Introduction
The idea of organising The Bicycle Tour of Poland, which is what is the story telling about, was born in our heads about five years ago, in the second class of the secondary school. As we didn’t put our plan into effect then, the idea remained in our minds until finally this year, for some this may seem unbelievable, we eventually decided to carry it out.
Preparations
Although the idea of Tour de Pologne, as we started to call our trek, was known for quite a long time by all the potential participants, the real organisation did not start until the end of May, 1997.
The most important task was to create a route that would be attractive and at the same time optimal for everyone in terms of the time it took. We didn’t want it to be too hard for anybody and moreover nobody had free time for the whole holiday. We had planned that our group would be from 10 to 15 persons that was the number of people who were interested in our idea and was to last for 30 days (from June 30 to July 29). To make our preparations more efficient, we set up an organising committee which immediately started to work.
As a result the final route was established. The amazing average of 87 km per day and about 2600 km overall was waiting for us. We knew we could be proud of ourselves if we managed to go this distance. As we are only "poor students" we decided to send a letter to the president of the city of Szczecin with an offer of co-operation in promoting the region of Szczecin in exchange for help in organising our tour. Unfortunately, there was no answer. The authorities of our city talk a lot, but when they may be really helpful they don’t raise a finger to do anything.
Finally, seven people decided to take up the challenge and take part in this crazy race. Two of them, Dorota and Ewa, do not live in Szczecin and were to join us in Hel. We had to meet them on the fourth day, that’s why those four days looked just like a duel with time.
At the beginning of June we started to collect all the stuff needed. We had six mountain bikes (only Ewa had a trekking bicycle) and three "snowhouse" tents. Everyone bought one cartridge of Camping Gas®, a lot of spare parts, especially spokes, and a large amount of films for our cameras. We put all the baggage on our bikes and waited for the time to start, hoping the bad weather would pass by and the rain wouldn’t interrupt us. Our strong hope was based on the weather forecast we had seen the previous day. We would soon see how mistaken it was.
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