Can you say "Szlak Orlich Gniazd"?
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 3 ~ 30 June ~ Kraków to Olsztyn to Bobolice
We've been told that breakfast is included in our room rate, but we've never been able to figure out how, given that we're self-catering. It has to be said that Rainbow Apartments haven't quite lived up to expectations, but we've still had a good couple of days in Kraków, so we're not really unhappy.
We are now going to be collected by taxi and driven to our cycle starting point, the castle of Olsztyn, about two hours away by car. It's only around a hundred km in a straight line, but we'll meander back slowly and take nine days. Of those five are actually going from A to B while four are exploration/walking/etc days in between.
Our luggage is outside the apartment ready for collection, but our driver has the same problem we originally did: he can't find the entrance from the address. We find him looking confused on the square.
Once we get going, the journey is straightforward enough. Michal, our driver, doesn't speak a huge amount of English, but it's certainly better than our Polish and he seems a friendly sort.
At Olsztyn, he sets up our bikes for us.
Amanda is a bit unhappy with hers at first, but this is mainly because she's not used to this sort of bike any more. I blame Mark of Cycle Catalan for corrupting her with the lightweight carbon road bikes he provided in Girona. Our route now, though, will include cobbles, as you see here, and some off-road sections; lean mean racing machines are perhaps not ideal all-rounders. [For reference, when she did the Chantilly Triathlon -- which I don't see to have blogged about -- a couple of years back, she was seriously nervous on the cobbles and saw some people simply give up and push their bikes on those sections.]
She comes to terms with reality before too long, though.
Oh, and Iga is so apologetic about our poor room in Kraków, she's given Michal a bottle of wine to give us in compensation!
We're ready to begin our tour...
Now, slightly annoyingly, I'd forgotten to download the GPX files with our routes onto my Garmin GPS unit. They're on my phone, but getting them copied onto the eTrex turns out to be impossible without a computer. As we discovered in Spain recently, using a phone for navigation will finish off the battery well before you finish a long ride, while the eTrex will happily run for a full couple of days or more.
However the trail does seem to be clearly marked, so we should be able to follow that, just using the phone for confirmation every so often.
Onward!
The sign points to various places, but our first visit is 'Zamek'. That's Polish for 'Cast;le' and is our first Eagle's Nest.
It's mostly ruined, but we still have to pay admission. That tower looks interesting, but when we get there, our tickets don't include it! We can pay at the entrance and iIt's not much extra, sure, but it's the principle of the thing that annoys us so we decline.
Looking down over the town. We're not travelling that big obvious road, but I think that's our general direction ahead.
The beginning of our trail is on a fairly smooth gravel path. It'll become a little more rustic, but then we'll hit some quiet roads.
A curious little micro-church.
Back in the woods, but the trails are very well signposted.
We have GPX files (satnav data) for our routes, but for now at least they are almost completely redundant. It's interesting how quickly cycling tours seem to have gone paperless: for Catalunya last year we had only a phone app, which was a bit less than ideal when on one long day my phone ran out of charge. We had a few years without cycling holidays (as did many of us: Covid didn't help!) and I'm trying to remember if we had physical paper notes given to us to complement the GPX files for Croatia (2019) and Slovenia (2018), but we definitely had written instructions for Corsica in 2017.
Do you remember I mentioned earlier that Saint Florian was the patron saint of firefighters? I didn't know this when I took this picture, and I confess I was a bit confused by it.
Wooden churches turn out to be something of a thing here. There's even a whole Wikipedia article about them. Learn more about this specific one, the Church of St Giles in Zrębice.
They have more traditional churches too, of course.
Back on forest trails again, but still very smooth and well marked.
We stop for our lunch just outside the woods, at a little picnic table complete with rustic bike park. Note that we've got quite a bit of pannier space. We'd originally been expecting to use backpacks, but don't have any need. One thing that would have been useful, though, is a front handlebar bag to put my camera in. I've shortened the strap a little so that it doesn't bang into the bike when strapped across my shoulders but it's still slightly faffy. I must investigate whether I can find something better among the enormous range of camera accessory straps, harnesses, clips, etc that are available.
Our post-lunch path leads through farmland for a while.
Aha, this is Mirów Castle, quite close to Bobolice Castle where we are staying tonight and tomorrow. We think we'll stop and take a quick look, but the ticket office seems to be closed.
Bobolice comes into view.
Our room is in a purpose-built hotel block, not the castle itself. As guests, we get free entrance, but it's closed now.
To our surprise, the restaurant isn't open either. Our notes say that it's open on Sundays, the staff say it isn't, but they tell us that the kitchen should be able to rustle us up something simple for dinner.
So we sit on the terrace with a view up to the castle.
Chicken and vegetable noodle soup.
And these are 'pierogi', a classic Polish food. Stuffed dumplings not entirely dissimilar to Japanese gyoza.
A nice glass... well, bottle... of wine to accompany it and we're most satisfied.
Evening falls and it's time for bed.
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