Gaski, Poland: Of runways and nuclear battlegrounds

August 23, 2015

More roadside whimsy, just for the fun of it

DAWN CAME late this morning. I know, because I was up waiting for it. After yesterday I wanted to be on the road before Poland's sun-lovers. By the end of the day I had enjoyed some rural hey-nonny-no, wandered into a nuclear battleground and had tea with an ancient mariner.

That and finding myself on an airfield runway. Not a bad tally.

I woke long before dawn. Nerves saw to that. I was like a small kid checking the end of the bed for Father Christmas. Was it light yet? Could I get started?

The saying about watched kettles was fitting. Not only would dawn not come before it planned but its first rays were held back by cloud. And that was good: the more cloud, the less the rush for the beach. And that'd take some of the traffic off the road.

I set off in half darkness, unable to wait. The road was empty. In woods I disturbed a dozen wild pigs the size of dogs. They scattered clumsily to my right. All except one that crouched in the grass and pretended it was dead. I heard it crashing about again after I'd passed.

The few people on the road made a tyre-hissing noise unfiltered by other sound. It was unnaturally loud. And then the road widened. One moment there was a single lane each way, now there was room for two. Or three each way if we shuffled up a bit.

It ran straight, like an old runway. I couldn't guess from what era. The surface was good but not perfect, not perfect but not crumbling. What era was so urgent that a highway had to be requisitioned? A runway through woods rather than open country.

I'm not sure how long it lasted. It was still too dark to see the metres ticking by, especially in a wood. But at the end the runway widened into a big circle to the left, like a lop-sided thermometer. It was a turning area, probably. It was still well surfaced, although there hadn't been one at the other end.

Beyond it, beside the now re-narrowed road, were shabby, round-topped corrugated huts that armies go in for the world over. They advertised army surplus kit, although there was no sign if the one-man businesses were profiting from historical association or from cheap buildings no normal company would consider.

As the sea advances, the more the church falls into the sea

Proper light came around Trzesacz, a name that only Poland could have chosen. The day will come when it's no longer there. The church on its outskirts was once two kilometres from the sea. By the 1800s it was too unsafe to keep open. Still the sea advanced. The first wall fell down the cliff in 1901. The next soon afterwards. And then the third in 1994.

A single wall remains, weak and exposed on a sandy cliff covered by concrete to slow the waves.

I detoured to find the train station. Trzesacz is on a narrow-gauge line which could have taken me with some charm a little down the coast to Niechorze. But I was too early. Everything was neat and ready for business. But closed.

I came back to the road and stopped at a supermarket. In rural Poland you stop where you can because, here, you're in tuna country. There is a second iron curtain across Europe, east of which you find little but tuna in shops. Buckets and brooms and vegetables and lightbulbs, all that, but only tuna if you want something elementary to eat outside a tent. There are only so many ways to make tuna interesting.

A man in his 30s, short hair, otherwise unremarkable, stopped me as I packed.

"How much does your bike weigh?" he asked, having tried the question first in Polish.

I said, as I always say, that I didn't know, didn't want to know. It raises a smile and the subject passes.

Harbour fishing flags beside my lunch stop. I now know that *riby* means "fish"

"I would love to drive my bike. Long ways. Like you."

"And why don't you?"

He shrugged.

"I have babies. But I dream, you know."

"Keep your dreams alive," I said. "They belong only to you."

I had to say it again. When he understood, he smiled and put a hand on my shoulder.

"You are right," he said. "Dziękuję. We have dreams, yes."

The small road always holds more charms - but more bumps, too, sometimes

By afternoon the gloom was back. The wind blew against me and I zig-zagged on rough roads to enjoy the countryside rather than the traffic. Dogs barked. People looked up surprised. I rode on, tired now. I needed water and I needed somewhere, a clearing, a patch behind a wood. Somewhere to camp.

And then two things happened. Yellow hoardings insisted that tourists were good, nuclear energy wasn't. And around the foot of a lighthouse was an open-air party with a bar, music, tables and chairs and happy people determined to chat and laugh before the rain came.

I enjoyed the atmosphere while carrying my water bag. They probably thought it was something medical

Nobody looked as I wandered in cycling clothes, carrying the blue plastic water bag they probably thought was something medical. I filled it, enjoyed the atmosphere without understanding a word, waved at two half-sozzled old boys who wanted me to drink with them, then rode on.

I got nearer to the sea. Here the coast was heading in the opposite direction; the lighthouse, presumably once by the sea, was now inland. If I could clear the village, there may be space to camp.

And it was then that I found a campground and I found Adam.

Today's ride: 107 km (66 miles)
Total: 4,562 km (2,833 miles)

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