The fifth day

For some of us the day began at about 3:30 a.m. That’s the proper hour to see the sunrise above the sea, a thing quite unusual in our country. (Since the shore on our side of the sea runs south-west to north-east you can look only at the sunset in Poland.) The only occasion to see the sunrise over the Baltic Sea is the one we took advantage of - on the Hel peninsula.

In the summertime Hel is a terribly crowded town. Full of people, noisy - the true tourist centre. We also saw Hel from the point of view of an average tourist: the beach, swimming in the sea, some ice-cream. It was very nice and we spent half of the day there, leaving Hel at 2 p.m.

Rozewie

The Rozewie cape is the northernmost piece of land furthest north in Poland. On the cape there is one of twelve Polish lighthouses. Inside there is a museum of lighthouses. The tower itself is built half of bricks (the bottom part) and half of metal (the upper part). It’s situated on a high and steep headland and, thanks to this, the light goes out 75.2 m. above the sea level when the lighthouse itself is only 24.7 m. high. The light can be seen from a distance of 23 sea miles, which is the best result in Poland. It is possible to get on the lower balcony of the building but from this height the view is not too interesting. The museum is nothing great as well. So, if you have not been in a lighthouse before, it is worth visiting. But I personally recommend the one in Niechorze (the region of Szczecin). In the case of good weather you can see the island of Bornholm from there!

Then we went towards Wejherowo. In a small village called Darzlubie we decided to take a short - cut through the forest we could see not far away from where we stopped to have a meal. The road was recommended to us by an elderly lady who said we would save a few kilometres. In fact, we saved... one. But it was really worth going that way. Very soon we entered the thick wood with a narrow road we were supposed to follow. Three of us decided to increase the level of adrenaline in our veins and we started a crazy race. Now I can see it was really stupid to do that but who cared then? We were riding our bikes at 40 km/hour on this tight, winding route, without any possibility of seeing if there was a car coming in the opposite direction. Fortunately, we reached the end of the road without any accidents (if there was one, it would be probably the last in our poor lives).

We finally got to Wejherowo when it was already dark, and by chance we found a half - deserted camp belonging to the Polish scout organisation, ZHP, where we could sleep for a small sum which, as we were told, was paid for the "statute aims" - another remnant of the "old times".

Ewa and Dorota turned out to be our equals and, although it was their first day and they weren’t used to our pace, they reached the finish together with us, without being late.

The sixth day

It’s been raining since the sun came up over the horizon. A sudden break in the weather occurred just when everything seemed to get better. One of the tents started to leak and the poor girls had their stuff almost completely wet through. Time was passing and we had to wait. We couldn’t pack the wet tents, of course. Eventually, about 11 o’clock, the rain turned into drizzle and about the noon it stopped altogether. After two hours which we spent on drying our "houses" we went to... a railroad station. Unfortunately it was too late to go the whole distance by bike and we had to use the train to Gdansk.

Gdansk was overcrowded as usual. They were celebrating the city’s millennium and there was great feast in the old town. We spent an hour there and then moved on. Once again we had to take the train. We wanted to stick to the plan so we had to get to Pelplin in the evening.

We got off the train in Tczew. There was still about 20 km left, so we did some quick shopping and went on. Along our road we noticed the building of the first Maritime University in Poland, in which the museum of Polish maritime education is situated.

We reached our destination at about 11 o’clock in the evening and started to look for a place to sleep. Just after we entered the city we noticed a kind of a hostel which belonged to Caritas, the Polish church charity organisation. But they didn’t have a place for us so we went on, searching for a few square metres of dry floor where we could rest our tired bodies. It was about to rain and we had no time to lose. Fortunately, we came across the building of a local primary school in which some students of architecture were living during their student practice. They welcomed us warmly, gave us a big room with a TV set and what was the most important thing, they didn’t want any money from us. There were some ants on the floor but we were happy anyway. We could do some washing, it was very warm inside and there was no water falling on our heads.

The seventh day

Pelplin The most important monument in Pelplin is undoubtedly the great gothic cathedral with a main altar from the late Renaissance and very rich decoration of the interior. Next to the church there are the buildings of an old Cistercian monastery. It’s also worth finding the diocesian museum with a great collection of liturgical objects and the edition of the Bible which was printed by the Guthenberg printers.

And they took us into custody...

From Pelplin we went straight to Gniew castle which originally belonged to the Teutonic Knights. The building, in the style of raw gothic, is used now in a great way as a kind of background for different competitions and "duels" organised by The Brotherhood of the Knights of Gniew Castle. For instance, on the day we arrived the cross-bow competition took place. There was also one for smiths and in the evening everyone could take part in a medieval feast.

The Gniew castle is being reconstructed at the moment. It was changed into a store, then burnt in the 20’s, but now it looks almost the same as it used to many years ago. Visiting the castle is allowed only with a guide. By the way, the one who showed us around the castle and told its story was a complete ignoramus. She spoke nonsense, hoping we would believe it. For example, we were told that the girl whose skeleton was lying there was killed by the cannon ball that was lying next to her. But apart from this, it was really nice to be there. And we really have to appreciate the work

In Gniew you can meet there a real Commander of the Order of the Teutonic Knights

which has been done by a group of people, real enthusiasts who are engaged in taking care of this great monument. Anyway, we are going to see it again as soon as possible.

From Gniew we went straight to the ford across the Vistula river just next to the village called Opalenie. It was a really interesting experience to cross the river when there were obvious signs of an oncoming storm. The wind was blowing and our small ferry rolled on the waves like a little leaf. We would probably have been sick if this voyage had lasted a bit longer. But finally we managed to get to the other bank and then, in 20 min time, we reached the great walls of the castle of Kwidzyn. (But I wonder how long the people who queued behind us had to wait).

That’s how we got on the ferry

You can count it: the ferry takes only three cars each time and it takes a quarter of an hour to cross the river. If there were 15 cars waiting, the last one probably got on the ferry about 2 and half hours after us. But there is no choice, the nearest bridge is about 100 km away. But, as usual, we weren’t lucky. The castle museum was already closed and we could get only a glimpse of the castle church. The castle itself is a very interesting structure and it is impressive from a distance as well as from close up. We regretted there was no possibility of seeing it from the inside, but we had to take shelter from the oncoming thunderstorm.

It kept raining incessantly for the next three hours. We spent them in a bar at the railroad station in order to have some lunch and avoid being completely soaked. And, as we had already lost a lot of time, for the second time we had to take advantage of PKP (Polish Railroads) to be in Malbork on time and not to be late for the "Light and Sound" show.

One could say a lot about Malbork, the biggest and the greatest gothic castle in Europe (that means - in the world, compared even with the castles of the Holy Land), but I’m going to limit myself to telling you just some basic information. The Malbork castle is open every day and the evening shows start at 10 p.m. in July and 9 p.m. in August. The performance itself is a bit out of date - both ideologically and technically. In the decade of technical developments, some voices from a tape with lights on the walls may now not satisfy a quite demanding audience.

We spent the night in a very expensive campsite (it won the title of "Mister Camping" some time ago so it had to be expensive) but at least of a good standard. Of course we didn’t want to pay the whole price, so we smuggled Rafal in and in fact it became a bit cheaper.

The eighth day

I must say this was the strangest and at the same time the most dramatic day of our journey. The whole story started about 20 km outside Malbork. Ewa, in some strange and still unexplained way, fell off her bike, injuring her chin. Unfortunately, three people (Monica, Pawel and Sebastian) in the front of our group did not realise what had happened and didn’t stop. The accident was serious enough to call the ambulance and take Ewa to hospital. Rafal, who studies medicine, went with her and Dorota with Radek stayed to take care of the bikes. The most ironic thing in that horrible event was that Ewa had found a four-leaf clover only five minutes earlier. So, as you can see, this plant not always is a symbol of luck.

In the meantime the other three were waiting in the next town. They didn’t know what was going on but after about 2 hours decided to go further and try to find the lost part of the group in Orneta, which was our destination that day.

Ewa turned out to be a really tough woman. With very painful injuries (she was given some stitches) she set a very good pace which allowed us to be in Orneta at 22:30, only about half an hour after the first three. We were lucky there was only one hotel in the town, so we found one another without any problems. So, this clover was in fact lucky, wasn’t it?