, so I didn't need to stop and 'sightsee' (ie from the table of a pavement bar).



At one point the cycleway passed this tank monument (pic), with my bike leaning against it. Weighing nearly 40 tons, with a maximum speed of 5mph, based on old-fashioned but reliable technology, difficult to manoeuvre, but virtually indestructible, my bike has served me well on this trip.

And so to the sea: my first glimpse of salt water since Montenegro, never mind since starting at the Polish border high in the Tatras two weeks ago (pic).

A long, long beach connects the shores of neighbouring Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia, and on this sunny Saturday there were plenty of people frolicking on the sand.

Not many swimming, though – it's as cold as the North Sea at this time of year...



The cycleway continued, on and on parallel to the beach, and it was chock with people on bikes enjoying a weekend spin, as well as a fair few inline skaters, wheelchair users, electric scooter riders, and people on novelty hire bikes, who were going even slower than me.



At the shiny resort of Sopot I stopped for a drink. It's a grand, slightly artificial-feeling place with a very long pier, but it's agreeable enough, and today was crowded with tourists. The expansive main square (pic) is dominated by the Grand Hotel, notorious as the place Hitler was staying when he started World War II in 1939. Wonder what he wrote in the visitor's book.

I couldn't resist a snap of the Krzywy Domek, 'Crooked House' (pic). See what I mean about Sopot? Fun, but a bit contrived. We have lots of genuinely crooked houses in England. As anyone who's seen my annexe knows.

Anyway, I'm in my very pleasant hostel in Gdynia – a modern and vibrant, but to me slightly bland, city that somehow has got itself on the cruise-ship circuit.

Tomorrow is scheduled to be the last day, when I finally get to the northernmost point in Poland. Meanwhile, apparently there's a football match on telly tonight...

*No it isn't. It means 'accidents'.

Miles today: 47
Miles since Polish border: 535

Day 13: Grudziądz to Starogard Gdański

The river levels, if anything, rose overnight. No chance of taking the waterfront cycle path this morning (pic). Though it would have been a chance for me to use my trunks, about the only thing in my panniers I haven't managed to use since arriving in Albania so long ago.



After a week and a half of pancake-flat central Poland, the 'hill town' of Nowe (pic), all of maybe 40m high, came as quite a shock. I used my bike's granny ring for the first time since Zakopane.



Most of today was again easy, pleasant riding through very gently undulating landscape (pic). And, again, it put me in mind of eastern England. Perhaps that's why there are so many Polish fruit-pickers and vegetable-harvesters in East Anglia, round Boston say. They must feel at home, particularly with so little to do in the evening.

I had a coffee in the small, amiable town of Skórcz, where the cafe-pizzeria proprietor was so impressed by my End to End trip – and the fact I could tell him in Polish, more or less – I scored a free biscuit.



The final run to my destination town for the day was on quite a fast road, but I had a stroke of luck. I tucked behind a JCB digger-tractor-thing (pic) that trundled along a few miles to the next roadworks, providing not only a shield to slow down traffic that might otherwise have close-passed me, but also a handy drafting opportunity. He was going about my ideal speed, ie 8mph or so.



This is what the roadworks was all about (pic): a new segregated bike lane being built for a few miles into the town of Starogard Gdański. It will provide safe, convenient cycle access into the town. Or more likely – to judge by my impression of a friendly but rather dull, prosaic place without much in the way of an entertainment district – out of it.

Miles today: 46
Miles since Polish border: 488

Day 12: Toruń to Grudziądz

The longest mileage of the trip so far – but it felt wonderfully easy, thanks to a good railtrail, quiet flat roads, sunny but not overhot weather, and no wind. And a cream horn.



A good, 21st-century standard, segregated cycleway took me out from the centre of lovely Toruń, eventually turning into a surprisingly good, smoothly-tarmacked railtrail (pic).

I was making excellent, fast progress. In fact, in the time it took me to do 12km, I only moved from No 12 to No 11 in the phone queue to make an appointment with the doctor back home in York, so I gave up. By the time I fix one up, I'll be either cured or dead.

In the small town of Unisław I had breakfast: a cream horn, which wasn't real cream (it was buttermilk), and wasn't a real horn (it was made of pastry, not brass), but was plenty tasty and saw me through the morning.



Lunch, 30 lovely easy miles into the ride, was at Chełmno, whose beautiful old town square boasts perhaps Poland's finest town hall (pic) and several patio bistros, with domestic tourists chatting away happily and German visitors complaining about the beer.

I cycled round Chełmno's famous city walls (pic) which are almost intact.

Though that's hardly surprising, as they were built by Polish builders out of brick (pic).

They probably worked bank holidays to finish it on time.

Hurtling along the cycleway north from Chełmno, I stopped to admire a couple of storks' nests.

The first had a parent feeding its chicks, the second (pic) this pair.

I saw plenty more wildlife on the road today, including a fox, a shrew, a grass snake and several species of snail, but unfortunately they were all, er, dead and, um, squashed.

The WTR (Wiślana Trasa Rowerowa, '[River] Vistula Cycle Route') is a bit makeshift, and rarely gives you any views of the river itself. It struck me as a dutiful but unconvincing attempt to copy Germany's wonderful river routes: unlike there, the Vistula has no towpath (so you have to take roads out of sight of the water) and as Poland is so flat there's no scenic benefit or hill-dodging advantage in following the 'river valley' (so you may as well take any old A to B route).



Still, on the approach to Grudziądz, the route did take us up on to a rough flood-bank-top track, giving rare but sweeping views of the river, swollen big time by recent rains (pic). Several families (some members in swimming costumes) and cyclists had come here to rubberneck the high water. Which is more a comment on how much there is to do round here, rather than the severity of the floods, I think.



As I cycled through the suburbs, I was mildly uplifted by the lively colour schemes of the blocks of flats (pic)...



...and even more uplifted by this riverside bar by the entrance to the old town (pic). There's something very satisfying about sitting in the sun after a decent day's ride a few minutes from your accommodation and watching liquid flow rapidly.

Miles today: 52
Miles since Polish border: 442

Day 11: Włocławek to Toruń

Probably the best 'cycle touring' day of the cycle tour so far. In other words, a day that demonstrated what cycle touring is really for.

No, I don't mean making friends and relatives at home jealous with Facebook posts. I mean a varied and unfolding day of weather that got better and better, of lanes and landscapes that got more interesting, and of coming upon hitherto unknown places by chance that turned out to be delightful. And cakes. And all enhanced by experiencing it on two wheels.

I was pleased to depart from my rather drab, cheap, wifi-less, industrial-estate hotel in Włocławek very early, around 7am. It's clearly a working-blokes' sort of place: lots of men in grubby work clothes leaving for another day's hard graft. So I felt I belonged, because so was I.

Just up from the hotel I joined the WTR (Wiślana Trasa Rowerowa, '[River] Vistula Cycle Route'). This is a 230km signed trail alongside the river which I'll be following, on and off, from now to Gdańsk in a few days' time. It's no Danube Path – but then, where is? – and feels a bit half-hearted in its execution, but it's a mildly interesting and useful basis for route-planning.



It started with a splendidly industrial feel, routing me through chemical works, bitumen plants, fertiliser factories and goods-train marshalling yards (pic). Which I love, I really do, so long as it's only one element of a varied mix: part of the joy of cycle touring is seeing a place in all its reality, from humdrum industrial areas to beautiful scenic idylls...



...beautiful scenic idylls not featuring strongly in rural Poland, of course. But, after a week of rather monotonous flat farmland in which the only entertainment was to watch the wind turbines rotating, at least I was now beginning to get some variety in terms of river views (pic).



The WTR took me along several tracks (hooray for my trekking bike etc) which looked almost English at times: this sandy scene (pic) could have been on the East Anglia, East Yorkshire or Lancashire coast.

The headwinds gradually abated, the sun gradually came out, and the sugar rush from the doughnut I bought from a tiny local sklep gradually kicked in.

In the small town of Nieszawa I was amused by this house decoration (pic)...



...and relieved that I hadn't planned a route that involved the town's ferry across the Vistula (pic). Following heavy rain, the river is very high – they're talking floods in Warsaw – and the boat wasn't running today for obvious reasons.



A pleasant surprise awaited me in Ciechocinek, merely a place on the map for me until I arrived in the sun. It's a spa town, popular with domestic coach parties strolling its pleasant gardens, pedestrianised streets and parks. Which means that, unlike most Polish places of this size, there were plenty of cafes and cake shops (pic). Well, what's the point of knowing a bit of refreshment-related Polish if you don't use it...?



I like serendipity, especially when you come upon it by chance. Ciechocinek, it turned out, is famous for these things: yes, you guessed, brine graduation towers. They're special towers which graduate brine. And these ones here are, indeed, the world's biggest. In fact, they graduated more brine than any other towers. Quite impressive indeed; I'd thought they were watchtowers and the remains of some politically divisive wall.

Also admiring the wall I saw the only other cycle tourist I can remember all trip. I didn't get the chance to talk to him because he saw me first.



And so – by some lovely tracks through woods, some fast pleasant wide hard shoulders on main roads, and some impressive new segregated infra taking cyclists over the Vistula – I arrived in beautiful Toruń (pic), home of both Copernicus and gingerbread.

Thanks to having escaped the bombs in World War II, the extensive old town (pic) is an absolute treasure: a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of Poland's Seven Wonders, of which I have now seen six.

I visited the fascinating Copernicus Museum, in the very building where Dr Nick was born in 1473, or perhaps somewhere else. I knew that his 1543 book De Revolutionibus had shaken up mainstream religion by asserting the earth revolved round the sun, not vice-versa.

But I didn't know he had also anticipated 'Gresham's Law' ('bad money drives out good', an effect familiar to all Premier League football fans). The museum is free on Wednesdays, which saved me 15 zlotys, which I therefore spent on a kebab. I don't know if there's a financial law describing that effect.

Earlier on in the day I'd passed a distillery called Copernicus. It made me wonder if the fearless astronomer had got his inspiration for heliocentricity after overdoing the vodka one night. And realising that the room was not, despite appearances, revolving round his head.

Miles today: 41
Miles since Polish border: 390