19.05.25 Day 13 - Darłówko-Łeba. Coast, fields and villages.

While yesterday was better than expected, today it was the opposite. Starting with rain which continued quite a while, wind from the north and still cold,10 degrees. It became a long ride, because after Ustka, there are not many options for the night before Łeba.

But first one more thing about Darłówko. There is "shove bridge" for pedestrians, see picture. The two sides are shoved back to each side. Have not seen that patent before, anyone?

"Shove bridge" in Darłówko

The first part of today's ride was along the seashore on a pretty bumpy track. Coming to Jaroslawiec I intended to find a supermarket, but I only found small shops with little choice. "Supermarket" can be anything for Google.

In my collection of intesting traffic signs. Hadn't seen this one before, makes sense, they take a lot of space

From here the EV 10/13 moves inland and follows partly bad, bumpy tracks. The strategy seems to be to avoid roads without bike lanes at (almost) any cost. This is not necessary, some roads really have not much traffic, and cycling is no problem. E,g. between Kollino and Zaleskie it is much better to follow the road.

Like Norway, Poland sticks to the steam engines. Cf. my post some days ago in Germany.

So to Ustka, where I finally found a supermarket and bought food for dinner. Not that I love supermarkets, but they are much easier to handle in a foreign country where you don't understand the language.

Less impressed by the Polish bread, only found white bread. Tastes well, but I need more

After Ustka I left the EV 10/13. Here the guidebook has formulations like "some section that are not bike friendly" and "some very sandy spots where you have to push". My advice: stay away from those, at least with a bike+luggage of 40+ kg. 

So I took a road option, Wytowmo-Ojazde-Gabino-Gardna Mala-Smoldzino-Glowczyce. I still managed to mess it up a bit and had a bumpy gravel road, but not too bad. Problem is it is hard to know from the map is a white road is paved or not.

Here are also many wind turbines. Poland has been lagging behind here in a European context, but now they are also building a lot.

See how the blades are bended backward by the wind. See my post from 09.05 with standing turbines

Coming to Glowczyce, it was 16:00 and I had done 90km. The nearest option was a camping in Ibizca, but I did not feel much like that, and worse, than I had to do a "deep sand path". Not sure what it means, but it doesn't sound good. The other option was Łeba, 30km away. Or 25, via the "deep sand path". So I ended up following the 30km road. The last 12km along the 214 actually had a bike lane.

After dinner, the sky finally cleared, the wind vanished and I made a walk to the beach, taking with me a beautiful sunset. 

Sunset in Łeba

Tomorrow there are also some tricky choices to come to Gdansk - I'll keep you informed.

123km in 9:45 hours, active time 7:35-

Total 1301km.