Day 28 of my cycling journey
On a day when it was raining almost all the time, I somehow managed a moderate 68 km. Cycling from the little hamlet of Piasty Wielkie, where I had stayed ,to the town of Mlynary, where I had rented a B&B with WiFi, so that I could watch the Champions league final. But who could have known the drama which developed and cruelly spoilt a day, which was, at least from the weathers perspective, not so great to begin with.
The important day had arrived. I had a Champions league final to watch. I had selected a B&B in the little town in Mlynary, where the reviews and the description on the internet portal had identified good WiFi. I was ready to stream and consequently eager to cycle 68 km in relatively foul weather. Therefore, in the morning I got out of bed rather quickly. It had rained the whole night and so I used the somewhat rare moment of an occasional sunshine to dry my rainfly and to get my stuff packed. It wouldn’t last, I knew. On my weather app I had one of my bleakest predictions ever – six days of continuous rain predicted. What had I done to Poland to deserve this? Surely enough, I was hardly 30 minutes on my bike when the rain started.
Back into my full raingear, I cycled through the beautiful Masurian countryside. And it is beautiful, even in rainy weather. The pretty little villages with their old-world churches, always strategically placed on the highest point of the village so that you could see the spires from afar, and probably hear the church bell farther away. The beautiful country roads, narrow and almost always with trees lining them. I was imagining how beautiful it must be to drive those tree-lined highways in summer, when the temperatures are high and the trees a providing shade to the cyclist. You know the feeling in the desert when you dream of water, and you can almost see the water in the distance. The same happened to me here, I almost had a reverse Fata Morgana, although it was only in my mind.
In the little town of Pieniezno I had a strategically timed lunch, while outside the weather attempted a second deluge. Cycling further into the general direction of Elblag, I passed several little villages with beautifully, old churches. The vistas of little villages with their churches are very beautiful and I stopped several times to make pictures of them.
I arrived at my B&B and was greeted from my hostess, who used her 15-year-old daughter to translate for her. She told me that there wouldn’t any breakfast. A fact which couldn’t have disturbed me at all, since I almost always make my breakfast myself. Then disaster struck: Her WiFi was broken and couldn’t be fixed. She didn’t have a TV so that I could watch the Polish coverage of the game, and to add insult to injury, the mobile reception was so bad that I couldn’t use mobile date to follow the game. I was almost completely cut off from the world on an evening I desperately wanted to be connected with it. There was no way I could have cycled another 15 km to the next guesthouse. I was shot and cold from cycling the whole day in the rain. My hostess must have seen my disappointment, because shortly after she presented me with a plate of hot food for free. Feeling sorry for myself, I drank the beer I had bought for the game and soon fell asleep. I woke up at midnight and checked on my phone for the reception and there was some reception at this time. This flimsy reception produced the information that my team had lost, and I understood that, perhaps, it was for the best that I hadn’t watched the game.
Drat
.. bad weather and poor connectivity … life sure rained on your good time but
I’m sure you will persevere and better times are ahead.