Day Ten - Rogowo to Ustka (92mi)
The day started with breakfast and coffee at the campsite, and searching my body for woodticks. All was good.
My neighbor was driving a diesel VW Westfalia that he couldn’t keep running. He’d drive 5 feet, then it would die. He repeated this about about 100 meters. Being alone, on my bike, held to my own devices, I could relate to what it must feel like when your gear lets you down. I felt bad for him. He eventually got it in the road and was moving. I wonder how the rest of his day went. It made me wonder how my day, and the rest of my trip would go.
After about an hour of packing up, I too was in the road east, with a massive tailwind and sunshine. It felt good to roll fast and efficiently. The flip side of riding fast in Poland, is dealing with the uneven and unpredictable surfaces. Sometimes there are signs that say “Złym Stany”, meaning bad condition. You get going like 20+ mph and there are huge potholes to navigate with vehicles overtaking you, or you are on the bike path and there are indentations for every driveway that shake the entire bike. These fast up and down movements make it literally a pain in the ass. I’m starting to feel it. One other thing with riding fast on paths in this region is that there are tourists walking everywhere. I found myself often riding through towns on the road instead of the path. The remote areas of the paths are really nice, however. Like this area pictured below.
planned mileage for today was 84, and a lot of it was on bike paths of various conditions. This made it interesting and also gave me a view of the sea for a good chunk of the day.
The Polish government made it an initiative to build connected cycling infrastructure in this region. There were signs everywhere indicating this. It’s super cool that they are doing this. The health and wellness benefits for vacationing Poles to this area are immeasurable. With a per capita GDP of $19,000 (U.S. is $76,000 for comparison), many poles can’t afford to travel abroad for vacation. Pomorza Zachodniego is a beautiful summer beach location for them to come to, and now there are long connected bike paths to ride on throughout the region. You could see it is being used, as the paths had lots of traffic.
With the increase of traffic to the area, you can see that they are also trying to get people to keep the area clean, especially beaches. The sign below reads “Do you like garbage on the beach?” It’s great that the officials are making a campaign of this too.
Along with all of this growth comes infrastructure development, including road construction. Entire villages are being built in this area with huge projects. Amazingly, they keep the roads open to cars when they are building these. You drive right next to excavators and bulldozers with no protection.
I rode through all of this, navigating a lot of confusing routes, and finally made it to a town for lunch. I found this restaurant named “Salsa”, than had an oddly familiar logo treatment to Salsa Cycles. They don’t have a single item with salsa on their menu!
I grabbed lunch at a place near the beach for some needed fuel. I decided to shoot a photo of the view from where I was sitting, to share context. This is common architecture in Poland, and it is changing fast.
After a cheese filled croquette with fries and a Greek salad, I was back on the bike and quickly ran into a snag with the planned route. An armed soldier walked from next to a bridge and said “Zamknięty!” I said “shit” out loud and he responded by saying “Tutaj jest military”. So, he was telling me this area is closed because it’s being used for military purposes. Interesting. There is a lot to unpack with that. In any case, it meant I had a serious re-route to navigate. It put me on the trail below, only to be dead ended.
I went in a circle and was back where I entered this area. I kept exploring different ways and ended up in this.
And then I was on this, which was really nice.
Eventually the path went to a paved surface, which is a lot smoother.
And because of an isthmus that’s impossible to traverse, I was pushed deeper inland to the countryside, which was kind of nice actually.
Someone was selling lemonade in the middle of nowhere. Some things are universal. It was a nice break to stop and photograph this sign, which reads “Cold Lemonade, 700 meters”.
Passing through small villages is always interesting, as there are usually old churches or buildings that make for nice photos in the right light.
As I was nearing Ustka, this building stood out to me. It’s new, and is already wearing the signs of weather and stress. There’s something symbolic here that speaks to Poland’s history, resilience, and grit as it forges ahead in a modern world connected to the EU.
It was a long day in the saddle, and I reached the camp site around 8:15pm. I had to call the number on their door for help. A nice woman said she would come over to let me in. I ended up hanging with her for a half hour talking, and her family came too. I got to meet her grand daughter, Jagoda (which means “berry”). I would same something to Jagoda in English and she would run in circles giggling. It was a great way to arrive at the camp site. I went down town and found a place for pizza and then went to bed immediately for rest.
