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Published: August 16th 2007
Ian here...
week 3 on the tour...day 25 and ian is in the diary room..big brother man why you make it so goddam hot...im not freeeeezing.
since last post we have cycled from prague in the czech republic to the north west border with poland and across the bottom of poland to the city of Krakow...
still hot as we left praha and it was a bit like a treasure hunt finding the cycle route signs out of the city...met some ozzies a few days before who recommended getting a train out but they SOOOOOOOOOOOO exageratted...remember i cycled into Blackburn every day for god knows how long..passed through this huge out of town retial park type thingy and i think jenny went weak at the knees when they had an M and S and disapeared in to do our shopping...wonder where all my money went then!! We were heading for a town called Kutna Hora. Pretty smart little place with a lot of old stuff but its money was made from silver mining back in the 1400s...did the obligitory mine tour which lasted an hour and a half...most of which was some wide eyed woman whittering in on in polish and cxexh about how the miners user to have to eat the rock cos they were so poor (we can only guess what she was acutally saying as i didnt understand a jot and no one esle laughed or showed any emotion!!)..going down the mines was the money shot for me and lasted 25 mins but pretty impressive, narrow dark deep (we went down about 50m but apparently fact friends they went down 600m at one point and were the deepest in the world at one time!) ..another good thing is we were made to look like klu klux klannists in actually mining garb whcih consisted of a white sheet over a helmet ...very surreal. Jenny started her accident run when she klonked her head hard on a lamp whilst trying to read our english script, look at some model of a siversmith and shelter from rain at same time...tut tut...quite a big bump though...she had an acvcident a day for next 4 days...
next few days were spent trying to head north whilst trying to keep out of the intermitted rain.
Near the polish border we went to some crazy rock formation called Teplice and Ardspakke. It was like brimham rocks but far greater...some wind/water combo on hard rock and soft rock created these gulleys and outcrops and little gorges etc...pretty smart (and we blagged it in for free) could just imagine some Robin hood types living as outloaws in amongst the mazes of rocks..(apparently Slovakia has a famous roibn hood type but later )
corssed the border into poland and noticed a difference if only slightly...if anything it was a little more run down and seemed poorer..(but rich compared to Darwen). Got our wad of polish zloty and we were away!..did the same trick as czech were we sort of knew the excahgne rate but not quite so sort of guessing on how much everything was...dirt cheap here any way!! ..
Been to some great campsites in practice but there has been hardly anyone on them. Last 3 have been wicked, i dont know if we are out of holiday season but i doubt it as still middle of august but there has been like 3 or 4 other people on them . We have got into a real habbit of clocking up a decent whack of miles before lunch and then resting on our laurels in some nice cafebar with a well deserved beer (i think im sooo addicted to this czech and polish stuff - really got a taste for it and can see a lot of drinking going on this winter when i get home!!)...tea has usually been some camping creation involving a number of staple foods followed by jennys obligitory chocolate and then some tasty tasty cheap strong beers in the local bar...its a routine i like... a lot....
Did Auswitz yesterday which i dont really want to go on about...the place itself i didnt find too shocking..the absoloute attrocoties that happened there seem quite surreal.....you almost need to be put on your own to quite get a graps on everything...shocking.
Cruised over to Kravow now and its been scorchio today and couldnt cope really...on the bike its not too bad as you gwet a bit of draft and breeeze its when you stop sweat starts dripping off me...mad...love it really though. Krak seems a nice place with a lot of old stuff...going out form some traditional polish pizza tonight...yum yum.....djenkue..bye for now...
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vlad tepes
non-member comment
homecoming
ian you are brillaint and i am glad you are coming home to visit my in transylvania...it has been too longed since we gorged!!!!!mwaahhhh ha ha