Polish Postscript: Mud and Mosquitoes

Stuck in the mud in Poland
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

On arrival in Poland, we made the decision to stop early as we were both tired and in need of some R&R. So, we headed to the Polish Lake District and arrived in our destination of Mikolajki by late afternoon. We then set about finding a wild camp. Given the enormous swathes of forest and several lakes, this didn’t seem like too challenging a prospect, particularly as we have in recent days had no problem at all in quickly location a suitably overnight spot.

However, every forest track we took was too busy to stop on – the worst road surfaces yet, but bizarrely as busy as the A1. Each track also ended without a view of the lake – it seems that they just do not want you anywhere near the lakes around here (we think that this is perhaps because they are protecting the swans). In one case, when we thought that we had found a suitable track to park on, we were greeted by two farmers with guns. So we opted to leave.

After two hours of driving up and down and / or reversing out of forest tracks, we were close to giving up. This had all been so much easier in other countries. We decided to give it one last try and follow a track to the clearly signposted bird watching point. Unfortunately, this was to prove one track too far. The track quickly became boggy and it proved difficult to prevent a two ton camper van from sliding unassailably into the mud. Realising the issue, Michael tried to reverse out, but by this time it was too late. We were, for the second time in this van, stuck in the mud. Sadly, this time no burly Yorkshire farmer in rubber trousers appeared to bail us out.

So, instead, we were forced to (a) brave the inordinate number of huge mosquitoes which infest the Polish forest and (b) construct a fantastic Ray Mears inspired technique of laying twigs and branches in a ladder / railway track formation across the bog to allow us to eventually reverse out of trouble. Only immediately to get back into trouble at the next patch of mud. And so it went on. We have now practiced our “rock and push, rock and push” technique with the van to (almost) perfection. For the final part of our adventure, we were ably assisted by two Polish bird watchers on bikes (or possibly Brokeback Mountain boys, we weren’t quite sure as they emerged from the forest). They helped to push the van and, as their reward, got some warm beer from us (lucky them) and apparently a great deal of amusement.

Photo of van stuck in mud and cunning “Twig Train Track Survival Technique”™ attached.