Friday departures are the best way to squeeze every last drop out of a weekend, yes cliche. This time we headed toward Włocławek. Gostyńsko-Włocławski Park Krajobrazowy had been on my radar for a long time… so yeah, finally made it happen. But the question was, what path to ride on the way? Everything north of home we've already rinsed so hard I probably know every single gravel road by now. So I switched it up. Drew the track through spots where I didn't have any tracks yet. At first glance, meh, looked boooooooring. Just endless grey fields and farms, right? Couldn't be more wrong. Turned out we randomly stumbled on some absolute gems of the Łódź region. Also hit my favorite spots in the Jura Krakowsko-Częstochowska (shoutout to Góra Biakło!), but from sides I'd never seen before. What did disappoint me though were the areas right before Włocławek. Instead of gravel, thin little threads of asphalt everywhere. Huge shame. Total visual pollution.
Fun fact, on the way back, somewhere in the fields north of Łódź, we rode straight into a legit sandstorm. Africa never really leaves you, huh, but seeing stuff like that happening in Poland now… kinda unsettling. Checked it at home, soil moisture levels here are currently comparable to the steppes of Algeria. At this rate, those "central Poland deserts" I used to write about might actually show up soon, peeking out from under that soft, hypnotizing blanket of lichen…
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