The first day

We started about 11:30 a.m. from the Pomeranian Princes’ Castle of Szczecin, from "kilometre 0". It was Monday, the last day of June. In the sky that was completely cloudless so far some signs began to show us that it wouldn’t be easy to complete our tour. But the sun was still shining and it was really hot.

After seven kilometres, at the first really big cross-roads, we lost one of our members - Sebastian turned in the wrong direction and disappeared. We lost an hour searching for him and we didn’t find him. Expecting him to find us later we moved on. The first stop was

Maszewo

a small, Pomeranian town, with an old city, a gothic church and town walls. We got there just in time - it started to rain cats and dogs just as we arrived at the old market. The wind blew so strongly that it was impossible to continue our journey but - lucky us - we were invited by someone from the town office to come into the building. We spent two long hours there waiting for the storm to end. When it finally stopped raining we opened the door and... we spotted Sebastian looking around at the market. So, we could go further together.

The weather conditions changed completely compared to what we had seen in Szczecin earlier that day. Rain and wind forced us to slow down and, which is not surprising, we were really out of humour. We lost a lot of time and eventually it turned out that we could not reach Swidwin as we were supposed to. For the first night of our trip we stayed in Lobez, in a hotel of the "Troops of Voluntary Work" (OHP in Polish). (That institution which was very popular in the times of communism in Poland. It was created to let the "difficult" young people use their energy in a more useful way than they probably would do otherwise. As we found out, surprising even for us I must admit, they still exist in small towns.) We were really glad we could sleep in a dry place, under the roof. On that day we made 106 km.

The second day

It was raining for the whole night and, to make our moods even worse, we also had a row with the manager of the hotel who, as it’s easy to foresee, wanted from us more money than had been fixed on the previous day.

Swidwin

In the city you may find a quite interesting castle, a gothic one with some baroque elements. Inside there are different cultural institutions as well as periodic exhibitions. Another thing that is worth seeing is a gothic gate from 15th century called the Stone Gate. What else? Nothing but box - type blocks of flats typical of times of socialism.

Tychowo

In a cemetery that is situated there you may find the biggest erratic block in Poland. It’s really big!

We arrived in Koszalin at about 8 p.m. At this time of the day there was nothing to see there. Nothing but the great monumental, I would say gothic cathedral which is situated among those typical, low, box - shaped buildings of the "modern" city centre. What really amazed us was a nest of some predatory birds, probably hawks, on the roof of the church. I’m not sure but I think such things may happen only in Poland.

A place to sleep we found in Lazy, just as we had planned before. That means we managed to make up the kilometres we had lost the previous day and it was 246 km altogether. We slept at the camping site, between the sea and the lake.( Look at the map to find this very interesting place where Lazy is situated.) The only problem were mosquitoes, everything else was great. Even the clouds disappeared and we could admire the beautiful sky full of stars which was the sign that the next day was going to be really great. We really missed the sun, you can believe me.

The third day

It stopped raining, indeed. What’s more, we noticed the first signs of long - awaited sunshine. For the first time we checked our bikes and we were really glad to find that everything was fine. This strengthened our hopes that we would cope.

From Lazy we went towards Darlowo. In the meantime we stopped in Dabki in order to see our "Great Water" - I mean our beloved Baltic Sea. The water was rather cold but Sebastian turned out to be brave enough to swim for a while.

On the beach of Dabki: "Holidays ’97"

Darlowo

In Darlowo there was a celebration of the 600th anniversary of the Union of Countries of Scandinavia. There are two buildings in Darlowo that are really worth seeing. These are the church with a grave of Eric the Crazy, the king of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and the Pomeranian Princes’ castle, in my opinion not as pretty as the one in Szczecin. In the castle there are different exhibitions e.g. one of sacral sculpture. As I said it’s not very beautiful (that’s a subjective opinion) but if you have some free time you could go and see it.

Saying goodbye to the ghost of Eric, we went forward and four kilometres after this village we turned right to

Swolowo

which is a kind of relic of the rural architecture from the 18th century, which is almost completely untouched. That’s the exception in Pomerania as well as in Poland.

The hut from the 18th century in Swolowo

One can see here the original half-timbered houses and other buildings. The arrangement of the village is also the same as 200 years ago: buildings stand in the shape of an ellipse with a picturesque church in the middle. Just after our visit some ethnographers discovered a shack (a chimneyless hut), probably the last one in Poland. What a pity we didn’t know about it, maybe we would be rich now?

We had no occasion to see Slupsk. We arrived at the city just as it was getting dark and we had to go further. The castle of Slupsk seemed to be quite interesting but it was too late to go inside. It was our fault we hadn’t gone a bit faster earlier.

9 km to the north-east of the city, a village called Lubuczewo is situated. Thanks to a very nice lady who allowed us to pitch our tents next to her house, we could sleep safely, not worrying about the bikes. Among the ominous buzzing of mosquitoes the third day of our adventure came to an end.

The fourth day

The day began for us very early but the distance we had to go was exceptionally long. The weather was encouraging and kilometres were passing easily. When in the late afternoon people asked us where we were going no-one would believe that we wanted to go on another 100 km that day.

In the afternoon we passed by the village of Zarnowiec, a name which is known to everyone in Poland. That’s because the first nuclear plant in our country was supposed to be build there. After a wave of protests the project was rejected and the first buildings that were already built destroyed. Now there is no sign of it but there are still some things to see e.g. a big dam and the old Cistercian monastery - a real pearl of gothic architecture.

After 10 km we turned left towards Wladyslawowo. Suddenly Radek realised that his rear wheel had lost its round shape and become rather three - dimensional. One of the spokes had broken. We still had 40 km to go but thanks to Radek's stubbornness and some luck as well we managed to finish this stage without bigger problems. The last 10 kilometres was amazing: after the whole day of riding our bikes (135 km) we accelerated and this distance took us about 20 min! Can you imagine us with this heavy stuff on the backs of our bicycles? At 10 p.m. we arrived in Hel, where Ewa and Dorota had been already waiting for some hours. Our group was finally together.

We slept at the empty scout camp, just next to the sign with the name HEL.