Category: Journeys

The official finish was in Gdańsk, but the ride reached its real ending earlier, at the Vistula mouth near Świbno.

The first tough section of the final day was still inside the building.

Our apartment in Grudziądz Old Town had a steep staircase with shallow steps. We had noticed it the evening before, so it wasn’t a surprise in the morning. It was still annoying with a loaded bike.

Older buildings aren’t designed like new ones. That is part of their character, but at 6:40 in the morning, after six days of riding, I was mostly interested in not dropping the bike.

For a moment after waking up, I had the pleasant thought that it was already over. As if we were already in Gdańsk and didn’t need to cycle anymore.

Then I remembered that there was still one more day.

It wasn’t a real doubt about finishing. We had about 150 kilometres left, and by then that didn’t sound like a question. We were going to ride it. The only question was how slowly, and what time we would arrive.

I knew we would finish that day. I just didn’t want to start.

The first named obstacle was Góra Łosiowa.

We knew it was coming because the organiser had spoken about it with too much satisfaction. There was apparently a bike path at the foot of the hill, but the route didn’t take it. The route climbed the hill instead. He had said riders would curse him on the way up and enjoy the view afterwards.

By Day 7, I didn’t have much energy for enjoying the view. We climbed it because it was part of the route.

The approach was open, with fields and the hill in front of us. It was not a mountain climb in the usual sense, but it was steep enough that we had to push the bikes in places. On the final morning, that was enough.

At Góra Łosiowa, we took a quick photo on the bench. It was more for memory and the photo library than for rest. We still had almost the whole day ahead.

After Góra Łosiowa, the route continued. I don’t remember it as a clean reward after the climb. The wind soon became the main thing.

The bridge near Kwidzyn became our last crossing of the Vistula on the whole ride. After a week of crossing and re-crossing the river, that should have felt like a clean milestone.

Instead, I remember the wind.

Even on the descent from the bridge, the bike slowed down when I stopped pedalling. That is a clear kind of headwind. You expect the bike to roll, and it doesn’t.

Ventusky showed gusts around 41 kilometres per hour. It wasn’t constant wind at exactly that speed, but the gusts came often enough that it felt almost continuous. The river, the fields and the open sections gave the wind plenty of space.

Towards Gniew, the day kept moving slowly.

Gniew marked another practical stage. We rode through the castle area and the town. Around the 50 kilometre mark, Andrzej found a bakery. We stopped for cakes, coffee and 15 or 20 minutes of rest.

Gniew deserved a few historical words, even if for us it was mostly a short stop. The town sits near the place where the Wierzyca meets the Vistula, and its castle is one of the strong brick reminders of the lower Vistula’s Teutonic past. On Day 7, we only passed through the castle area and stopped for cakes and coffee, but the place still fitted the final stretch of the route: another old river town on the way to the mouth.

Then the wind pushed back again.

At some point we had to stop on the grass. It wasn’t planned. We needed a break because of the wind.

The strange thing about that day was that I knew we would finish. There was no serious question about that. But knowing you will finish doesn’t make the kilometres disappear. It only changes the problem. The question becomes: how long will this take, and how much more annoying can the route still get?

Tczew was the last proper rest stop before the final approach.

The restaurant was convenient because it was directly on the route. We didn’t have to leave the trail to sit down properly. It also had a good view: the Vistula, and the historic bridge visible through the window.

I had been to Tczew before. I had started a few Kashubian rides there, and I had seen the bridge before. The old Wisła bridge at Tczew opened in 1857 and is one of the important 19th-century crossings in the lower Vistula story.

But on that day, Tczew was mostly food, drink, sitting down and preparing for the last difficult section.

That section was Tczewskie Łąki.

I had hoped it would be simple gravel. It wasn’t.

Most of the section was grass, slow riding and distance. About 12 to 15 kilometres of it. On another day, maybe it wouldn’t have stayed in memory so strongly. On Day 7, after Tczew, when the finish was already imaginable, it felt far too long.

It wasn’t one spectacular obstacle. It was worse in a quieter way. It kept going.

By then I wanted the route to become simple. Asphalt, gravel, anything steady. Instead, Tczewskie Łąki gave us slow grass and mental fatigue.

After that, the route finally started to move towards the real ending of the river.

The final kilometres to the Vistula mouth weren’t smooth either. Near the cypel, there were rocks, water and awkward walking. Carrying the bike was only a few metres at a time, but it happened more than once. The rocky section may have lasted around a kilometre.

Walking through water and over rocks in SPD shoes was not how I imagined finishing the Vistula part of the ride. I was careful because slipping there would have been stupid and unnecessary. After almost the whole route, I didn’t want to twist an ankle near the end.

Then we reached the mouth.

That was the important moment.

At the Vistula mouth I felt that we had done the main thing. We had followed the river from the source area near Barania Góra to its end.

The ride wasn’t over.

The river was.

The place itself also fits the wider story of the Vistula, because the modern main mouth near Świbno is connected with Przekop Wisły, often rendered in English as the Vistula Cut. Even at the mouth, the river wasn’t only nature. It was also engineering, flood control and human decisions.

There were still about 20 kilometres left to the official finish. That was the strange part. The river had ended, but the ride had not.

We still had Wyspa Sobieszewska gravel, Gdańsk paths, cobbles and the final approach. At that point, the distance wasn’t frightening, but it was still distance. Knowing it was almost done didn’t finish it for us. We still had to ride the remaining kilometres.

Finally, we reached the official finish.

We collected the medals and took the photo with the board.

The official time was 156 hours and 53 minutes. The exact number didn’t matter much in the moment, but finishing inside the 170-hour limit did. We had about 13 hours to spare, and that felt good.

The finish mattered for a practical reason: it meant we could stop.

I took the bike to the car. Then Monika and I went back to the finish area, had something to eat and drink, and afterwards went to the accommodation.

There was no need to make the ending bigger than it was.

The river had ended at Świbno. The official finish had closed the ride. We had medals, food, a place to sleep and no alarm for another 5:30 start.

That was enough.

By Day 6, long levees were starting to blur together. Toruń, Chełmno and Grudziądz broke the monotony just enough to make the lower Vistula feel different.

Day 6 started like the previous days.

Wake up around 5:30, spend about an hour getting ready, then start cycling around 6:30. By then the daily rhythm was fixed. What changed each day was the surface, the weather, the stops and how tired we were when the next problem appeared.

We were still off route after the accommodation search from the evening before, so the first job was simple: ride the extra five or six kilometres back towards Bobrowniki and return to the Wisła 1200 route.

Before Toruń, the route went through bushes, sand and very narrow overgrown lines. I wouldn’t really call them bicycle tracks. In places, even walking would have been awkward. Riding loaded bikes through that was slow and annoying.

I remember thinking about the guys from Wadowice, who had gone through that area at night the day before. I still don’t know how they managed it.

By around 9:00, we reached Żabka in Silno.

That was breakfast. Pizza, something to drink, and a proper pause after the first difficult section. It wasn’t special food, but it worked.

From Silno, Toruń was close.

Toruń was the first old town that broke the rhythm of the day.

We met the guys from Wadowice again. There was also a rider from Toruń who’d already finished the whole Wisła 1200. He was relaxing on the boulevard and started telling us about the sections before and after Grudziądz: singletracks, difficult places, and parts where even he had to walk his bike.

That was useful information, but not exactly comforting.

I knew Toruń already and had been there before, so it wasn’t a discovery for me. But it still worked as the first old-town interruption of the day. After the narrow tracks, sand and morning fatigue, the brick city centre and the Vistula boulevard changed the rhythm for a moment.

Toruń is worth mentioning here because it isn’t only an attractive old town. It is a well-preserved medieval trading and administrative centre on the Vistula, recognised by UNESCO. Its Old Town and New Town keep many Gothic brick buildings, and that river-trade background fits the wider lower Vistula story.

After Toruń, the day returned to roads, tracks, fields and wind.

At some point, the ride became less about places and more about keeping the body moving. The main problems were general tiredness and wind. By Day 6, everything was already adding up. My ring and little fingers had probably started going numb the day before, but on Day 6 I could definitely feel it.

That is one of those small things that tells you the ride is no longer fresh.

You can still pedal. You can still talk. You can still stop, eat and continue. But the body starts reporting problems in the background.

Ostromecko became the next proper stop.

We stopped in a restaurant and had a proper meal. Afterwards we got supplies and water from Żabka and continued.

In the restaurant, another Wisła 1200 rider was so tired that he was falling asleep while eating soup. We met him again later on the route. It was a small scene, but it said a lot about this stage of the ride.

After Ostromecko, the next old-town interruption was Chełmno.

The approach already felt different. There were better roads for a while, but there were also climbs. They weren’t mountains, just long and sharp enough at that point in the ride. I was tired, so I didn’t push myself to ride everything. I walked part of one climb. Andrzej probably rode it.

That was fine. By Day 6, there was no reason to prove anything on a climb.

Chełmno gave us a slightly longer pause.

We stopped at Żabka, bought ice cream and drinks, and sat on the market square for a while. I took a photo of the bikes against the old town hall building.

Chełmno stood out because of the setting. It was still a ride stop, but it didn’t feel like another random shop break. The old brick town, the market square and the high location above the Vistula valley made it different from the flat, repetitive riding around it. Chełmno’s old town is listed as a Polish Historical Monument, and its historic layout sits on the high edge of the old Vistula valley.

After Chełmno, the levees returned.

This was the part of the day that later looked better in photos than it felt from the saddle.

I looked at the views. It was not as if I rode completely blind to the landscape. But much of the time I was listening to music in my earphones and watching the front wheel and the surface just ahead of it.

The photos make some of those sections look open and peaceful. They were, in a way. But after several days of riding, a peaceful levee can also become monotonous. If the surface is good, you roll. If it is slow, you lose time. Either way, you keep watching the line in front of the wheel.

The final thirty kilometres towards Grudziądz were partly kind and partly not. Some levee sections let us ride over 20 kilometres per hour. Others dropped us back to 13 or 14. That difference matters late in a day, when the only thing you want is a clear sense of progress.

Before Grudziądz, a local rider appeared.

He was waiting for Wisła 1200 riders because he wanted to ask questions about the event. He was thinking about taking part the following year and wanted to know about the route, logistics and how it really worked.

That was a good moment. We had spent the day dealing with fatigue and repetition, and suddenly someone fresh was looking at the same event from the other side, as something still ahead of him.

He also helped guide us through the final singletrack section before the city.

The Vistula before Grudziądz looked good. I remember that. After so much surface-watching, the river view finally cut through the day.

Then Grudziądz appeared.

We stopped and looked at the riverfront and the granaries. The view was hard to ignore. The brick line above the Vistula made a clear ending to the day.

But the main feeling was simpler than history: relief.

We had reached Grudziądz. We had a nice apartment. The day was over. There was only one day left.

That was enough.

After getting to the apartment, we went for a short walk to a local shop to buy something for supper and breakfast. We knew the final day would be about 150 kilometres, but I do not remember thinking too much about it that evening. The focus was still on ending Day 6 properly: food, shower, sleep.

We had planned to stop beyond Grudziądz, but by then leaving about 150 kilometres for the final day was enough.

The old towns really had broken the monotony. Toruń, Chełmno and Grudziądz did something small but useful. They interrupted the levees, fields, wind, music and wheel-watching. They reminded me that this lower Vistula section had its own shape: brick towns, river trade, high banks, granaries and crossings.

On the bike, I was mostly tired. But the old towns still did their job. They broke the monotony just enough for Day 6 to stay memorable.

The next morning would be the last one. There were no more multi-day calculations left. We had one day to reach the mouth of the river and the official finish.

The middle Vistula was less about sightseeing than practical river towns, exposed levees, headwind, food stops and finding somewhere to sleep.

Day 5 started in Zakroczym, with the usual rhythm already in place.

Wake up early, pack, leave around 6:30, and find breakfast where it was available. This time it was easy. There was a Żabka only a few hundred metres from the accommodation, so that became our first stop before properly leaving town.

The guys from Wadowice were at Żabka too. By Day 5, meeting the same riders again and again no longer felt unusual. Everyone had their own version of the route: different speed, different sleep, different stops, different problems. But the same shops, pit stops and accommodation ideas kept bringing people back together.

The plan for the day was clear. We wanted to reach Bobrowniki, around 150 kilometres away. If we did that, we would have roughly 300 kilometres left for the final two days.

That sounded manageable, but the forecast wasn’t friendly. There was no special section waiting for us like the organiser’s Otwocka Amazonia the previous day. Instead, the main problem was supposed to be simpler: wind and rain.

After four days on the bike, simple problems were enough.

The first town after Zakroczym was Czerwińsk.

I took one photo there. Looking back, I am glad I did, because Day 5 didn’t produce many photos. The wind, rain and mud made the day more practical than visual.

Czerwińsk also had a personal connection. A few years earlier, it had been the destination of the rowing trip from Warsaw where I first met Andrzej. On Day 5, we were passing through by bike, but the place already belonged to my own Vistula map.

Czerwińsk also has one of the more interesting crossing stories on this part of the river. I was not thinking about it while riding through town, but later it fitted the day well: the Vistula here wasn’t only a river to follow, but also an obstacle to cross.

Wyszogród came next as the first real checkpoint of the day.

There was Żabka. That was enough.

We didn’t feel late or behind schedule because we hadn’t reached Wyszogród the night before. By then, the original plan had already become flexible. Wyszogród was simply a useful stop: food, drink, a short break, then back into the day.

The harder part came after Wyszogród.

The wind started to matter properly.

Ventusky showed gusts up to 61 kilometres per hour. That wasn’t constant wind, but the gusts were enough. On exposed levees, it became very physical. At times we could barely move, but we kept cycling because the target was clear: Bobrowniki. If we reached it, the final two days would still make sense.

That was the main calculation of the day. Not comfort, not speed. Just keeping the remaining distance under control.

After riding into that wind, Podgórze came at the right time.

The Podgórze pit stop was connected with the event. There was hot water, soups, cookies and a place to stop for a while. There was even a camera where we could share a message with organisers. On a day like that, a pit stop doesn’t need much more. It only needs to give riders a few practical things at the right time.

The canopy was collapsed. At the time, we thought it was simply folded down because there was no need to open it. Later we learned that it had collapsed because of the wind.

That explained the day better than another weather forecast.

Other riders had already started making their own decisions. Some had shortened the route after the previous day’s Otwock section. I understood that. Long-distance rides are full of official routes, original plans and ideal scenarios, but eventually everyone has to decide what keeps the ride possible.

For us, the next major target was Płock.

Płock was a food stop and a rest stop. We wanted to reach it for a proper break, somewhere around halfway or a bit further into the day. If we got there in reasonable time, the second part would still be long, but it would feel more controlled.

The approach was slow.

The wind was still there. At one point near Płock, on the levee, we were moving at around 10 kilometres per hour. That is a frustrating speed when the day still has a lot of distance left, but at least it was still movement.

Before town, the organiser’s route also sent us into sand in the rain. I don’t remember it as a major special section. It was just one of those choices that felt unnecessary in the moment. Wet, windy, tired, and then sand before a city where we wanted a proper stop.

Płock finally became exactly what we needed it to be.

Pizza, something to drink, a longer pause, and booking accommodation in Bobrowniki. We left again in the rain.

I later learned that Płock and Włocławek were not random large stops on this part of the river. They had been important Vistula ports. Zakroczym and Wyszogród also belonged to that old river network, even if their later importance changed. On Day 5, I was using these places in the most ordinary modern way: Żabka, pizza, bridge photo, accommodation booking. But they sat on an older working river.

That’s what I like about this kind of ride. You don’t always understand a place while you’re there. Sometimes you only pass it tired and wet. Later, when you check the background, the route starts to look different.

After Płock, the road didn’t become easier.

There was a section of about 20 kilometres on a state road, a regional road rather than a national trunk road. It wasn’t the heaviest kind of traffic, and the asphalt itself was good. Normally, on smooth road, we might have gained some speed.

But not that day.

The wind and rolling sections drained energy. Cars were passing. It wasn’t a pleasant section, but it did one useful thing: it kept us moving. After mud, wind and slow levees, even an unpleasant road can still have one advantage. It moves the distance forward.

Further on, near the Dobrzyń area, the route became muddy again.

This was where we reached the place the organiser called Mostek pana Wiesława.

The name makes it sound like a proper bridge. It wasn’t. It was the organiser’s name, not a real place name, and it was not really a bridge at all. There were just wooden pieces laid across wet ground and small streams, enough to get through without stepping directly into the water.

It felt like something added to make our lives harder late in the day.

The organiser had said that when he checked the route a week earlier, the place was so overgrown that he could barely find it. By the time we arrived, faster riders had cleared enough of the path to make it passable. That didn’t make it pleasant. It was still muddy, awkward and slow.

But it was also exactly the kind of detail that stays in memory: not a monument, not a view, not a famous place, just a small named obstacle in the mud.

Włocławek became the next checkpoint.

We had chosen it ourselves, not because it was an official checkpoint, but because it had Żabka and because we needed a break before the final part towards Bobrowniki.

When we approached the city after the muddy sections, I saw the bridge and took a quick photo. It was partly documentary. I knew I had not taken many photos that day. The wind, rain and mud didn’t make me think about photography. The photo was simply something to remember Włocławek by.

That also fitted the day. Płock had been pizza and accommodation booking. Włocławek was Żabka and a bridge photo. These were old river places, but for us they were practical checkpoints on a hard day.

After Włocławek, we still had to reach Bobrowniki.

By then the day had narrowed down to the next practical thing. Food, wind, surface, distance, accommodation. The last part was about ending the day in a way that would let us start again in the morning.

Near Bobrowniki, the accommodation search became its own small story.

First we approached the firefighters’ house. There was nobody there, but a man was walking nearby, so we asked him if he knew about any accommodation. He said he would call someone.

A few minutes later, a firefighter arrived. Then the four of us, me, Andrzej and the two local men, started discussing options.

The firefighters’ place wasn’t possible. There were children there for the holidays, and the garage had new supplies inside, so they couldn’t even let us sleep on the floor.

We asked about the priest and whether there might be a possibility of staying near the church. That also failed. The priest was away on holiday, and the lady who looked after the church lived somewhere else. She only came to clean the church and the priest’s house.

Then someone suggested a small barracks at the local municipal waste collection point, known in Poland as a PSZOK.

That was the point when we decided we should return to the original plan. Maybe the PSZOK option would have worked, but it didn’t sound like a first choice. After a day of wind, rain, mud and traffic, we didn’t want to test that idea.

So we went back to the agroturystyka plan, even though it meant cycling another five or six kilometres off route, towards a place in the forest. Google chose the shortest way, which of course meant forest and sand. It was a fitting ending to the day.

That was how Day 5 ended: not with a big view, but with local phone calls, failed options and a ride off route to sleep somewhere usable. It wasn’t the most scenic day of the ride. It was wet, windy and logistical. That is probably why the idea of the working river fitted it so well.

The next morning, we would have to return from the agroturystyka to the route and ride towards Toruń, Chełmno and Grudziądz. The old towns of the lower Vistula were waiting, but first there would be more sand, bushes and levees.

Rain and mud made the Otwock section hard enough. A broken spoke then turned Warsaw into an unexpected repair stop before the ride could continue north.

Day 4 started in rain.

We had slept near Maciejowice, in the small hut we’d found instead of pushing further the evening before. The owner had brought breakfast the night before, so we could leave when we wanted. That worked. We ate, packed and started around 6:35.

By now we had a simple daily rhythm: wake up around 5:30, leave around 6:30, ride until about 20:30, eat, wash, prepare for the next day and sleep around 22:00.

During the day there was not much routine beyond solving the next practical thing.

That morning, the rain was already falling.

Andrzej made the first useful joke of the day:

It’s good, it’s raining vertically.

It was exactly the kind of joke that helps when you are already wet. Rain wasn’t good, of course, but vertical rain meant there was no strong side wind. On a long ride, you take that kind of good news where you can find it.

The previous evening we had known that Day 4 could be difficult. The route ahead included the section the organiser called Otwocka Amazonia. The name was made up for the ride, not an official place name, but it was enough to suggest mud, branches and slow progress.

Before that, we still had to get through the morning.

After about 30 kilometres, we reached Bar u Zosi.

The stop was useful for simple reasons. We could dry a little, eat something warm, drink coffee and clean some mud off the bikes with a hose. The “cyclist set” that morning was tomato soup, coffee and cola. It wasn’t a planned menu. It was just what made sense.

We also knew there wouldn’t be many good stops before Warsaw. Bar u Zosi was one. Ostrówek would be another. After that, we would be close to the Otwock area, and we didn’t want to leave the route too much. The plan was to keep moving until Warsaw if we could.

Somewhere in that part of the day came another joke about “comfort.”

We were thinking ahead. If we reached Wyszogród, there would be roughly 420 kilometres left to the finish. That meant three days of about 140 kilometres. Compared with the first 200-kilometre days, that sounded like comfort.

But after three days of riding, with tired legs and half the route still ahead, it didn’t really feel comfortable anymore.

Still, the calculation mattered. We were no longer judging distance as a single ride. We were dividing the whole route into days that would keep the finish possible.

For a while, we rode with another rider.

That created a small misunderstanding. The three of us were riding together and the pace kept rising. We thought he wanted to go faster. He thought the same about us. Apparently nobody actually wanted to go that fast, but everybody kept pushing because they thought the others were pushing.

On a long ride, that happens. Nobody says anything, and suddenly everyone is working harder than necessary.

The next planned stop was Ostrówek.

It was the first proper shop stop of the day, so we used it for supplies. I also asked the shop assistant if she could boil some water for coffee. She agreed, made instant coffee in her own cups for me and Andrzej.

It was a small thing, but small things matter on a wet day. A shop, a roof and a hot drink can reset the next section.

After Ostrówek, the route became worse.

Before Kępa Nadbrzeska we entered a muddy section with singletracks and ruts. My bike slipped, and I fell into the mud. At the time, I didn’t know that anything serious had happened to the bike. I just got up and continued.

Later, after leaving that first mud section, I noticed that the front wheel was out of shape. It wasn’t bad enough to stop the ride immediately. The bike still rolled, and it didn’t really affect the ride quality, but I knew I had to be more careful.

That was not ideal, because the organiser’s Otwocka Amazonia was still ahead.

Near the Świder mouth, before or at the beginning of Otwocka Amazonia, I called Adam.

Adam had serviced my bike before Wisła 1200. I knew that if I could reach his service, he’d be able to check the wheel properly. I didn’t think much further than that. First get to the service. Then find out what needed to be done.

Otwocka Amazonia wasn’t difficult because of one obstacle. It was difficult because of the number of obstacles and the length of the section. If it had been shorter, it might’ve been fun. After a while, it became ridiculous.

There was mud, branches, narrow paths and repeated interruptions. I was already watching the front wheel, so I rode more carefully. At some point, after a branch hit the bike, I also lost my rear light.

The section was mentally tiring. Not because I thought the ride was over, but because it kept taking attention. Line, mud, branch, wheel, path, repeat. After enough time, that gets into your head.

Warsaw became the solution.

At the service, Adam found the real problem: a broken spoke in the front wheel.

The repair was more complicated because the wheel was tubeless. It wasn’t just a quick spoke swap. The tyre had to come off, the sealant had to be dealt with, the tape had to be cleaned and replaced, and then the wheel had to be put back together properly.

Once the spoke was replaced and the wheel was back together, the ride could continue.

The stop took about an hour and a half.

During the repair, Monika joined me at the service. It was good to see her after three and a half tiring days on the bike. We went upstairs to the café for coffee and cake. That helped. I was out of the mud, the bike was in good hands, and the problem had become specific.

After the repair, the day felt saved.

Andrzej and I rode separately after Warsaw. He’ d started earlier, as we had agreed, and I followed after the bike was ready. This was familiar ground for both of us, so splitting for this section didn’t make the day more complicated. We would rejoin later at the lodging in Zakroczym.

I knew the route from Warsaw towards Zakroczym, and that made a big difference. I did not think about the wheel much after leaving the service.

The route through the city didn’t feel like a typical urban bike crossing. Long parts followed gravel sections along the Vistula. They were good paths, and they kept the ride connected to the river rather than turning it into a city transfer.

Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki became a reset stop.

I went to McDonald’s. It wasn’t about hunger. It was a reward after a mentally hard day: the rain, the mud, Otwocka Amazonia and the repair. Coffee, something sweet, and then the last part of the day.

After Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, I rode along Twierdza Modlin, or Modlin Fortress. It was hard not to notice the large complex beside the route. This is also the area where the Narew joins the Wisła, so the ride passed another important river junction without turning it into a visit.

It was familiar in more than one way. I had ridden there before. I had also seen this part of the river system from the water. A few years earlier, I had first met Andrzej on a rowing trip from Warsaw to Czerwińsk.

The original destination for Day 4 had been Wyszogród. We didn’t reach it.

That was fine.

It was the second day in a row when we stopped earlier than the original plan. By now, the plan wasn’t something to obey at any cost. It was something to adjust so the whole ride stayed possible.

We both finished in Zakroczym, with about 450 kilometres still ahead. That meant three days of roughly 150 kilometres. After everything that had happened on Day 4, 150 kilometres still sounded manageable.

The last named section of the day was the organiser’s Zakroczymska Sawanna.

Again, this was the organiser’s nickname, not an official place name. The section crossed open land by the river, with wide views. After the mud earlier in the day, it felt like a better ending than I expected.

There were also singletracks before Zakroczym. They weren’t long enough to become annoying. After everything that had happened earlier, I actually enjoyed them.

Once the bike was fixed and the route was familiar again, the day had changed. It was still long, wet and tiring, but it no longer felt like a problem was growing. The main problem had already been solved.

I reached the lodging in Zakroczym a little after 20:00. Andrzej was there too, and we rejoined for the end of the day.

The place had no shower, but it had a bath. After a day of rain, mud, a crash, Otwocka Amazonia and a wheel repair, that was even more useful than a shower. I could lie in the bath for half an hour and enjoy the fact that the day was finished.

The next day didn’t have any special section waiting for us, but the forecast wasn’t friendly. We expected wind and rain.

Day 3 began with Góry Pieprzowe and one of the best landscapes of the ride. It ended with a more important decision: stop chasing the original mileage plan.

Day 3 started at Willa Krzemień, our accommodation near Sandomierz.

Before leaving, Andrzej noticed a board about krzemień pasiasty, striped flint. The name of the place suddenly made more sense. It was not a planned visit or a subject I had prepared for that morning. It was just one of those small local details that appears when you are already on the route.

The detail was worth checking later, because the Sandomierz region is strongly associated with striped flint. But at that moment the main business of the morning was simpler: breakfast, supplies, talking with other cyclists and getting back on the bikes.

We rode into Sandomierz and stopped at Żabka on the market square.

It was easy to see where the shop was. There were cyclists outside, coffee cups, pizza boxes and bikes leaning wherever they could. After two days, this already felt normal. Riders had different speeds, different sleep plans and different ideas, but the same places kept collecting us.

There was one story from that morning that stayed with me.

Some riders had gone through the night. One of them had reached the Sandomierz market square around four in the morning, slept for about two hours on a bench, put on all his clothes, wrapped himself in an emergency blanket and still got cold.

It was a useful warning.

Riding through the night sounded like a way to gain time, but it didn’t automatically work like that. It could leave you tired, cold and still not much further ahead than people who had slept. That helped confirm our own approach. We were not trying to win Wisła 1200. We were trying to finish it. Riding until evening, sleeping properly and starting early again made more sense for us.

A few kilometres after Sandomierz, the route gave us Góry Pieprzowe.

We had heard about this section before the ride. It had a reputation as one of the harder special sections of the route. In dry weather it was difficult enough. In wet weather, it would have been a very different problem.

That morning it was dry.

That helped, but it didn’t make the climb easy.

The difficulty was simple: steepness.

There was no realistic chance for us to ride up with loaded bikes. Maybe a very good mountain biker on a different setup would have tried. That was not what we were doing. We pushed.

At the top, the view was good, but we didn’t stay long. The day had only begun, and the route had already reminded us that planning distance on paper and moving through it on a loaded bike were not the same thing.

After Góry Pieprzowe, the day opened into the normal work of riding.

Zawichost and Annopol passed as route points, but not as proper stops. We had hoped for coffee and something sweet in Zawichost, then again at the MOR (Miejsce Odpoczynku Rowerzystów, a cyclist rest area) in Annopol, but it did not work out. So it was water and bars from the bags.

The next proper stop was Józefów nad Wisłą.

That stop mattered because Andrzej was already dealing with pain. He went to the pharmacy, bought what he needed, I got us bananas and some drinks. The ride was still moving, but decisions were starting to depend not only on distance and weather, but also on how the body was reacting.

That is when a multi-day ride becomes different from a long single day.

On a single ride, you can often ignore a problem until you get home. On Wisła 1200, every problem had tomorrow attached to it.

Somewhere around that part of the day, we also passed the 500-kilometre point. It did not become a huge moment. We knew it was there, and we had planned a very short stop, but the number itself was less important than the practical question: how far could we still ride sensibly that day?

The route before Kazimierz Dolny gave us one of the best visual sections of the whole ride so far.

There were bright white rock walls, narrow passages and a surface that felt better suited to a mountain bike in places, but was still rideable on gravel. Janowiec Castle was visible across the river on the left. The landscape suddenly felt different.

I later checked that this part of the Vistula corridor is connected with soft light-coloured rocks such as opoka and gaize, cut by ravines and old routes towards the river. On the bike, I didn’t think in those terms. I just remember that it looked excellent and that it was still part of the day’s work.

Before Kazimierz, there was also one of those small rider-support moments that can easily disappear from the final story. Someone had set out a table with coffee, water and freshly baked cookies for riders. After several days, a table like that beside the route feels like someone has understood exactly what cyclists need.

Kazimierz Dolny was supposed to be a food stop.

We had been thinking about Orlen and the route did not make the easy stop happen. Instead, the organiser had another idea: Góra Zamkowa, then more descending and narrow riding.

Kazimierz became a place we passed through rather than the stop we had expected.

That changed the plan again.

The next real food stop became Puławy Żabka. Pizza, drink, a pause, and then a decision. Wilga, our earlier idea, was too far. We were not going to reach it by a sensible time. I searched for accommodation and found a place near Maciejowice.

That was the real change of Day 3.

The original plan still existed, but it had stopped being the boss.

From that point, the day became about keeping the whole ride possible.

Dęblin passed almost without a stop, but it gave us one small detail we liked.

I know Dęblin mostly as a railway place. During rides from Warsaw, it is one of those useful fallback points where Koleje Mazowieckie can take you home if needed. On Wisła 1200, I wasn’t looking for a train. We just noticed the railway crossing named “Wisła”.

It was a small thing, but exactly the kind of detail I like on a ride. Not a monument, not a planned stop, just the river appearing as a name on railway infrastructure.

Later, the day reached another important practical point: the end of the first of two GPX files.

The route file had been split into two parts. At that point, we reached the end of the first one. In earlier editions of the route, this had been close to the halfway mark. This time it was not exactly half, but it still felt like a psychological boundary.

Nearby was the place connected with Pan Qrek.

Pan Qrek is how he writes his name on Facebook. For years, he has been known among riders for offering support during Wisła 1200. He lets people stop, rest or even sleep there. We did not stay overnight, but we stopped to talk and drink coffee.

That coffee helped.

He told us that our accommodation was only about 15 kilometres away. At that stage of the day, that was exactly the kind of information we wanted to hear.

The final kilometres to the lodging were tiring because of the surface, but they weren’t a crisis. It was still daylight. We were tired, but moving.

The accommodation near Maciejowice was one or two kilometres off route. It was a small hut for two people, with two beds, a bathroom and a small kitchenette. It worked.

The owner brought breakfast that evening, so we could leave whenever we wanted in the morning.

That mattered because we already knew the next day wouldn’t be easy. The route ahead included Otwocka Amazonia, the organiser’s name for a difficult special section near Otwock. We expected it to take energy.

Day 3 didn’t end where the original plan wanted it to end.

That was the point.

We were no longer asking only how far we could go. We were asking how to keep the whole ride possible.

Rain, Sunday shopping restrictions and 217 kilometres to Sandomierz turned Day 2 into the first day when Wisła 1200 began to feel like a repeatable routine.

Day 2 really started the previous evening, with shopping.

We knew Sunday would be difficult for food and water. In Poland, most regular shops are closed on Sundays because of trading restrictions, and we were going to spend the day moving away from Kraków towards Sandomierz. So before going to sleep, we went to Lidl and bought supplies.

Bread rolls, cheese, kabanosy, skyr, sweet rolls, bars, water. Nothing special, but all of it useful.

In the morning we woke up after five, packed the bikes and left soon after six. After the first day, there was no long discussion. A routine was already forming: wake up, eat, pack, check the bike, move.

I carried about 4.5 litres of water between the bottles on my bike and bottles packed in my bags. Andrzej had his own supplies. It sounds like a lot, but on a Sunday stage with limited shop options, it made sense.

The plan for the morning was simple. We had around 16 kilometres to ride to McDonald’s in Niepołomice. That stop wasn’t random. We had planned it before the whole ride started. On a Sunday, with rain in the forecast and limited shop options ahead, it was probably going to be our only proper hot meal for a while.

Wisła 1200 was a race, but this was the kind of race I was riding: planning around water, shops and calories.

At McDonald’s in Niepołomice, we ate properly. While we were sitting inside, the rain started.

That was useful timing. It’s always better when rain begins while you are under a roof, even if you still have to ride into it. The rain wasn’t heavy. It was more of a shower, steady enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to change the whole day.

After Niepołomice, the ride became wet, grey and practical.

The first part of the day wasn’t about big views. It was about moving through the weather and keeping the next stop in mind. At one point the rain stopped, the sun came out, and I took off my rain jacket. About 500 metres later I had to put it back on because it started raining again.

That was Day 2 in miniature.

I was already learning that the route didn’t have to become difficult in one big way. It could just keep asking for small adjustments.

After Kraków, the river corridor felt different from the first day. There was more flat land, more levees, more open space and more time spent following the line of the route rather than reacting to steep climbs or technical descents. By the second half of the day, the river was clearly becoming the larger Vistula.

But during the ride, the practical things came first: food, rain jacket, water, road surface and the next stop.

Zalipie was on the route.

I knew Zalipie mainly as the painted village. We had longer meal break near the museum but I think I expected more old wooden houses or a stronger village impression than I actually found in that stop. Maybe that was unfair to the place. Maybe it needs a slower visit.

On Wisła 1200, it was one more point on a long day.

Later, after the rain had passed, we reached a cyclists’ stop near the levee.

The place normally had coffee and cakes, but that day there was also a grill. Sausage and coffee were enough to make it one of the better stops of the day.

We also used the pause for something more important: booking accommodation in Sandomierz.

That gave the rest of the day a clearer shape. We still had around 85 kilometres to ride, but now there was a known end point. On a long ride, that matters. “Sandomierz” was no longer only a place on the map. It was a bed, a shower, space for the bikes and a plan for the evening.

The ride after that became warmer and drier for a while. We took off rain layers again and kept moving.

Near Połaniec, the route gave us singletracks with Vistula views. Tracks demanded attention, I didn’t want to rush them. By then I understood that saving the bike and keeping control mattered more than forcing speed through every section.

Połaniec didn’t feel like a major historical stop in the moment. It was part of the route, a place passed while thinking about distance, food and weather. Later, reading Chwalba, I understood that this was one of the points where the old river story was much bigger than my quick ride through it. Połaniec and Sandomierz belonged to the Vistula’s trade and transport world, especially in connection with salt.

That is one of the things this ride kept doing. I would pass a place quickly, then later the books helped explain why it had mattered.

The closer we got to Sandomierz, the more the day narrowed again to weather and arrival.

About five kilometres before the town, we saw dark clouds and put the rain jackets back on. That was the right decision. A few minutes later, a short heavy shower hit us. It lasted only two or three minutes, but it was enough to soak us properly.

Then it passed.

We reached the accommodation in Sandomierz after 20:00.

That was when the proper multi-day routine started: bikes into storage, bike cleaning, chain lube, shower, laundry, checking what food was left, and making notes for the future blog. We also watched a football World Cup match in the background before sleep. It was not important which match. What mattered was that the day had turned into a repeatable evening system.

The ride was becoming a repeated process: wake up early, ride, eat where possible, deal with the weather, book the next stop, clean the bike, prepare for the next morning, and sleep.

Sandomierz was a good place for that first clear routine to appear. It stands above the Vistula and has a stronger river presence than many points passed earlier in the day. I reached it as a tired rider looking for accommodation, but later reading helped explain why the place mattered in a wider river story.

The next morning already had a clear problem waiting for us: Góry Pieprzowe, only a few kilometres after Sandomierz.

So the plan was simple. Start with Żabka, the convenience store on the market square, eat properly, get supplies, and only then ride into the special section.

Day 2 had been wet, practical and long.

It was also the day when Wisła 1200 became a routine.

The Wisła 1200 starts before the riding: trains to Barania Góra, a practical start near the source area, then the young Vistula, Jezioro Goczałkowickie, Tyniec and Kraków.

Wisła 1200 didn’t begin with riding.

It began with trains.

First from Warsaw to Kraków. Then from Kraków to Bielsko-Biała. Then further south, towards Milówka and the start area near Barania Góra. Before I could follow the Vistula, I had to get myself and the bike to the place where the route began.

On the way, I met other riders. Some had more experience with long-distance events. Some, like me, were starting Wisła 1200 for the first time. A lot of the conversation was practical. Do not start too fast. Do not race people in the first hours. Eat regularly. Keep breaks short, but don’t skip them completely. Ride slowly enough to keep riding the next day.

That sounded sensible to me.

The route was about 1,200 kilometres long, with a 170-hour limit. So even if Wisła 1200 was officially a race, my plan wasn’t complicated: keep moving, don’t rush at the beginning, and avoid stupid mistakes.

At the shelter near Barania Góra, the evening was mostly about preparation. Bikes, bags, food, lights, clothes, weather, sleep. Nothing very romantic. Just the normal list of things that become important before a long ride.

I also had to make one decision before the start.

I didn’t go to the exact Vistula spring markers.

The ride began in the source area, but visiting the exact markers would have meant extra climbing and extra time before a 1,200-kilometre route. It would have made the beginning more symbolic, but not more practical. I decided that starting from the official route near Barania Góra was enough.

The source markers can wait for another visit.

For this ride, I was already at the beginning.

The Vistula near Barania Góra is not the wide river people usually picture. I knew that before the ride, but starting there made it practical rather than abstract. The river begins through streams and watercourses coming from the slopes: Biała Wisełka, Czarna Wisełka and smaller waters that later form the Wisła.

So the first part of the route wasn’t about a big river beside the road. It was about leaving the mountains and following the beginning of a river system.

The start was in the morning. I woke up after 5, had breakfast around 6, and started at 7:10 in the third wave.

It was cold at first. The first few hundred metres went downhill on stones and gravel, then onto asphalt. Almost immediately, other riders had problems. I remember at least two punctures in the first 50 metres. That was a useful reminder that things can go wrong before the ride has properly begun.

My bike was fine, and we continued downhill.

I was riding with Andrzej, we weren’t trying to prove anything. The aim was to settle into the ride without doing something stupid.

The early kilometres didn’t feel like following a great river. There were roads, villages, descents, gravel, small watercourses and the usual attention to the surface. The Vistula was still young and not always obvious.

After about 30 kilometres, I lost the cap from one of my large bottles. I probably lost it while riding through rougher ground on the levees. The water poured out. It was annoying, especially because the bottle was new, but it wasn’t a disaster. I still had enough capacity to continue, and I hoped I could solve it later in Kraków.

That was the first small lesson of the ride: not every problem needs drama. Some things are just irritating and have to be managed.

The first major difficult section came around Wały Goczałkowickie near Jezioro Goczałkowickie.

Before the ride I knew about the reservoir, but seeing it during the first day changed the scale. The lake had waves and looked almost like a small sea. It wasn’t the wide, sandy, partly wild Vistula I knew from Warsaw. It was a managed water landscape connected with the upper river system.

That was useful to see so early.

The Vistula didn’t become large first as a free, open river. It became large through infrastructure.

The section itself wasn’t gentle. There were levees, rougher surfaces and the kind of riding that made everyone slow down. The organiser had prepared these “special sections” with visible pleasure. We knew from the briefing and from videos from previous editions that some early parts would be hard. In that year the grass had apparently been cut, so it could’ve been worse.

That isn’t always comforting when you’re already there.

Before the harder part, around 52 kilometres, we stopped at Żabka. Hot dogs, water, a short rest. That kind of stop became part of the language of the ride very quickly. Shops were not background. They were checkpoints.

Later, another rough section came through the beaver area. It was one of those parts that felt designed to test not only legs but patience. At the start of a 1,200-kilometre ride, I was already learning that the route wouldn’t simply follow smooth roads beside a river.

Near Brzezinka, we passed Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I’d never been there before. But even passing beside it made an impression. What struck me was the scale: the number of preserved buildings and the physical size of the place. I’d visited Treblinka and Stutthof before, but here the presence of the camp in the landscape felt different.

There was no way to turn that into a normal cycling note.

We stopped briefly, took a photo, and continued.

After that, the day returned to the usual work of riding: distance, food, route, surface, water, pace. The weather was good after the cold morning, and physically I felt better than I had expected. After 150 kilometres, I was tired but not destroyed. That mattered.

The approach to Kraków gave the day another change of character.

First came Tyniec.

The monastery at Tyniec is one of those places that clearly belongs to the Vistula landscape around Kraków. We didn’t make a long stop there, but it was impossible to miss the connection between the river, the hill and the old buildings.

Further on, the route didn’t simply roll into Kraków on easy paths.

The organiser still had ideas.

We had to climb towards Kopiec Piłsudskiego, and then came descents and paths that felt more suitable for runners or mountain bikes than for loaded gravel bikes after a long day. I remember thinking less about sightseeing and more about not damaging the bike. Hands on the brakes, watch the roots, keep the bike moving.

Kraków itself was another strange contrast.

We rode through one of the most recognisable cities in Poland, but by then it was Saturday evening, crowded, and late in the day. The route even took us through the market square. On a normal trip that might have been the point of the day. On Wisła 1200, it was part of the final push to lodging.

By the time we reached the accommodation in Kraków, we’d ridden about 206 kilometres.

That number mattered. Without it, the first day sounds too abstract. It wasn’t just “from Barania Góra to Kraków.” It was a full day of riding. It also changed the scale of the whole project.

Before the start, Wisła 1200 was still mostly a number. After the first day, it became a route I had actually started. There were still around 1,000 kilometres left, but the beginning was done.

The next day was already a problem to solve.

There was rain in the forecast. It would be Sunday, with fewer shops open. That meant thinking about food, opening hours and how much to carry. The first day didn’t end with a celebration. It ended with the usual long-ride questions: what will the weather do, where will I buy food, and how hard will the next section be?

That was a good introduction to Wisła 1200. Not a calm tour of the upper Vistula.

Before the Vistula looked like the Vistula I knew, the ride had already begun properly.

I knew the Vistula mostly from Warsaw. Following it from Barania Góra to the Baltic showed me a river that kept changing: mountain streams, reservoirs, levees, old river towns and a mouth shaped by engineering.

I know the Vistula mostly from Warsaw.

There it is wide, sandy and partly wild. One bank belongs clearly to the city. The other can still feel like an escape from it, even though it is still inside the capital. There are beaches, gravel tracks, islands, places for bonfires, and sections where the river feels less controlled than you would expect in a city of this size.

That was my starting image of the river before Wisła 1200.

Wisła 1200 was a long-distance cycling race with a time limit. The route followed the Vistula from the source area near Barania Góra to the present river mouth near Świbno, and then on to the official finish in Gdańsk. I rode it over seven consecutive days.

The clock was always there. That meant I could not stop everywhere. Some places I only saw from the bike. Some I passed while thinking more about food, rain, mud or the next shop than about history.

I wrote the more practical cycling notes on my BikeStats blog. This article is about something different: what the Vistula itself showed me when I followed it across Poland.

I had read Andrzej Chwalba’s Wisła. Biografia rzeki and Mateusz Waligóra and Dominik Szczepański’s Szlak Wisły. 1200 km pieszej przygody before the ride. After finishing, I returned to them. Some passages made more sense only after I had seen the river from the saddle.

The first thing was simple: the Vistula is not one landscape.

At the beginning, near Barania Góra, it is still a mountain river system. I did not go to the exact spring markers, but the route began in the source area. The beginning of the Vistula is not one neat dot on a map. It is water gathering, joining and growing: Biała Wisełka, Czarna Wisełka, mountain slopes, small streams, and only later the river that most people imagine when they hear the name Wisła.

That early river was not disappointing. It was simply a different stage of the same river: younger, narrower, faster and more visibly managed.

In the upper section, infrastructure and small towns were often more visible than the river itself. The water moved through a controlled landscape, with straightened parts, reinforced banks, low thresholds and channels. It still had mountain energy, but it already passed through a human-shaped corridor.

Then came Jezioro Goczałkowickie.

We had already seen the lake during the Wały Goczałkowickie section. It was early in the first riding day, and the section was hard enough to make everyone pay attention. But visually it gave the first clear change of scale.

The lake had waves and looked almost like a small sea.

It was not the river becoming wild. It was the river system becoming large.

That difference matters. The Vistula did not suddenly become the wide sandy river I knew from central Poland. It first became bigger through control, storage and infrastructure.

Further downstream, after Kraków, the route slowly changed again.

The river corridor opened. There were more levees, more long straight sections, more places where the ride became about following a line across flat land. The Vistula was not always visible, but its presence shaped the route. Towns, crossings, floodplains, embankments and old river places kept returning.

Some of those names are familiar from history lessons or short trips: Kraków, Sandomierz, Kazimierz Dolny, Warsaw, Płock, Włocławek, Toruń, Chełmno, Grudziądz, Tczew, Gdańsk.

On the ride, they did not appear as a list of monuments. They appeared as practical points on a long river corridor. A shop. A bridge. A climb. A square. A ferry area. A place to refill water. A place to book accommodation. A town where the route slowed down because the old streets were busy or the river crossing mattered.

That is what made the books useful after the ride.

Chwalba helped me see those towns not as random stops, but as parts of an older river economy of ports, ferries, crossings and trade. Modern voivodeship borders divide them one way. The river connects them another way.

This was especially clear on the middle Vistula.

By then the ride had become more exposed. Wind mattered. Levees mattered. Food stops mattered. Żabka, petrol stations and McDonald’s became real checkpoints, because they were the places where water, coffee, hot food and quick calories were available. That may not sound historical, but it is honest. On a slower trip, the checkpoints might have been castles, churches, old river ports and museums. On Wisła 1200, they were often chain shops and petrol stations.

The older river was still there. I just met it between practical problems.

Warsaw remained my personal reference point.

I had known this part of the river before the ride. I had cycled along it, walked near it, crossed it, watched how the city uses it and how the right bank still keeps a different character. But after riding from the source area towards Warsaw, the capital no longer felt like an isolated river city. It became one stage in a much longer corridor.

That helped me understand something about the so-called wild Vistula.

It can feel wild without being untouched.

This is important. The Vistula near Warsaw and on many middle sections can look sandy, open, braided, rough and less controlled than other large European rivers. But that doesn’t mean people haven’t shaped it. There are embankments, groynes, bridges, extraction sites, regulated stretches, flood defences, ports, ferries and old river works. The river may feel free in places, but it has still been argued with, crossed, narrowed, protected against and used for centuries.

That difference mattered during the Otwock and Świder area.

The organiser called one section Otwocka Amazonia. It wasn’t an official place name, just the event’s nickname, but after riding it I understood why it had stuck. Mud, branches, narrow paths and repeated obstacles made that part one of the most mentally tiring sections of the whole ride.

It was close to Warsaw, but it didn’t feel urban in the normal sense. It felt like the capital still has rough river margins if you follow the water closely enough.

That is one of the things I liked most about the project. It showed that the river doesn’t become simple just because it passes a big city.

After Warsaw, the Vistula kept changing.

The next days were less about famous landmarks and more about scale, exposure and repetition. The river was wider, the land more open, the wind more important. The route moved through towns that once mattered because of crossings, trade or local river work. Sometimes I noticed that while riding. More often I understood it later.

The lower Vistula brought another change.

There were still long levees and exposed stretches, but the old towns started to break the monotony. Toruń, Chełmno and Grudziądz gave the ride a different visual rhythm: brick, old market squares, high riverbanks, granaries, crossings and riverfronts.

Grudziądz was one of the strongest moments visually. The line of granaries above the river looked like something built for the Vistula, not merely beside it. That distinction matters. Some towns sit near a river. Others make more sense because of it.

By the final day, the river story had become simple again.

We were going to the mouth.

The present main mouth of the Vistula near Świbno is connected with Przekop Wisły, the Vistula Cut, opened in 1895. That means the final river moment of the ride was not a purely natural ending. It was also a place shaped by engineering, flood control and decisions about where the river should go.

That fitted the whole ride.

From the source area to Goczałkowickie, from Kraków and Sandomierz to Warsaw, from the middle levees to the brick towns of the lower river, the Vistula was never only water. It was also infrastructure, trade, floods, crossings, boundaries, towns, memories, repairs, shops, wind, mud and people making decisions around it.

The river journey ended at Świbno.

The ride ended later, in Gdańsk.

Both were necessary.

Before Wisła 1200, I thought of the Vistula mostly through Warsaw. After the ride, I still think that Warsaw has one of the most interesting urban river landscapes I know. But now it is one part of a longer story.

The Vistula isn’t one view, one bank, one city or one idea.

It is a line through Poland, but not a straight one. It changes shape, speed, use and meaning. Following it by bike didn’t make me an expert on the river. It gave me a better map in my head.

That was enough to make Poland look different.