You’d be forgiven for thinking that cycle touring is always fun and easy and to be honest on the most part it’s a fine way to spend your time, but the longer you are doing it the higher your chances of having a bad day. There are a multitude of things that can spoil the rhythm of eat, sleep, ride repeat and with various consequences: Bike parts can break, tyres can puncture, food can run out (or get eaten by animals), body parts can ache or chafe, route choices can lead to nowhere… The list is endless but really shouldn’t be contemplated for too long otherwise you’ll never leave your tent for fear of something going wrong. But the most likely thing to put a dampener on proceedings (pun intended) is the weather.

22nd to 29th October

We  leave Lublin late in the day so only made 20km before needing to find somewhere to camp but suitable sites are  limited. Our eventual choice is a field that seems firm and level and with the tent pitched we eat pierogi dumplings. It would be hard to imagine a more Polish scene as there’s  also a huge pile of turnips alongside but there is one missing ingredient that would complete the picture. In the middle of the night the wind picks up and it begins to rain, a storm is closing in. The soil surrounding the tent  turns from firm ground to soft mud within minutes and becomes less capable of holding the pegs so with a particularly strong gust a few are pulled out. It takes  a while for us to realise that the loud flapping noise was the tent starting to collapse but when I eventually open my eyes I had to quickly put on a jacket and shoes and run round the tent in my pants trying to get the whole thing upright and stable again. An hour later it happens again. By the morning we are both cold and tired so decide to pack up at first light and head for the nearest cafe. It’s still raining and freezing cold so after packing up the soaking and muddy tent I can hardly feel my fingers and can’t get my gloves on. Somehow we manage to get down to a petrol station and stand in the kiosk trying to defrost while the man behind the till looks at us but says nothing other than ‘No toilet’. Once we feel normal again we venture back out and pedal hard to stay warm longing for a cafe to appear round the next corner. Eventually we find one, scoff pancakes and omelettes and make the decision to push on until early afternoon and then check into a hotel. In all we cover 60km which, given the conditions, was considered to be a good day’s work. The hotel is very smart until we unpack all of our wet and muddy kit into the room but for some reason it lacks hot water which is the one commodity we really need. Kirsty is particularly unhappy about this as you might well imagine. The next priority is to fill up on dinner so we abandon the hotel and head into town to the ubiquitous pizzeria. Saulius in Druskininkai had suggested we try some Flacki (a soup made from tripe, i.e. cut up cows guts) while in Poland and I finally manage to find some. It’s  hearty, tasty and much better than it sounds provided you don’t look too closely at the contents. In fact it’s so filling that not all of the 37cm pizza that follows gets finished.

The next morning the skies are clear and the sun has returned but it’s still chilly, barely above freezing. We’re feeling much better after a good night’s rest and we ride out into the Roztoczański national park with forest all around us. We don’t want to stop for long that day so have a quick lunch break with our healthiest menu yet: left over pizza, kebab flavoured crisps and some kind of processed meat stick but balanced out with an orange. Then on to Tomaszów Lubelski to pick up dinner supplies before finding somewhere to camp. The forecast is for -6 degrees that night so we want to make sure we can get a fire going before bed time. Kirsty picks up a bottle of some unidentifiable  liquor to help heat us from the inside too. We find a great spot in some woods with plenty of kindling and quickly get a fire going that is just the right side of being under control. Putting most of our clothes on and making sure we are fully heated from the flames and the liquor we retire to the tent to see how our lightweight sleeping system will fare.

It’s not the most comfortable of nights but we don’t catch hypothermia and we now know that our kit can go well below zero, but we wouldn’t want to have to endure that too many times.

We have 20km to ride to our next border crossing and the sun comes out to warm things up a degree or two. On the way we pass a 24hr hotel that was 500m away from our camp site.

Researching the Ukrainian border guard website has told us that you shouldn’t be able to cycle across at the Hrbenne/Rava Ruska crossing as it’s for automobiles only, however we are heading that way regardless. We had read a couple of blogs where one person had hitched across by catching a lift in a passing mini van while in September another couple had simply turned up and played innocent and after a bit of persistence were let through. So it sounded like it should be possible and if we got through we would avoid having to ride an extra 100km south to another crossing that would definitely let bikes across.

Rolling up to the first checkpoint the Polish guard waves us past the queue of cars, takes our passports from us and disappears into a booth without any fuss. A few minutes later we’re beckoned to the window of the booth where our passports are returned and we’re sent on our way to deal with the Ukrainian side. At the next checkpoint we encounter a stern looking Ukrainian guard. It’s a Saturday morning, there’s a cold wind whipping round his fur hat (I was wishing I had a fur hat too) and he doesn’t need this kind of complication today. He steps back and chats on his radio for a bit then with a sigh fills out a slip of paper, hands it over and sends us on to the next checkpoint. Here we are interrogated about where we are heading and why and again our passports disappear into a booth. Someone else in the queue tells us it’s not great weather for biking as it’s a bit cold. It’s not great weather for waiting around at a border control either but finally our passports are returned complete with the first stamp of the trip and we’re waved through into Ukraine! Well nearly as there is a final checkpoint where the slip of paper and our passports are checked again, but after that we are free to continue on.

This now feels like a proper foreign country. It’s just been through a revolution, it has a war zone in the East, it uses the Cyrillic alphabet which Kirsty has been busy learning and is excited to try out her new skills, and our mobile phone charges have gone up by a percentage factor that even wonga.com would be ashamed of (data is 26x more expensive than in EU countries). The phones get switched off.

The big open road is lined with petrol stations and money changers and every other car seems to be a Lada. The towns we ride through all have ornate orthodox churches that are brightly coloured and shiny but everything else seems to be in fairly poor condition, particularly the side roads. We cross through 50 degrees of latitude so are at last below our previous southernmost point, which was Brighton some two months ago.

We decide to try some local delicacies at lunchtime and stop at a small cafe that has a pickled gerkin, some ham and not much else on display in the counter. It doesn’t look appetising which is fine as the lady refuses to serve us and points us to a restaurant around the corner instead. Here they are setting up for a wedding banquet but they don’t mind fixing up two basic meals for us but it’s a shame we’re too early for the party as the banquet looks much better. The food with coffee costs us about 60 Hyrvnia which is less than £3. Because of all the things happening in Ukraine at the moment the economy has crashed and with it the exchange rate has taken a hammering. This is very good for foreign travellers but very bad for Ukrainians who may want to visit other countries in Europe.

Back out on the road into Lviv we start to encounter several hills and a hierarchy is soon established amongst the traffic. The tandem is marginally faster than a horse and cart, a Lada is marginally faster than the tandem, and a truck is marginally faster than a Lada. But on the descents the tandem is level pegging with the Ladas. It’s a major road but there are farmers selling vegetables on the hard shoulder so occasionally a car pulls over to buy some cabbages and we have to swerve around them.

Lviv (or Lwow if you’re Polish or Львів if you’re Ukranian) sits in a big natural bowl so after cresting the final hill we freewheel most of the way into the city centre. We’d been having trouble finding a host despite starting the search about a week before arriving as everyone seemed to have a full house. Our last resort was going to be the Ghost-el which claims to be a medieval themed hostel, but in the nick of time we received an email from Irka, a Couchsurfing host, to say we can stay with her. After meeting up in a coffee shop we head back to her apartment which turns out to be even more bizarre than even the Ghost-el was promising. All of the walls in the hallway and kitchen are hand painted with cartoon images of a fairly tale with knights princes and castles. In the bedroom we have an intricate floral pattern on the walls and ceiling and a painting of St Lucias reading to a child. Irka apologises and says her landlady forbids her from changing any of it but  it makes for a very unique place for us to stay.

Irka asks if we’re here for the wine and cheese festival. Well we weren’t but we are now so the next day we wonder round the old city with its domed churches, castle and beautifully ornate market square in search of wine and cheese. It’s a Sunday and in the main cathedral they are broadcasting the mass to the crowd outside as it’s full to capacity inside. Also the clocks have gone back so we regain the hour we had lost when we crossed the border and are effectively back on Polish time, but we still try and structure the day according to Lithuanian time to make the most of daylight. It’s getting quite confusing.

When we get to the festival we are issued with a cocktail stick and small cup and head round all of the stalls to try the free samples. The wine is very sweet but works well when mulled. The mild cheese seems better as a hot fondue too. There’s a large dance floor in the shape of the map of Ukraine but it hasn’t been updated in light of recent events so people queue up to have their photos taken defiantly staking a claim to Crimea.

Lviv is very patriotic so there are flags everywhere and plenty of anti-Putin material. You can buy a chocolate Putin dressed up like Stalin and enjoy biting his head off, there are Putin door mats so you can wipe your feet on his face and Putin toilet paper with his image on so you can …well you get the idea, Vladimir is not welcome round here. But although voting is taking place for an election that day there are no campaign posters or in fact any evidence at all that it is happening. Speaking to Irka in the evening she says people are getting tired of all the elections and feel that there is not a very good choice of candidates to choose from so as a result the turnout is low. She has dreams of bringing dance music to Lviv and opening a night club as the music scene is decades behind the huge club culture of western Europe. You heard it here first, Ukraine is set to become the next big party destination.

On our way out of Lviv we stop at a market for food and a passer-by gives us a small Ukrainian flag to hang off the bike which should help keep favour with the drivers. We also stop to buy some extra pairs of long johns in case things get colder but at the moment we have fantastic clear blue skies and it’s nudging 12 degrees.

We spend all day on a main road as almost all of the side roads are more pot hole than tarmac, but it’s not that busy and the traffic gives us plenty of room so the flag seems to be working. We spend the night in a hotel in Stryi (Стрий) which costs less than the French campsite and it promises a swimming pool and sauna. The pool turns out to be roughly 7 foot long and roughly 2 degrees so I manage a single length with my toes still at one end while my fingers touch the other before hopping straight out again. Kirsty dips a toe and thinks better of it.

In Stryi the next day we stop briefly at a busy market and while Kirsty heads off for supplies I park the bike next to a fire station where it gets a full inspection by the curious firemen. There is snow on the roofs so the warm hotel was a wise choice.

On the horizon today is an unfamiliar sight, a dark band of mountains in the form of the Carpathians. Up until now we were beginning to think that Europe was mostly flat. In the foothills we begin climbing on a nice shallow gradient  through woods, over the River Stryi several times, past shiny churches and ramshackle villages. It’s another bright, clear and crisp day which is just perfect for climbing mountains. Towards the top it ramps up to 10% which requires a bit more effort but the views make it worthwhile. By the time we reach the hotel that sits at just over 700m on the top of the pass the sun is beginning to set and with it we can straight away feel the temperature dropping quickly. But we don’t have enough cash and they don’t accept cards. In a panic we contemplate the options which include camping (way too cold, even with the new tights), riding down to the next hotel (they might not take cards either), offering to do the washing up (not many guests so unlikely to be enough washing up to earn the 250 UAH). But the staff just say it’s OK we can pay some other time, give us a credit card number and show us to our room. We’re not sure what we are supposed to do with this number but are extremely grateful so settle in for the night. Try this next time you need to stay in a Travelodge and see what happens.

In the morning we step out into a bright but frosty landscape and get a lung full of air that reminds us of catching the first chair lift of the day in the Alps. It’s warmed up to -4 when we set off and we are trying out the double layer of thermal tights to good effect. There’s a small amount of climbing which warms us up nicely before we begin the long descent out of the mountains. The views are spectacular and we make rapid progress with 80km covered before lunchtime.

On the way we celebrate our 5000th kilometre. It’s then 40k on mostly flat road into Uzhhorod (Ужгород) for our final night in Ukraine and staying with Natalia and Jan. Over a dinner of varenyky (Ukranian dumplings which are smaller but more meaty than Polish pierogi) Natalia fills us in on some of things that have been going on in Ukraine over the past few years with tales of propaganda, war tax and the fact that it was only a matter of time before Russia took an interest in the eastern part of the country. We also learn that within one person’s lifetime this particular region has been part of 5 different countries as borders and boundaries get changed and land gets passed from one custodian to another. It’s no surprise then that the people of Uzhhorod are not as patriotic as those in Lviv as they must find it hard to know where they should be showing allegiance to.

From here we’re heading over into Slovakia then down into Hungary, aiming for Budapest. The keen eyed amongst you will have realised that this brings us back west whereas New Zealand is in the east but as the old adage goes, to go east first you must go west. Or was that just a Village People song?

 

Languages have never been my specialist subject. Somehow I managed to get a B at GCSE French and tried to brush up on some of what I learned at school with a French module during my degree but it seems to go in one ear and out l’autre. Not that French would help much on this trip anyway as we only spent one day in France. But as an English speaker it has been incredibly easy to travel through the countries we’ve been to so far as almost everyone we have met speaks very good English or at worst enough to understand what we are trying to do/buy/eat. Poland has proved to be a bit more challenging though and trying to speak Polish is far from easy with more z’s and c’s in each word than you can shake a szctick at. But sign language and a smile seems to go a long way so it’s been good to start practising this for later in the trip when things are sure to get a lot harder.

14th to 21st October 2014

From Druskininkai it’s not far up to the border crossing into Poland and the enormous customs checkpoint lies empty alongside the main road now that both Lithuania and Poland are within the EU Schengen region so we ride through without stopping. Crossing the border means we gain an hour as we go back a time zone but we’ve decided to try and stick to Lithuanian time as it makes better use of the daylight. Into our first Polish town of Sejny it all looks much more commercial than the Baltic states as there are huge shop signs everywhere and when we stop at a supermarket the choice on offer seems enormous, even though it’s just a Biedronka which is a kind of Polish version of Lidl.

Next morning we stop for a quick biscuit break and some policemen wander over for a chat about our trip then suddenly ask to see our passports. This is the first time we’ve had to produce them during the entire trip so far so we’re glad that they are still where we think they should be. They tell us there are one, maybe two lynx in these woods so we keep an eye out but they must be hiding today. The policemen are soon distracted when a Lithuanian camper van pulls in towing a trailer with a generator running that seems to be powering a large fridge in the van.

After lunch in Augustow we’re reunited with the Via Baltica for 30km and it’s now laden with a lot more trucks, in fact several times more trucks than cars. There’s enough of a hard shoulder to stay to one side but at one roundabout things get a bit too cramped for our liking when a huge artic tries to squeeze past. Polish drivers are by far the worst yet so I need to be much more aware of what’s going on, but unfortunately my rear view mirror was lost somewhere a few days ago. The road surfaces are also in a poor state with some stretches having deep trenches cut into the tarmac by the heavy lorries so a choice has to be made to either ride the narrow ridge to the right of the trench or stay in the trench, both require a lot of concentration!

There’s a thunderstorm overnight which comes very close to the tent but by morning it’s calmed down again and stopped raining. We’d left our Alpkit top tube bags on the bike and they’d taken a soaking which we later discovered had affected our Portapow USB mains plug (which works again once it’s had a chance to dry out). The morning is very misty which makes the rural and quiet roads we’re now on very atmospheric. There are free range chickens, free range dogs and free range cattle roaming freely in many of the villages. Old men in flat caps stop and stare and we see one chap herding his cows from the saddle of an old single speed bike.

This is a resolutely Catholic country and there are hundreds of shrines alongside the road, roughly every km or so but sometimes more. Some houses have their own shrines in their gardens. Pictures and statues of Pope John Paul II are on display fairly regularly too.

Things get busier as we approach the city of Bialystok and on the way we start to see some familiar brands such as Makro, Tesco (they don’t like them here either) and Decathlon. It’s impossible to ride past a branch of Decathlon though as they come loaded with everything you need for camping, cycling, walking or any other sports you care to mention. They’re out of overshoes in my size and Kirsty can’t find any new tights that she likes but I decide to see if they can fix the broken spoke on our back wheel. Straight away Albert the mechanic sets to work getting the wheel off, produces an enormous 45mm spanner to get the drum brake off, hands the cassette to Mateus to give it a good clean, fits a new spoke, trues the wheel and then puts it all back together again, during which time I tell him a bit about our trip. When it’s all done I ask him how much I owe him and he says it’s on the house as he likes crazy people. We can’t thank him enough but while we are eating lunch on a table just outside the shop Albert and Mateus pop out and hand us 2 inner tubes and a bottle of chain lube again without charging us. Our gratitude has to be ramped up another level or two but they seem genuinely pleased to be helping us out.

We have two smaller acts of kindness the next day when in a tiny village store we realise we’re about 1 zloty short (about 18p) but the shopkeeper lets us have the food regardless – much to our relief as we were worried we’d have to put the huge bag of doughnuts back. Then at another town we’re desperate for the loo and need to fill up on water but have no change for the toilet attendant, but she lets us in anyway. We come up against the language problem when she tries to ask us what we’re doing, but we show her our map of the world with our route marked on and point to the bike and she seems to understand. Maybe.

It takes us 4 days from crossing the border to get to Warsaw and on our final night before riding into the city we get held up at gunpoint. In a small village just past Lochow two small boys are having a mock battle and when they see us they turn their weapons on us. We decide to camp behind the community centre and get watched carefully by the boys as we set up the tent and begin to make supper. Using the Google Translate app on my phone we establish they are either 6 or 8 and their names are unpronounceable but they may have family in the UK (one of them has a union jack t-shirt on). We get to join in the battle as they have four toy guns and a plastic knife between them. The porch of the tent makes a great machine gun nest when the vent at the front is opened.

It’s 70km into Warsaw the next day so we have plenty of time to enjoy the warm sunshine before we are due to meet our hosts, Marek and Kasia at 4:00. While stopped at a McDonald’s to borrow some Wi-Fi and a toilet we get chatting to Paul who says he is a professional bike racer and he invites me to join him at a race the next day, even offering a spare bike. It’s all very tempting but the thought of charging after a peloton travelling at 40 km/hr sounds too much like hard work as opposed to a leisurely stroll round the city, so I politely decline.

In Kaunas we had met someone who had ridden from Lithuania to Serbia that summer and had warned us that the road into Warsaw was horrendous. On the map we can see seven major roads converging to cross a bridge, and it makes spaghetti junction look neat and tidy. The Garmin is trying to send us on a 10km detour to avoid it, but when we get there we find a cycle path that winds its way under, over and round the whole lot. We even get to ride behind a huge double-glazed wall that shuts out most of the traffic noise. It’s a very twisty route so I can understand why the Garmin didn’t want to try and make sense of it, but it makes it very easy for us to get to the city and includes some nice parkland sections for good measure too.

We arrive at Marek and Kasia’s lovely flat in a large residential area about 10km from the city centre and soon learn that the whole family is bike mad and enjoy lots of touring and long distance riding. Their son in law Stefan was hoping to ride the 1200km Paris – Brest – Paris event next year but it’s very difficult to find qualifying events in Poland so he may have to wait until the next one in 2019. We may well join him for that one.

Marek and Kasia’s flat conveniently sits a few hundred metres from the last stop on the M1 Metro line, which is actually Warsaw’s only Metro line so it’s an easy ride into the city the next day. It’s a lovely clear sunny day so we join a free walking tour led by Gawel who tells us all about Warsaw’s troubled history. Apparently it’s not the most picturesque Polish city (we’ve been repeatedly told that Krakow holds this title), but it is one of the most interesting. Before the Nazis fled from the approaching Russian Red Army during the 2nd Word War they destroyed most of the city, razing 85% of it to the ground. However when you walk around it today you can see a medieval castle, cathedrals, 15th century houses and cobbled streets… or so it seems. These are all actually exact replicas of the original buildings and were built after the war ended. It’s hugely impressive and makes for a fascinating visit. At the end of the tour Gawel takes us into a bar and educates us on the etiquette behind drinking vodka before handing round some free samples which certainly helps when he then asks for tips. We have two huge platefuls of traditional pierogi dumplings for lunch then have a few shopping errands to do. The modern part of Warsaw is much like any other with shopping centres, restaurants and high rise office blocks, but in the middle of it all is the enormous Palace of Science and Culture which was a gift from Stalin. Well he called it a gift but the Polish people had to pay for it. And build it themselves.

We had hoped to pick up two parcels that were being sent to Marek’s flat. One was a replacement Plug for the dynamo hub as the one we had bought in Amsterdam was proving unreliable. Felix at Toute Terrain was more than happy to send a new one under warranty so had shipped one from Germany. The other parcel was a replacement section of our Click Stand which we needed after our bike fell on the stand on a beach in Germany and bent it. Tom at Click Stand was happy to send one to us all the way from the States, but it had taken until now to get hold of him as he had been away on his own tour. However neither parcel had arrived so we were faced with the decision to stay and wait indefinitely or keep moving and ask Marek to post them on to us. The risk being they could be chasing us around the world with us always a step ahead.

We decide to not to wait and Marek leads us out of the city on a great cycle path that will one day be part of a huge route from north to south of the country due to open fully in 3-5 years. We say goodbye to Marek at a small ferry crossing and continue onward alongside the other side of the river for two days, now heading towards Lublin. We’re now in amongst apple orchards and trailers laden with fruit trundle past. There’s also plenty of muck being spread on the fields so Kirsty can’t help but ask if the smell is anything to do with me.

 

The morning before arriving in Lublin we feel a couple of spots of rain at the same time as seeing a sign to a ‘Rowery Muzeum’. Yes it’s another bicycle museum, so we decide to take refuge. It all looks to be closed but then all of a sudden the museum owner appears. He gestures for us to sit outside a large shed then proceeds to give a potted history of the bicycle followed by the most amazing parade of largely home-built bikes we’ve yet seen. It seems he loves to experiment with steel tubes and a welder, so has built all sorts of odd recumbents, folding bikes, articulated bikes, scooters and a mini penny farthing. But unlike most museums we’re encouraged to have a go with varying levels of success as most of them are largely unrideable. It’s our favourite bicycle museum so far and he puts one of our cards in pride of place in a picture frame on the wall of the museum.

The road into Lublin is relatively hilly which comes as a shock as most of Poland had been very flat. It’s a big city of half a million people but 1/3 of them are students at five different universities which must make the weekends in town quite lively. We’re staying with Warm Showers host Michal who is an injured physio with two broken wrists so can’t currently practice. He sustained the injury while trying to ride down a long flight of steps but fell 3m and was lucky not to be hurt more badly. He gives us a tour round the old town, this time the buildings are genuinely old, but a lot of them are empty awaiting a rich enough investor to bring them back to life. We reluctantly end up having dinner in an Irish pub as we had left it too late to eat anywhere else. I guess we’re only one letter away from being in Dublin so it’s just about acceptable. Afterwards we get to practice some of the vodka drinking etiquette we learned in Warsaw with some of Michal’s friends. The standard shot size is 50cl and they keep coming thick and fast in various flavours so we already know it’s going to be another slow start the next day.

 

It’s late morning before we finally make it out of the flat and back onto the bike and like my head, the sky is very cloudy. It’s still fairly warm though and we count ourselves lucky that we weren’t there this time 3 years ago when they had half a metre of snow in October. We have to head to the train station to meet a train. Predictably it turns out that both our parcels arrived in Warsaw just after we left, but Marek has had a cunning plan. The Polish railway system allows you to send parcels via the train by handing it to the conductor at one station then the recipient can collect it at another station. So the 13:08 train from Warsaw rolls into Lublin station and in carriage number 13 the conductor hands me the parcel that Marek had given him 2 hours before in Warsaw. It’s a brilliant system and has saved us a lot of trouble trying to coordinate sending the packages on to another address. With the combined help of Marek, Felix, Tom and the Polish railway system we have our parts and we are very, very grateful to all concerned for making it happen.

After a bit more recuperation time in Lublin, during which I snooze in the waiting room then fit the new parts while Kirsty has a look round the city centre in the daylight, we’re ready and safe to cycle again. We’re now heading south east towards our next border crossing that this time will take us out of the European Union and into a country with not only a difficult language but also a difficult alphabet. That’s if Ukraine will let us in of course.