Gwilym's Adventure Blog

The title says it all. Both Poland and Lithuania just delivered straight roads and level crossings. Just as you wind the bike up to speed a crossing appears. Every so often there was a bend and that had a crossing on it too! It is brakes on, stop, look left, look right, doubt yourself so look left again, right again, wonder if you would even see the train if it was coming full speed, rely on your hearing (wearing earplugs and a helmet) and think sod it, shut your eyes and open the throttle. Only a few km until you do it again Basically the route today was going around the little bit of Russia that is Kaliningrad . I considered getting a visa etc but would have had to go in person to London, get biometrics done and paid over £125 just to do about 100km through it. In the end it was time that decided against it as my Belarus visa only came back the day before I left. So after 400 odd km of riding I got to my campsite here at Karkle near Klaipede which is n...

Today I left the coast and headed inland towards some of Poland's Lakes. A quick stop at Deccathlon to get some swim shorts and the punishment for this was having to ride through the centre of Gdansk which is a pretty major city. Once I got out of there, it was back on a mix of fast A roads and narrow incomplete country roads. One road just stopped in a pile of dirt blocking the way but fortunately it was ony a couple of km back to another route. There were some good biking roads but they were short lived and as a rule, I am not impressed with northern Poland's roads. I travelled through lots of villages today and saw the same stork nests that I saw in Hungary although no storks were in them when I rode past. Still hot today and hoping that turning North tomorrow will bring some cooler temperatures. If not, early starts and hiding in the shade are the plans. After around 450km of riding, the last few kilometres of the day were along some sand tracks ...

…. is pretty poor. I would describe it as 200+ km of Butlins holiday camps interspersed with belts of trees so thick you can't see the sea and roadworks that have half the highway missing so even if you could see the sea, you wouldn't be looking at it as you are too busy trying not to fall off your bike into foot deep gravel pits. From the campsite in Germany I headed north straight to the coast and then turned east and crossed into Poland by land. A ferry was required to get across a river. A free ferry at that! My plan to have a breeze and keep cool also failed with temps low to mid thirties again. Those trees and camps stop any wind making it to the road. This may sound very negative but it was also 9 hrs of riding and exploring a new country so still fun in its own way. On the positive side, the roads have more corners than northern Germany and the prices are low (and I mean super low). Yesterday's camping was 11 Euro. Today's campsite here was 2...