The last section of the Republic of Poland put behind me, but surely, those twenty-three days of walking stay in my mind as a most charming experience.

 

 

I flew together with Daniel, my son, to Warszaw Lody Chopin Airport, took the train to Lublin after a delicious meal in the train station Warszawa Centralna. Lublin train station is a bit off city centre but close enough for a chilling-off walk along the avenues.

 

Best hotel in town is from my own experience IBB Grand Hotel Lubelski with a very attractive tarif. Double room from 350 Zloty including a generous breakfast.

 

In the morning by taxi 13 Zloty, again back to the bus station next to the trains, to catch the 08.01 connection to Frampol, our starting point.

 

Lovely weather, after all flat land (Poland comes from 'pole' which means 'field' or 'flat land' cf. Dutch 'polder') we started to see some elevations but only for a short while. Our destination and most of our route further south-east turned out to be as flat as ever. And even as sandy as before. More than 600 kilometers with sandy soil. Easy walking and gentle to your feet. Not exactly but relatively speaking. Frampol, a sweet Little Town from the early 18th C., was almost completely destroyed during WWII as the Luftwaffe targeted it on 13 September 1939 for 'instructive aims'. It was not a military object. Thus a war crime, a terror act like Guernica two years before.

 

We bought some bread and cheese and set on, in fact not towards south but more to the east.

Frampol is the said Place for Isaac Singer's novel Gimpel the Fool. Everywhere there are various marks from the visit 1987 of Jan Pawel II i.e. (Polish) pope John Paul II. In the village of Radziecin there is a Park Papieski, an arboretum to his honor.

 

 

 

From 09:30 to noon we walked under a pretty hot sun on bitumen roads with no or very little traffic. We had our bread and cheese 'lunch' in a forest

 

 

 

that led us south to the town of Bilgoraj, another scene of Isaac Singer's novels.

 

                                                  Daniel fann snart adress och telefon till sina kollegor på polska skogsstyrelsen.

Ingången till skogen mellan Frampol och Bilgoraj.
   Här som vid flera andra skogsentréer fanns pedagogiska
introduktioner, bord och bänkar för studier.

Hotel Sikarski. Rekommenderas varmt.
Välförtjänst kall Tyskie öl, som avnjöts med
pumpasoppa och polska piroger som kallades
ryska men som var dumplings, ett slags ravioli.







 

 

The first day was not that long, 20-25 km but perhaps a bit too warm, +25°C. www.meteoprog.pl did promise cooler weather and even some rain and we were Confident that we would make use of our 'wet equipment' - my French natural rubber boots and Daniel's Lundhags leather boots. We asked our way out of Bilgoraj around 9 o'clock in the morning. People we asked said 'Don't you have money to take a cab? They did not have a clue of our intended walking route across the fields to Edwardow village.

Taking the east exit, we passed old and new industries and private villas. There is abundance of EU signs of co-financing. Not on these constructions though.

more to come....