To the Capital

Before leaving our Trakai campsite with the 'van in tow, we head off in the Treg to the Hill of Angels to walk through the unique site above the town. Each wooden carved 'angel' has a plaque with a quotation - not always from the bible. Whatever your beliefs, it's a peaceful, calming place in the early morning. A coach full of schoolchildren arrives as we drive off...

So, refreshed, we pick up the 'van and head off to the site close to the capital city of Lithuania, Vilnius.

We drop off the 'van,  pick up two travelling friends and head to Paneriai, the site where some 80,000 Jews were systematically slaughtered by the Nazi regime in WW2. A very sobering visit but one we all think is important for us to experience.

After a pause back at the site to regain our equilibrium, we head into the city by bus (which is always a mini adventure in a new country) to experience parts of the capital we're probably not going to see on the official tour the next day; this is why we start with the 'bohemian' district of Uzupis. We wander, drink, eat and people-watch, getting back to camp after 9pm; what a great start to our experience of the city.

Wierd art

Day 2

We have an official guide for day 2 in the city who is truly exceptional and open. We learn a lot, especially as we sit with her for the included lunch.

We can certainly understand her passion for this exceptional UNESCO historic city with its baroque architecture in abundance, cobbled streets in the old town together with the shiny high-rise glass buildings proudly demonstrating a growing commercial sector.

The Presidential Palace

Castle on the Hill

City View from Castle

We stay on in the city to visit the ex KGB headquarters, now Museum of Genocide Victims and St. Anne's Church. Plus coffee, of course.

St. Anne's

This has been a really successful and fascinating visit to this city. It has a vibrant, young feel to it. Although Lithuania's post economic crisis economy is still developing, it's interesting to note that there are not large numbers of cars around but of those that there are, a significant proportion of them are extremely expensive; Mercs, Audis, BMWs etc. 

Onward to the second largest city tomorrow, all being well. See you there?

Delving Deeper into Lithuania

We're up early and off to visit the slightly controversial Grutas Park. A private collector has acquired many of the discarded statues from the Soviet era, once adorning town squares, and exhibited them in a parkland setting with other artifacts from that time.

Powerful, eh?

We travel on to a 'farm camping' site, just west of the town of Trakai. Nice site but it's shared with a summer camp for lots of children - so restful it's not..

It's our turn later as we have a shared group meal and folk evening which involves us participating in traditional folk dancing.... OK, OK, I know..
High quality stuff, though, and interesting to hear folk styles from each region of the country. We're told that the traditions are being kept alive.

Also tried the locally made schnapps that's won an award..,....

Traditional Lithuanian Folk

Day 2

A trip into Trakai the next day with a local guide takes us through Lithuanian history and details of the reconstructed island castle in the town, reconstruction having begun in the Soviet era.

Something slightly scary about this suit of armour..

The town is the centre of the Karaite culture in Lithuania with 60 residents. They have their own religion and customs and we learn as much as we can. Really, really wish I could remember all this interesting stuff.

Sue tries the local Kibinai which are basically rather nice Cornish Pasties or Spanish Empanadas, if you prefer. Pity they're made of wheat.....

Off to the capital, Vilinius, tomorrow, so 'bye for now.

Into Lithuania

So, the tour begins....

See Lithuanian Country Profile (in 'web version' of blog)
Also: Happiness Survey

Our tour leader and joint owner of Mir Tours has given us highly detailed roue instructions so we head off to meet in Lithuania sometime in the afternoon at our pre-booked campsite.

Because our caravanning satnav (which understands the size of our 13+m outfit and routes us accordingly) died a couple of days before we left the UK, I have our Huawei tablet rigged on the dash running a CoPilot app which does the same thing. It talks  to the internet through my phone but it's not quite the usual neat setup; it works, though and gets us here over some incredibly bumpy roads.



After one minor diversion we roll up at site and take a group walk into the nearby Spa town, Druskininkai. We see a wonderful old Russian Orthodox church amongst other sights and then eat at the campsite restaurant with friends. A good day.

Russian Orthodox Church

 Catholic Church

Onward tomorrow...

Mragowo Meeting

Well, here we are at Camping Seeblick, Ruska Wies near Mragowo, and a nice site it is, too. So, this is the beginning of the Group Tour part of our adventure and there's always a little anticipation at this stage. Looking forward to it.

(Thanks Google - says my Huawei)

Hope we can get some sleep tonight, though, because there are two pools of frogs, yes, FROGS, the VERY LOUD croaking variety. Listen:

We've left time for a day exploring this lake district and, importantly, a couple of days relaxation and mingling as other group members roll in. Should be fun.

Day 2

The official meet-up day is Sunday, so that means we have two 'free days'. Today we visit some local highlights and tomorrow we'll stay on site and get sorted for a hectic tour.


We head off to Swięta Lipka to see a superb baroque church (17 Century). It has an organ with 5000 pipes and gold-embossed angels. We stay to see a recital but we aren't prepared for the sight of twirling angels and trembling bells as it grinds to the crescendo..... er, not sure about that at all... definitely not sure. On the other hand it certainly livens things up, but which way does the congregation face? It's great to see this this mechanical marvel in action, though, and wonderful that it is so well preserved.  Here's the organ (movie not ours)

Next on our list is Wolf's Lair, Hitler's HQ for the invasion of Russia. It was here that an assasination attempt was made by a group of high ranking generals; it failed and 5000 suspects were executed as a result. How many lives would have been spared if it has succeeded?

We see many of the destroyed heavily armoured bunkers, including Hitler's, as we walk the site with the supplied guidebook.

We call in at Gizycko on the way back and, by chance, choose a really good restaurant where we eat some fresh fish. .. then on 'home' where.....

Surprise!  Two of our old travelling friends have pitched next to us. After hugs and manly hand shakes, two more appear. We all know each other well and it's a great reunion. Adventures beckon.

Day 3

We pop onto the nearest town to say a goodbye to Polish culture for a while. As ever in these parts, it's on a lake, tidy and rather nice, too.

Back at base, our serene campsite is now full with an ACSI tour group of Austrians and Germans - and, of course, our fellow Brit travellers are rolling in, two by two, followed by Sabine, our tour leader - the only other caravanner. We chat, bond, laugh, have our first group meeting followed by a welcome meal from the barbecue. Adventures await.

Elbląg Adventures

We make a relatively short trip to Elbląg as a stop over for a couple of days before we head to our meeting point for the Camping and Caravanning Club's escorted tour with six other adventurers.

We're here to visit the vast Malbork Castle and investigate the unique Elbląg Canal with its method of raising boats between levels.

We arrive at a camp site right by the river and decide to head off to the Castle, where we manage to get a self guided audio tour without the expected crowds.

Malbork Castle was once the HQ of the Teutonic Knights and is the largest Gothic castle in Europe. Well worth the visit: highly recommended.

Here it is:

The outer skin has been rebuilt following WW2 destruction so it looks to be in wonderful condition.

This large hall's ceiling is held up by a single post. Someone seems to have got their sums right....

We decide to stay for a second night to take a trip on the Elblag Canal; it turns out that the ticket office is 500m from the campsite and we grab two seats on a trip leaving in the morning.

The more-or-less five hour trip up the canal the next day includes a coach ride back and seems to us the ideal way to experience this brilliant bit of hydro engineering by Georg Steenke

Although the main attraction of the trip is the engineering, sailing along through rivers and large lakes populated by hundreds of nesting birds is a fantastic experience in itself and shows us yet another fascinating face of this country.

How about some pics...

Looking to the stern as we ride up the slope

Journey's end

Using the height of the water to power the winches that raise the (largish) boat up the inclines in cradles while we're all still on board is very clever indeed. It also surprises that it's quite slick, too; it's probably a lot quicker than a series of locks. Wonderful.

Someone else's boat going up..

If you have three minutes to spare, here's Edbląg Canal: The Movie

So that's it: another mini adventure!

Off to Camping Seeblick at Mragowo tomorrow. See you there ABW

.......

Before leaving Elbląg the next morning, we take a walk into this developing town; there's a lot of development going on, all in sympathy with the Polish five storey narrow house design. Impressive indeed.

Interesting style for the stained glass windows in the cathedral..

Great conservation, great development; pity about the roads.

Sopot and Gdańsk

Sixth stop

After a very, very wet journey and a little excitement* finding the site, we're here in Sopot, looking forward to exploring the area, despite the weather.

*Well, we missed the site entrance (hardly visible, faded sign etc etc) and turned down the next road which turned out to be a dead end to the beach with a 90 degree bend. Given that our outfit is over 12m long with nowhere to reverse-turn, we had to un-hitch and turn the van round using the motor mover (it's 1.7 tonnes), thus providing a group of local guys with a phone video opportunity. Just hitched up and a very helpful woman in a BMW X5 reverses up and offers to lead us to the site entrance, which we overshoot slightly. I begin to reverse with the hazards on, then realise that a police van is pulling up behind.... so we follow the BMW lady around the next island with the police van in tow then promptly turn into the site (which really doesn't look like a site), waving thanks to all, including the police. Phew! Helpful Polish people, yet again - probably thinking mad English caravanners.. not quite our usual slick effort, by some considerable margin.

When the rain stops and turns into a light fog, we walk into Sopot and head along the longest wooden pier in Europe apparently. Nice beer in a cool bar, too. Nice place.

Along the pier - making the most of our European citizenship....

The mist falls on the square

Should stick to Costa Coffee - not the local beer...

A day in Gdańsk

We use the local train to take a day in Gdansk and, as we might have expected, it's a mighty impressive place; the old town is dominated by five story stately buildings but there is still a sense of space, especially in the main Long Market and it's here that we take a leisurely lunch, helped down by a glass of Żywiec.
Much of the centre was reconstructed after the destruction in WW2 and it's been fastidiously maintained since then.

The tall houses

 

 Long Market

The view from the top of the largest brick-built church in the world (St. Mary's); of course we climbed it! 405 steps.

This is where the fall of the communist state arguably began with the creation of the workers' union, Solidarity, in September 1980 in the Lenin Shipyard under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. Until this time, all unions in Warsaw pact countries were controlled by the communist state.

A monument to the fallen shipyard workers of 1970.
MORE

There's so much more but you've read enough.

Into Hel

After a visit to a ViaToll customer service centre to register on their app so we can top up our ViaToll account online (super helpful again) we continue on to Hel, a small town at the tip of a narrow peninsula reaching into the Baltic sea.

Sat Nav looks interesting...

Hel  has seen more than its fair share of conflict from the 17th century through to WW2 and the peninsula is dotted with relics of war (and the cold war). Although it has its fair share of 'seaside' trivia shops, it's clearly a favourite with young families and we can see why. A fascinating time here (and another nice lunch...)

Hel Harbour

At the very tip of the peninsula

Relics of WW2

On the way back from Hel, we're stopped by the border police for 20 minutes to check our docs and that the car's not stolen, I guess. Unfortunately their computer crashes so we chat to the officer while it's sorted, bridging our language problems with Google Translate. All good in the end though.

On the road again and heading for 'home', we visit Gdynia, where a WW2 battleship and a three masted schooner are docked.

Great day, worn out, time to plan the journey tomorrow. We're heading for Elblag.... See you there, all being well.

Torun: UNESCO World Heritage

Fifth Stop

It was a great decision to stop at Torun for a night before we head for Sopot, near Gdansk.

Camping Tramp is easy to reach and a 1km walk over the nearby river bridge takes us into the walled UNESCO old town. While reading about the brick-built churches sounds impressive, the reality of the scale of the architecture is breathtaking as we wander  to the wonderful town square.

Torun claims to be the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus  and his presence is felt all over the town. Surprisingly, given my fascination with things astronomical, we give his museum a miss as our arrival coincides with a visit by what looks like a zillion small schoolchildren. Still, we saw a display of his instruments in Krakow last year.

We climb to the top of the Cathedral tower (of course) and finish up with a wonderful cup of chocolate from a specialist chocolate shop near the square. Highly recommended.

Into the walled city..

Up to the bell tower..

Views from the top

Copernicus himself

This guy saved the town from a plague of frogs by playing the fiddle. Or so they say...

Beautiful, even in the rain

We have to walk back to camp over that bridge.

Sopot tomorrow is the plan.

Meanwhile the mist starts to rise as the sun sets in Torun