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YOU KNOW you're in Poland when you seek the road from Świnoujście to Międzyzdroje. Just looking at a map makes your eyeballs run hot. There's that old joke of the Pole who goes for an eye test and, asked to read the letters on the wall, says: "Read it? I know him!"

If real touring starts when you reach a country where you don't understand a word, then for me this tour started this morning. Until now I've grasped at least something. And that's made Poland exciting. There was something distant for me, somewhere to explore.

The ferry from Ystad was painless. My cabin-mate settled in silently, slept on after I got up and didn't make a noise in between. I had a good night. This morning I looked around. My shipmates were what the Gay Twenties called the lower artisan class - men who looked like bricklayers, plumbers, people good with their hands and quick with a packet of cigarettes. They hurried through their food and went up on deck en masse for a ciggie as we slid past grey warships in the estuary.

In the last years, four million young Poles have moved abroad. Many went to Scandinavia, especially Denmark, because it's so close. A sign in Polish in Ystad harbour gives the times of the direct bus to Copenhagen. Why Poles rather than other nationalities, I don't know. Maybe in the next few weeks I shall find out.

I rode out of Świnoujście's port and sat on the first bench I saw, inside the gates of a sailors' training school. So far everywhere lived up to prejudice. The railings were rusty, the gate showed no sign of closing, the building looked prefabricated and shabby. Wiry grass grew through gaps in the paved roadway. Half a boat stuck out of something between a hut and a buiding and looked no better than anything else.

I had second breakfast with my own supplies and then set the GPS for Międzyzdroje. It was the easiest way to get out of the port area.

The diodes blinked at the improbable consonants but cooperated and sent me left. I rode left and followed the electronic arrows to a ferry across the river. The main town was on the other side.

So far I had faith in Garmin.

The ferry was open only to locals in rush hour, since locals pay taxes to run it. Cyclists, though, could go when they wished. I turned off the GPS, watched the other half of town approach, rode up the ramp and turned the GPS back on.

And it directed me back across the estuary on the same ferry. I looked at my map. And, yes, the GPS was right. I was on the wrong bank.

With a sigh at my foolishness or Garmin's, I waited 20 minutes for another crossing and got back to where I'd been an hour earlier. I turned the GPS on again. The arrows were insistent: turn round and take the ferry to the other side.

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If Garmin had its way, my bleached bones would now be on the deck. Poland was going to be a challenge, I could see that.

I rode back a short distance and stopped a young couple out for an early walk. Don't think I tried to pronounce Międzyzdroje. It sounds a bit like Meechich-droya. But only a bit like that. I pointed to it on the map.

The two did their best in English and sent me back to the dock where I'd started. The GPS was now in a fluster, sulking I hadn't believed it and finding complicated ways through housing streets to go back to the ferry. So there was nothing for it but find a cyclist. And he knew, of course. I was on the right road, just going the wrong way.

Międzyzdroje is the first place up the coast and for a while all went wonderfully. The police had closed the road - an accident - but let me ride for 20 minutes through deserted pine trees.

The cyclist back at the port had said to follow cycling route 9. "It's beautiful," he said. And this road wasn't bad, either, which is maybe why I didn't notice route 9 signs. I rode on, a happy man. And then the road re-opened and traffic began to hiss. But no matter. I was on a bike path and soon I'd reach the turning for the lesser road to Międzyzdroje.

Lesser road, my foot! It was lesser in the sense that it was narrower and deprived of its path. It was anything but in that it went, without my understanding, to one of Poland's most popular seaside resorts on the first sunny Saturday of the summer. And that in a country for which summer wasn't intended.

The traffic was atrocious. Nobody hooted, nobody buzzed me. Polish drivers are exemplary, it seems. But it was horrible. I sought refuge in the town and saw a mass of flesh in flip-flops and unwise shorts. I've been in plenty of seaside towns before but never have I seen such a tide of beachgoers.

And so the day went. My effort to ride a lesser road through the hills merely took me along a cut-through for traffic from the highway. By mid-afternoon, I'd had enough. If this was Poland - dense traffic, bombed-out roads - I was going to hate it. It was all noise and continuous holiday towns selling plastic air beds. My nerves were starting to shred. And the wind was rising along with my frustration.

My last hope failed. I rode through Dzinów, tired, cross and despairing, and found my last hope as frustrating as the others. The road inland was as narrow and busy as the rest. I turned and rode back through the burger bars and bucket-and-spade shops I had left. The solution was money. I went to the first house with a Pokoj sign. They'd been so frequent that probability said it meant "room".

I was prepared to match money against distress. There are four złoty to the euro. I'd go as high as 240.

The woman spoke only German. Polish as well, of course, but only German so far as I was concerned.

"Ein Zimmer, ein Nacht, mit ein Fahrrad", I said, remembering to put a capital on all the nouns. I don't speak German. I speak Cyclist. I speak fluent Travel.

She understood.

"Heute?"

"Bitte."

She looked grave and tapped a grey calculator without speaking. She turned it for me to see. I expected a couple of hundred. It said 60. A room, and a good one even if there were no towels, for less than €15.

The day had ended better than it began.

FOOTNOTE: Polish is consistent. Every letter is pronounced the same way. The stress is always on the penultimate syllable. If you know the sounds, you can speak Polish even if you don't understand it. And that L with a line through it? I've cracked that as well. Polish has more than 26 letters. Of the English 26, W is pronounced as a V, as in German. But Polish also needs a wuh sound, and that's the Ł. So the currency is pronounced zwotty.