Orienteering from Lodz to Greater Poland Voivodeship

The land around Lodz Voivodeship is rich with forests where one can get lost for long hours of trail, dirt and service road exploration.
Being local and having spent a lot of time riding around some of the surrounding forestry land I know it like the back of my hand. Yet there’s still a lot to be discovered further away from home than a days ride can take me.

My Grandmother lives 100 km away in a straight line on the outskirts of the Greater Poland Voivodeship. Visiting her by bike is almost a prehistoric idea that once popped into the head of my cousin and never saw it’s execution. It was high time to change that.

Lazy sun

Long, warm days are gone, giving room to foggy, damp and fresh mornings.

Days better than others: Zwardon to Makow Podhalanski

Some days you hear a voice  

Taking you to another place

Some days are better than others

How to grasp riding in a climate so different than the one I got used to those days. Unforgiving heat that I'm soaking up with all of myself while pushing a 35 kg hog up the hillside of Wielka Racza... warm nights on the hills, no light pollution and crystal clear skies dotted with a matrix of stars and galaxies roaming above our heads. Fire, sausage, an orchestra of beetles, crawlers, crickets and other instruments listened to in new but somehow familiar company.

Baltic 2+1

Eight days, eight panniers, two bikes, two adults, one child, two teddies, one tent, zero rain, small distances, a lot of photos.

Beaches, dunes, cliffs, forests, meadows, fields, roads...

More on that later.

Surly Pugsley - about being fat and ugly

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Forst

Moving places brought a welcome change in surroundings, climate, landscapes... basically everything. Gone are the hilly tarmac roads, moist seaside air and vast, barren moorlands. All replaced by flat as a table terrain, dry yet increasingly violent continental spring climate and seemingly endless forests guarded only by sandpits. It happened that I was longing for some proper thunder storms and I was quite prepared  for sand pits.

Don't leave well alone, the thing about fat tubes

Riding the Pugs is cool and there's more coming about that, what's not cool is the silent hiss of a tyre going flat, even more annoying is the second - of a peeled off patch... The original Surly Toobs fitting Pugsley's 26x3.7 tyres are hard to get and on the expensive side. Going flat happens just like that and keeping a close eye on the future I started looking for other solutions.

A glimpse of spring

Back at home winter struck back full throttle, meanwhile in Wales first signs of spring can be seen. Rainy months gave to windy weeks and when those blew away all of the cloudy days, sun rays fell to the ground.
After a recent injury I was stuck at home for a longer period, but the pain was long gone and it was high time for some scouting. How long can one sit at home and fiddle around with the bike...

Snaps: Preseli Hills

"mur fy mebyd
Foel Drigarn, Carn Gyfrwy, Tal Mynydd, 
wrth fy nghefn
ym mhob annibyniaeth barn"

"the bare dwellings of my youth, ’
Foel Drigarn, Carn Gyfrwy, Tal Mynydd, 
are at my back
in all independent judgement"

Waldo Williams

Surly Pugsley - 29er / 700c wheels

When buying my Pugsley I knew from the very start that I would build a light set of 700c wheels for it. Fat is rad, doesn't mind snow, sand or boggy moorland (at least some of it). Yet most of the time fat tyres aren't 100% necessary and I wanted to have a light & fast option. That's not to say that Larrys are utterly useless on tarmac - they're not.

Surly Pugsley - new shoes

A couple of months ago I became a happy owner of a yellow fatty monster, a Surly Pugsley that is. Not everything from the original specs suited me and at first I considered assembling the bicycle from parts, according to my wants and needs - more wants than needs I guess. Unfortunately used frames do not come up very often in the EU and I was forced to look for a new one eventually. Further price scouting revealed that buying parts separately would end up being more expensive then getting a complete bike, thus burying the idea once and for all. The die has been cast.

September memories #4 - Lower Silesia or bust

An early start awaited me today and thanks to this, I got to see the sun rising above Silesia. Such an incredible sight, as the lazy, September sunshine awakes this vast, urban landscape - still under a misty blanket - from its slumber. Silesia reminds me of the German Ruhr District - although heavily urbanized, both places are very green and, at places, resemble more of a forest rather than a cityscape.

Yesterday's evening party reached far into the next day, so I only got very limited rest. Not a good idea before embarking on a 200 km journey to Wroclaw...

September memories #3 - Silesia

Already in the planning stage I had mixed feeling about riding through Lower Silesia. It is home to the most urbanized area in Poland and I was afraid I'd have to spend most of my time navigating roads and cities. I had all before my eyes; heavy traffic, smog, noise and whatnot. I couldn't possibly be more wrong.

September memories #2 - Zywiec Beskids

Click on the soup and find the puppet's belly,

something good might happen :-)

We have spent the evening of my arrival on chatting, playing with little Madzia, looking after Wiktoria attending her homework duties and preparing Marcin's other bike for an excursion to the Zywiec Beskids mountain range we had planned before my visit.
Marcin's bike, I was about to lend, needed some attention and changing from a rigid fork to a suspended one. Because of the terrain we were heading for I didn't want to bounce around on my own rigid bike, my tires were clearly not fit for the job either.

Saturday morning we got in the car and drove off in the direction of Rycerka Gorna, where we had our base. I'll never forget the horror of being Marcin's passenger, luckily we arrived in one piece and we were still good friends ;-).

September memories #1 - Jura!

Let no one say it
(And say it to your shame)
That all was beauty here
Until you came

Sign in a National Park
Val Lewton

September for me was a month of respite, rest, going back home to familiar places and faces. A brief moment of loosing oneself when resting your head against a wooden pier and admiring a sunset. A whole month sounds like a long time, yet when you try to fit in over a year's absence, it soon starts to shrink incredibly fast. So many people to see, so many places to visit, so many things to do. One would like to stop time or at least slow down it's inevitable progress... well that's what I was just about to do.