By Marty Kendall, SJCC English Retiree
Because my husband Joe and I take our bikes with us wherever we travel, we paid British Airways for oversized baggage when we flew from San Jose, California, to Krakow, Poland (2024). We were traveling as musicians for a dance ensemble that was performing in an international ethnic festival in southern Poland. Off we went — bikes ‘n’ all.
It turns out the site of the festival, Bielsko-Biala, is Poland’s center of mountain biking! Its ski lifts carry cyclists and hikers to alpine trails. But our bikes are hybrids for long distance touring. Undaunted, when the 9-day festival concluded (with our group, the Jubilee American Dance Theatre, winning the award for Audience Favorite!), most of the members hopped on planes from Krakow to head home to California.
We hopped on our bikes.
I admit we felt uncertain about this adventure. Could we ride in Poland without speaking or reading Polish? What would cycling conditions be like? To be on the safe side, I confirmed that Polish railways accept bikes on the Krakow-Warsaw route, so if cycling long distance seemed sketchy, we would have an out after 200 miles of trying. If necessary, in Poland’s capital city of Warsaw, we could come up with Plan B.
I am ecstatic to report that we did not need an “out!” Thanks to the routing app Komoot, excellent cycling infrastructure, and our luck with persistent sunshine, we pedaled the miles with unstoppable smiles. Most of the time we rode protected bike lanes, and all the time we benefitted from drivers’ courtesy, halting for us at every crosswalk.
booking.com made it easy to arrange each night’s lodging, and the currency exchange rate made this our most affordable European trip ever. Fortunately we did not have to pronounce the names of our hotels (such as “Szyndzlenia” and “Wzysogrod-Rybaki”) before checking in!
We stopped at one bike shop to pump up our tires. The owner, Peter, insisted on pumping them up himself. In his good English, he said business was prospering — which seemed generally the case all across the country. Poland joined the EU in 2004, jump starting its economic growth and development.
When we met a pair of Swiss long distance cyclists we immediately bonded due to our shared passion for` exploring the world from the seat of a bicycle. They agreed that Poland feels more like a Western European country than an eastern one because of its high standard of living and availability of services. To top it all off, its low prices make it an undiscovered gem in the cycle-touring world. We predict it won’t stay “undiscovered” for long.
Most of Poland is flat, so the riding was easy. Summer temperatures in the 80s kept me sweating, but oaks and maples offered shade. Town squares between Krakow and Warsaw looked like postcard scenes, with inviting, neatly maintained central plazas overflowing with red geraniums, red and white Polish flags, and more ice cream shops than Polish has vowels.
Stoked about our positive experience riding from Krakow in the south to Warsaw in central Poland, we headed northwest between fields of corn and wheat. Above the flat horizon, white-tailed eagles soared across what felt like Big Sky Country. In the most rural areas, rustic inns contrasted with our elegant but still inexpensive 4-star hotels in larger cities.
Our lodging in Plock overlooked the Wistula River, the Mississippi of Poland. We generally followed that river’s route as it meanders northward from the mountains of the south to Gdańsk, where it flows into the Baltic Sea. There’s no consistent paved trail along its banks, so when we did have a chance to cycle next to it, we especially appreciated watching kayaks, pirogues, and swans on the wide, shallow expanse.
Each day provided a good balance of the novel and the familiar.
The “novel” for us was unridable deep sand, two four-letter words! We’re used to bouncing along unpaved roads, but some were so sandy we had to get off our bikes. After one stretch that was probably a kilometer but felt like a mile, my tired biceps complained: “This is supposed to be a pedaling trip, not a pushing one!” Fortunately such episodes occurred only a few times. A stopgap “fix” for the omnipresent sand is the use of pervious cement slabs, laid side by side. They are not very smooth, but we could ride over them.
For us, the “familiar” means pedaling paths that vary from paved bikeways alongside highways to single track alongside cow pastures. We pause often to picnic or snap pictures. We take our time, most days covering 30-40 miles of cherished, be-here-now moments in the saddle. When we check into our lodging every night, I love a shower, a glass of wine, and being handed a menu. Google’s Translation App helps us order. Sometimes menus already translated generated a good laugh: How did we manage to resist “salad with ripening ham?”
Many of my predictions about Poland turned out to be wrong. I expected it to be fairly poor because it was so recently behind the Iron Curtain. No!
I expected the Baltic Seacoast to be cosmopolitan with international tourists. Wrong again. Vacationers were overwhelmingly Polish. We interacted with many folks who spoke no English, but smiles and good will overcame lapses in vocabulary.
I thought Eurovelo routes along the Baltic shore would lure hundreds of touring cyclists. Nope! Nothing was crowded. Whether casually pedaling the seaside on a sunny afternoon, or carrying loaded panniers through forest paths on more extended trips, riders honored bikeway norms. We learned to hug the right side of trails, as riders behind us did not announce themselves. They passed in silence.
I worried that drivers unaccustomed to cyclists might be impatient. Wrong again. Traffic laws demand that drivers give cyclists the right of way, and they did.
We regretted saying goodbye to Poland. I don’t know how to say “Let the good times roll” in Polish, but I do know how to enjoy rolling my wheels there!