Sulistrowice, Swidnice, to the Czech Border May 30

By Eric

The weather in the morning was wonderful. It was one of the hottest days since we left the Iberian peninsula. It would in fact never get any hotter and mostly cold for the next month as we headed west to Holland.

We started out heading north even though our destination for the day, the Czech border, lay south. Piotr and Lukasz had recommended we visit a quarry in that direction.

On the way we stopped and bought a bag of cherries from a roadside stand. We only wanted a few but not knowing the language, we accidentally ordered a whole kilo (2.2 pounds)!! That's a lot of cherries. I put a bunch in my handlebar bag and all day we munched on them as we rode.

At the cherry stand, another customer chatted us up. She was from Warsaw and spoke great English. She told us not to bother visiting Warsaw, which is the same thing many other Poles said. It wasn't on our route anyway. She worked for Mars, the candy maker, which I think is based in Eric's home town of Pittsburgh, PA. Her job was checking the quality of the candy bar wrappers. Mars also made Snickers, so we told her how a total of 10 Snickers bars helped us survive our whole 23-day ride across the Himalayas. We told her to tell Mars. She said she would.

We found our way to the quarry by asking everyone we passed where it was. We had the name written down on our map so we just showed the name to all the people walking to church. Eventually we found a man on a mountain bike who spoke English and led us all the way there.

The quarry was pretty. Lots of people were there swimming and several scuba diving. The water very clear and not so cold. Joan was shocked that I just dove right in without the usual painful hesitations. I'm not good at getting into cold water. We were very very lucky. The rest of our time in Europe, it was never so hot again.

We had a good swim. Then we rode back south, to the main road, and arrived in the town of Swidnice just in time for a huge street fair. The streets were full of beer and food stands, and lots of people were doing traditional dances on a small stage. We parked our bikes, indulged in ice cream, watched some women dancing with flasks of wine? on their heads, and had a huge lunch of half a chicken (between us) and beers. It was one of our best days in Poland.

Then the countryside got really gorgeous. The road started following a river through some mountains. We stopped at a great cafe on the side of the road to have some beers. On the way out, we asked for directions, and I'm not kidding, about six people came forward to help. It was a little embarrassing because I kept asking them whether the "bicycle lane" went around the lake, and Eric kept trying to point out it was actually a road, but for someone reason I didn't hear him until the people we were asking directions told me it was a road. It was a nice, narrow road.

It took us around a pretty lake, over a dam, and through more forest. Then we started climbing a long hill. We saw a couple having a picnic in the middle of a pretty, recently cut hay field and father-son teams riding along the road. Really excellent riding here.

It the top of the long hill the road leveled off and ran along the edge of a valley. In the evening light it looked wonderfully pastoral. We stopped here, climbed an embankment beside the road and ate cherries. We had a pit spitting contest, which I won by just a few inches. Neither of us quite managed to get a pit clear across the road.

Before we left Joan mentioned that she didn't feel too well. Fortunately the road descended gently and continuously for many kilometers. I noticed that Joan seemed to be on a pedaling strike. When the road was she just coasted until almost stopping before pedaling. She was feeling worse and worse.

Finally we stopped in a little town and she crawled onto a park bench and just lay there, moaning periodically. Her stomach was hurting her.

I asked some passersby if there was any camping nearby and a man who spoke some English said there was some just one kilometer down the road. I convinced Joan to get back on the bike for one kilometer. But one kilometer turned into two then three then four. There was no sign of the camping.

I checked out a couple of free camping possibilities along the road and finally found one just about 500 meters from the border of Czech. It was along a row of trees in a dandelion field. I've never seen such huge dandelions as the ones in that field. They were three feet tall!!

We got the tent up then Joan crawled away into the deep dandelions and wretched up half a kilo of cherries. She felt much better.

Next: Czech, home of some of the best beers in the world

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