We have arrived in the Polish lake District and are having another day off. The weather has been becoming hotter and hotter with thunderstorms every evening. We are now very good at predicting where the next bus stop is, as this is where we stop to get waterproofed up. generally putting on the gear makes the rain stop. Last night there was a real humdinger of a storm but we were well tucked up in our hotel/bunker before it started. We are now hovering around the border with Belarus wondering how to get across. Apparently you can't cross the border on a bicycle so we think we will go down to Bialystok and get the train across. Apparently you can't take bikes on the trains that cross the border.We'll see.
In fact we were staying in the former officers quarters on the site of Hitler's bunker - the Wolf's Lair. He and his entourage spent the last 3 years of the war cowering in this site under a screen of real trees and artificial vegetation that they changed with the seasons. My expectations of the bunker was that it would be a moderately small hole in the ground. In fact the site is huge and the bunkers are massive pyramidal structures with the top truncated. They were constructed of concrete reinforced with steel bars. When the time came to evacuate the site they were blown up - but not very successfully - some are more or less intact - very creepy. In spite of signs in 4 languages that they were dangerous structures and not to enter we did venture into some of them.
Accommodation and victualling has been a bit hit and miss. One night we stayed in the front room of some old lady's house and a few nights later when checking into some snazzy hotel in Elblag the manager took one look at my passport and was so amazed that a man of my great age was cycling around Poland that he upgraded us a to suite which was about as big as our flat. In Gdansk we ate like kings on the waterfront. Last night at Hitler's bunker we toddled down to the hotel restaurant to find that it had closed at 5pm As the nearest other food was 11 km away and a spectacular thunderstorm was brewing we stayed in our room and consumed the leftover bits and pieces in our packs. The highlight was a complimentary packet of peanuts from the ferry crossing. The good news was that the hotel bar could provide us with piwa the one essential word in Polish - beer.
You may be wondering how we are managing with only one set of bicycling clothes and one set of clothes for the evening. The answer is Teddy does a lot of washing when we get to a hotel. We bought magic shirts from Rohan before we left and however crumpled they are when we extract them from our packs within 3 minutes they are immaculate. Having said that we are now starting to look a bit tatty. My legs are a varied hue of bruises from purple to yellow and I always manage to arrive clarted with oil from the chain. Ted, having been brought up properly, never gets oil on his trousers.
