Gdansk, Poland: Unpaved with good intentions

August 26, 2015

On the road to Hel before it all went wrong

IF THE ROAD to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to Hel isn't paved at all. And why was I going to Hel? Well, for the name, of course. But I hadn't thought of it until I met a group of Polish bike tourists who asked if I was going there. And when I looked at the map, I saw I could ride a peninsula and then take a ferry to Gdansk rather than ride a duller way and then through neighbouring towns.

So, I was headed for Hel.

I slept well in my field last night. A few people wandered up the half-surfaced roadway a spit's length away before walking down a steep hill through trees. But we don't see what we're not looking for. And we're especially bad at seeing anything that doesn't move. I doubt anybody even glanced my way.

I packed up in the morning, pushed back through the long grass and bumped down the hill. The dawn was fresh, cool and invigorating. The road was empty and the rising sun warming.

Polish villages come one after the other, at least so far as their boundary signs are concerned. You leave one and go straight into the next. But for a while there was a rival sign, large and white with a drawing of a stately home. When I reached the turning, I was intrigued enough to ride the kilometre it needed to get there.

Well, it was pleasant enough but I'd have forgotten it within the hour had I not noticed the small brass plaque beside the gate. It named the family that had lived there for generations. "Residence von Grasse", it said. And then, in Starzyński Dwór, I stopped astonished.

Russian soldiers were brutally treated and worked to death

For there beside the road, at a junction, was a slumped and exhausted soldier. In a Russian hat. He sat in his ragged greatcoat, his boots shabby and worn, his face grim and turned down in dejection. Behind his back, he kept his fist clenched in defiance.

Beaten, exhausted, he keeps one fist clenched in defiance

The statue was larger than life size. At its foot were candles and other tributes. And why? Because from 1942 to 1945 Red Army prisoners of wars were worked here as slaves on the von Grasse estate I had just passed. They were treated with astonishing brutality and laboured to death. Not for nothing did the Russians fight with a fury that left the West breathless.

The inscription read: "To the martyred soldiers of the Red Army - prisoners of Hitler's regime, 1942-1945."

Disturbing.

Poland's relationship with its Russian neighbours has been chequered, of course. The two fought each other even after the first world war had ended. The Poles, not uniquely, feared Russia wanted to spread the Bolshevik revolution beyond its borders. Poland whistled up supplies to the border, only to find that France and Hungary would help but that Czechoslovakia wouldn't let their trains through. In the end, the guns and bullets had to pass through Romania, on the other side of Europe, and they reached where I was now on a railway that the army built specially.

The Hel peninsula has long been strategically valuable, and the evidence is there

The railway no longer exists. Instead, it's a smooth bike path that started beside the Russian soldier and then wandered off through low hills. It wasn't going precisely where I wanted but there are times to show solidarity and ride a path just because it's there!

It brought me out beside the sea and left a couple of towns to reach the peninsula to Hel. And that was where the good intentions went wrong.

To start with, the bumpy paving of the bike path ran beside crammed campgrounds and scruffy surfboarding schools. It was still morning and yet some had distorted loudspeakers pumping out Polish pop. I saw two cyclists packing their tent and making an escape.

And then it all went wrong. The more the road improved, the worse the path became. In a while the road was closed to cyclists completely and we were pushed across the other side to cope as we could with sand. On the flat it was tolerable. But it wasn't flat. It ran through woods with sharp rises and descents. On an unloaded mountain bike, it must have been fun. On a bike loaded with bags and tent, it was horrible. Patches of loose sand, churned by other tyres, lay at the foot of the descents. They came too fast to be spotted and twice my front wheel sank into them and I fell.

I'm not alone in being brought to a halt on the joke of a bike path

I took refuge on the road, only to have a police car drive up alongside with the order to go back where I belonged.

I licked my wounds and resteeled my nerves. A slim, dark-haired man asked if all was well. I explained what had happened. He said it would get better in two kilometres. Grit my teeth until then, he said.

"Where are you going, anyway?" he asked in good English.

I told him.

"Are you going to Krakow?"

I had to pause and think. On a bike you live in the moment, in real time.

"Yes," I said after a while. He must have been puzzled why I was uncertain about visiting the old capital. "Why?"

"Because I live there. If you come through my town, you must come and stay." And he wrote his address on a page from his diary.

Well, I got to Hel. It's a seaside town with a main street closed to traffic and lined by ice-cream parlours. It took a while before I found two German cyclists to direct me to the unsignposted ferry for Gdansk and I passed my time reading a book and cursing Polish policemen.

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 4,958 km (3,079 miles)

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