From the Bug Toward Northern Mazovia: 115 km from Wyszków to Ciechanów

In March I wanted to do my first proper 100+ km ride of the year, preferably with some gravel. There was one more condition – I wanted to collect a few new gminas.

I use zaliczgmine.pl to mark Polish municipalities I have already visited by bike, and I call these trips gminobranie. I looked at my map and noticed a blank area in this part of Mazovia. I marked several gminas I wanted to collect and let Komoot work out how to connect them.

That is one of the main reasons I like gminobranie. It gives me an excuse to use a different route. Instead of planning a ride around places I already know, I start with a blank part of the map and see where it takes me.

This time it took me across northern Mazovia, from Wyszków on the Bug to Ciechanów, north of Warsaw.

Starting Again from Wyszków

Wyszków has appeared in my cycling trips before. In 2019 I passed through while riding from Warsaw towards Małkinia for a wedding, with a suit packed in the panniers. A few years later I started another longer trip here while heading towards a rowing weekend near Grunwald.

This time Wyszków was simply a convenient place to get off the train and start filling another blank part of the map.

The Bug also makes it an interesting starting point historically. In 1528 King Sigismund I authorised the construction of a bridge here and the collection of tolls. The crossing helped connect routes through Mazovia towards Lithuania.

I wasn’t here to explore Wyszków this time, though. I got off the train and headed out of town.

The Specialized Rockhopper, my XC bike, was still not ready. I had been planning to test it ahead of Wisła 1200, the 1,200 km bikepacking route along the Vistula that I was preparing for that summer.

So I took the Felt instead. The Felt is my road bike, but it has slightly wider tyres, which means I can take it off-road from time to time.

The route was the mix I wanted – asphalt, forest tracks, fields, some mud and some sand. The weather was good, although the wind spent rather too much of the day coming from the front.

Most of my photographs from this part of the ride are simply roads and tracks. That is quite representative of the day.

Stary Mystkówiec

At around 20 km I came out of the forest and fields onto asphalt in Stary Mystkówiec.

About a kilometre later I stopped at a cross with an inscription commemorating those who died in the struggles for independence in 1914-1918.

At the time it was simply a roadside memorial that caught my attention. I took a photo and continued.

Later I checked what it actually commemorates.

Pałac Zatory

At about 28 km another building made me stop.

Pałac Zatory was visible from the road, but I couldn’t access the property. I took a quick photo through the gate and continued.

The property is now being redeveloped for hotel, winery and event use. When I later looked more closely at the history, I found that the palace was just one part of a much larger estate.

Different Ways of Settling the Same Landscape

A little farther on I stopped beside a board for Nadbużański Park Krajobrazowy.

This part of the route also belongs to the wider landscape of Puszcza Biała.

Afterwards I realised how mixed the settlement history of this area was.

For centuries large parts of Puszcza Biała belonged to the bishops of Płock. Their villages developed differently from noble estates such as Zatory, where the palace and folwark belonged to a landed estate.

After wars, epidemics and depopulation, the bishops also brought settlers from Puszcza Zielona into Puszcza Biała. These settlers had experience working in forest areas and became part of the development of the Kurpie Białe cultural region.

Later another settlement layer appeared when German and Olęder settlers established themselves in parts of the area in the early nineteenth century.

From the bike none of these historical divisions were obvious. I was still riding through forests, fields and villages. But the villages around me hadn’t all developed in the same way.

That was one of the more interesting things I learned when I started looking at the route afterwards.

Crossing the Narew at Wierzbica

At around 42 km the route crossed another major river – the Narew at Wierzbica.

The crossing itself has a long history.

A permanent wooden bridge was built here in the nineteenth century as part of the route towards Białystok. The crossing was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt during the wars of the twentieth century.

In August 1920 it became part of the fighting north of Warsaw. Polish forces retreating from the direction of Wyszków crossed the Narew here before damaging the bridge. Soviet troops later repaired the crossing sufficiently to continue their advance.

The present bridge is much newer, but the crossing remained important.

It also gave me another connection between this ride and the start in Wyszków. Both towns developed around places where people had to get across large rivers.

Five New Gminas

The five new gminas from this ride were Gzy, Pokrzywnica, Zatory, Winnica and Gołymin-Ośrodek.

Some gave me an obvious reason to stop. Others were simply another place on the route.

Winnica was somewhere in between.

At around 60 km I rode through the village and saw its church, but decided not to stop. There was still plenty of riding ahead and at the time it was simply another church along the route.

Afterwards I checked how old it actually was.

The present brick church was built between 1484 and 1514. Winnica itself appears in records much earlier, in 1230, as property of the bishopric of Płock.

The church is also not the only old element here. The area around it still partly preserves the medieval settlement layout of Winnica.

That surprised me.

I had seen the church. I just hadn’t realised that I was riding past a building around five centuries old and through the centre of a settlement whose basic shape had much older roots.

Sometimes I stop because something looks interesting. Other times I keep riding and only later realise that I probably should have stopped.

At around 65 km I made my longer break at a forest rest area.

The ride was also showing me where my cycling form was after winter.

My lower back complained earlier in the day and my neck later. A couple of times I walked the bike for a few minutes to give my legs and backside a break. By then I was getting a fairly good idea that 115 km would be enough for the first long ride of the year.

The Felt also gave me a chance to spend more time than usual riding in the drops on straightforward asphalt sections. I had avoided that position quite a lot before, but it felt more stable than I expected.

An Old Mill in Gołymin

Just before the church in Gołymin-Ośrodek I passed a large old mill.

The local heritage inventory dates it to the first quarter of the twentieth century.

There is more to investigate here. Interwar records mention a motor mill operating in Gołymin in the 1930s, but Ihaven’t yet found enough evidence to say that those records refer to this exact building.

For now, the simple fact is enough: I had photographed another piece of local history without knowing what it was.

Gołymin-Ośrodek

A few minutes later I reached the church.

The church stood out. There didn’t seem to be much else around competing for attention, so I stopped for a photo.

I later learned that the brick Church of St John the Baptist dates from around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The building also has a direct connection with another part of Gołymin’s history. Its condition worsened after the fighting around the village in December 1806, and major repairs followed in 1815-1816.

The Broken Bridge

At around 97 km Komoot sent me towards a bridge.

The bridge wasn’t passable.

So I turned around.

The recorded route shows that the dead end added roughly 1.8 km of backtracking before I could continue another way.

The more annoying problem was navigation. My Garmin Edge wouldn’t let me load a new route without ending the current activity, and I didn’t want to split my first 100+ km ride of the year into two separate files. So I kept the ride running and used my phone to work out the detour.

I found another way and continued towards Ciechanów.

After starting the ride beside one historic river crossing and using another at Wierzbica, it was a much smaller bridge that finally stopped me.

Ciechanów and the Torus

I reached Ciechanów from the south shortly before 17:00.

This was my third visit to the city by bike. In July 2020 I passed through during my Władysławowo – Warsaw ride, my first 400 km in two days. A few months later I returned on a Vagabundus trip through Czeruchy and Opinogóra.

I had already visited the castle and museum during an earlier trip, so I didn’t go there this time. I also wanted to catch the next train to Warsaw.

My colleague Daniel had recommended the unusual water tower and science centre, so I went there first.

“Water tower” is only the common name. Technically, it is a tower-mounted balancing reservoir built for the city’s water system and the developing industrial district.

It was designed in 1972 and entered service in 1976. The steel structure carries a torus-shaped tank supported by a hyperboloid structure.

In practice it didn’t work particularly well. Problems appeared from the beginning, and the reservoir was taken out of use only a few years later.

Decades later the structure was redeveloped as part of Park Nauki Torus.

I had gone there because of its unusual shape and because Daniel had mentioned the redevelopment. It was worth the short stop before the station.

Then I caught the train back to Warsaw.

Why I Like Gminobranie

The cycling side of the day did what I wanted. I completed my first 100+ km ride after winter, spent plenty of time away from asphalt and got a useful idea of where my cycling form was in March.

But the five new gminas were probably the more interesting result.

If I had planned the ride around known attractions, I could have made a neat list of things to visit in advance. Instead, I chose a blank area on my map and used gminobranie as an excuse to ride through it.

The route took me through landscapes shaped in different ways – bishop-owned forest villages, noble estates, areas settled by Kurpie and later Olęder communities, old parish centres and modern industrial towns.

Some things had survived in obvious form. Winnica’s medieval church was still standing. Pałac Zatory was being given another use. The Torus had gone from failed water infrastructure to a science centre.

Other things were less secure. An old mill was deteriorating beside the road. The bridge at Wierzbica had been replaced repeatedly. At Stary Mystkówiec a small cross was one of the visible reminders of fighting that had passed through more than a century earlier.

And one bridge simply didn’t work at all.

Most of the 115 kilometres between those places were still forests, fields, gravel roads and ordinary villages.

That is why I like gminobranie.