Roadworks,Roadworks and more Roadworks(and rain)Northwest Poland


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July 12th 2013
Published: July 19th 2013
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Bliss,a night on a really comfortable bed and a great sleep.

However,we can't say that about the weather this morning with steady light rain falling and cool temperatures necessitating a change back into long trousers and a jersey.

The rate included a very tasty breakfast with a variety of meats,cheese and other vegetables that the Poles like to eat for breakfast plus scrambled eggs with chives mixed through almost good enough to replace the vegemite we are still missing.It is a good distance to go today and this should set us up well especially if the rain continues and we can't have a boot lunch somewhere on the way.

There are no major roads ahead of us as we track the Russian border of Kaliningrad westward to Braniewo almost on the Baltic sea coast.

We were only a few kilometres out of town on the R650 when we ran into what was the first of countless stretches of roadworks.We think perhaps that the Polish Roads Board,or whoever pays for the roads to be maintained,must have been given a heap of money for the summer road rehabilitation programme in these northern parts of Poland.

There were so many stops and starts for those little red lights on a stand in the middle of nowhere that we ended up in a convoy of cars and light trucks(no large trucks thank goodness) for the best part of 80 kilometres.There just wasn't enough time and distance between the sets of roadworks for vehicles to overtake each other such were the number of roadworks.What was happening at each site was that one side of the carriageway had been ripped up and in some cases dug out for a metre or two leaving just one lane to travel on.At some of the sites the rain had been enough to send the workers home,or perhaps they just didn't turn up knowing what the amount of mud would be like to try and work through.Here in some cases the traffic could have gone in each direction but no one had come to take the little red light on the stand away!

Along the way to a lunch time stop in Bartoszyce(the Poles love to mix s and z and y in their place names)we passed by a series of lakes which looked like under sunny skies would have been very pretty and worth a walk to and around but the weather was still producing steady light rain and it was cool at 16C so we held on until we got to the town.

At Bartoszyce,even though it was still raining,we decided we needed a break from the car and the journey that we estimated had taken an hour longer than it might have had there not been the multitude of roadworks.

So we pulled into an angle park in what looked like a moderate size town.We couldn't see any parking meters or signs to show that payment was required to be made into a machine and a ticket placed on the dashboard and were about to get out and walk away to find some lunch when a guy with a bag over his shoulder appeared from nowhere.He stood there looking at the car and us and didn't say anything,not even something in Polish,which of course we wouldn't have been able to understand.

At first we thought he was interested in the red French number plates on the car as we do look out of place in northern Poland where basically the only other number plates we have seen in the last two days other than PL have been RUS(for Russia).

Then he held his hand out in a gesture that said he wanted money although he didn't look to be a beggar and we wouldn't have expected to find one on the streets in this part of Poland and especially not in the steady light rain falling!

Gretchen got closer to him and through sign language discovered that he was a parking attendant and would issue us a ticket for an hours parking for PLN4 to place under the wipers.This we thought was an interesting way of doing the business and although there was no way of verifying that the guy was for real we paid up deciding that this could be a novel way for the unemployed back home to get into work collecting money for parking from those people who never pay for the car park in town!Plus the council would win with more money from parking!

Bartoszyce turned out to be the same as Goldap with no obvious cafes serving coffee and light meal options or at least not that we could find before we decided that the rain was wetting us enough to be ready to get back in the car.

On the way into the town we had spotted a Lidl supermarket and although we prefer not to use them it seemed the best option for buying some rolls etc for lunch as hunger was starting to set in as it does when you have tried to find some place to eat and can't.

With lunch purchased and the rain still falling enough to stop a boot lunch we started a new trend for the BBA V2,the Lidl car park lunch!

The Citroen has good flat surfaces big enough for the little chopping board we have and we were able to fill our bread rolls without dropping too many crumbs into the front floor wells(the car is due a vacumn anyway).

While we sat there,people watching, as you do when you eat lunch in your car in a Lidl car park,we noticed the large number of cars in the supermarket car park with Russian number plates and then we put two and two together,the Ruskies come over the border from Kaliningrad, a few kilometres away and buy their groceries way cheaper than they can in their own country.

Another car,this time with Polish number plates issued in Warsaw(the plates letters identify which city they are from) pulled in close to us and a couple got out and went into the supermarket returning a few minutes later with what we thought was cleaning materials.The woman proceeded to spray like mad inside the rear of the vehicle while the guy stood by drinking coffee(his idea of a Lidl car park lunch perhaps?).We deduced that an animal had done its thing in the rear seat and they were part through their holiday journey somewhere and the smell had become too much to continue without attention.What an action packed lunch time we have had in the rain!

The rain started to ease as we got closer to our destination and after a bit of a wander around a block of streets and not finding our accommodation we headed out of the town of Braniewo towards the coast for a hamlet with the same name as the street we were looking for.Although there were no more than 20 or 30 houses in the hamlet we couldn't find anything with the name of the place we were due to stay at so Gretchen went inside the small shop and asked.She came back with directions along a track we had already been to but not as far along and there was what we wanted.

The shared kitchen arrangements we have had have worked well and we haven't had to wait around to cook our meals and today was no different.

While we were clearing up a Polish man and his 12 year old daughter came in to prepare their meal.She had graduated from school top of her class and he was giving her a long weekend away visiting some sights around the western area of the country.We had a long chat about everything and nothing,as we do when we get the chance,while they prepared their meal.

WE had hoped to take a walk along the stop bank of a river and over to the wide lagoon but the rain had come back and in the gathering gloom of the end of the day we decided to head for an early night instead.

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19th July 2013

Road works at last.
Our experience of driving on Polish roads two years ago is still fresh in our memories. The long ruts caused by heavy trucks on many of the main roads made driving similar to driving on rails. When it rained, which was daily, the ruts became mini rivers. I'm pleased the powers-that-be have made a start on long overdue road works. Oh Lidl, our second favourite supermarket. A great place for cheap food and beer. I'm pleased you lived a little and took the plunge.
19th July 2013

The ruts in the road weren't as wide as the Citroen was it was like a bit of surfing to keep on a straight line.Lidl's we would usually avoid but any port in a storm.And yes the beer is still cheapest

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