Here’s How You Can Explore Poland By Bike

Mary Lussiana explores Poland on two wheels during a Slow Cyclist bike tour.

C&TH Guide to Responsible Tourism

The Slow Cyclist: Exploring Poland By Bike

(c) Alex Barlow

As I pedalled along country lanes in Poland’s Lower Silesia, these lines of Tennyson kept running through my head. For everywhere I looked were ‘long fields of barley and of rye,’ in gently undulating, unspoilt countryside that stretched far into the distance, to the base of Śnieżka Mountain (Snow Mountain), which rises 1,603 metres above sea level on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland.

Imagine then my surprise and amusement to find myself at a later point in front of 14th-century frescoes of Sir Lancelot – apparently the only ones which exist worldwide – which grace the walls of the medieval keep in Siedlęcin. For Tennyson’s lyrical ballad, The Lady of Shalott, which I had been thinking about this week, tells the story of Elaine of Astolat’s unrequited love for Sir Lancelot, a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.

(c) Alex Barlow

But perhaps that is exactly what I should have expected from a trip with The Slow Cyclist, a company that has grown, mainly through word-of-mouth praise, to now be in 14 countries. As founder Oli Broom told me: ‘We look for places where no one else goes; where there is beautiful landscape, high-quality accommodation and things of cultural interest. And to those three pillars we add our own Slow Cyclist hospitality, looking after guests from pick-up, at the airport, or, something we are working to increase, the train station, until drop off.’ Poland is the destination for their latest venture. Its south-west region of Lower Silesia, whose history (it went from Bohemia, to Poland, to the Habsburgs, to Prussia, to Germany and, after WWII, back to Poland, housing the Poles who had been displaced from the east of the country, as agreed at Yalta in 1945), has created a rich heritage of architectural monuments, with well-preserved historic towns and bucolic landscapes that include the Izerski Mountains and the Karkonosze Mountains, the foothills of which were our playground.

We bicycled along the River Bóbr, down gravel tracks and forest paths, on tiny lanes covered by arching avenues of lime trees. We passed endless fields of barley and rye, scattered with red poppies and deep-blue cornflowers, over which birds of prey, buffeted by the warm wind, hovered looking for food. One day we had lunch in a local winery, a table set up among the vines under a blue sky with cow and goat cheeses from the neighbouring farms. Another day in an old farmhouse, painstakingly restored by a young couple who got out their homemade elderflower nalewka at the end of lunch, to power us through the afternoon. Although many of us, I am sure, reached for the ‘turbo’ button that day on our sleek e-bikes.

(c) Alex Barlow

Our nights were split between two different rural villages, tasty dinners and Polish wine restoring us, before turning into bed. But not before a last look at the starlit, empty, landscape, enticingly beautiful and tranquil today after so many centuries of change.

BOOK IT

From £2,390 per person for a four-night journey, including group airport transfers, support vehicle and luggage transfers, The Slow Cyclist hosts and two English-speaking local guides, accommodation, all meals, snacks and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, activities, e-bike and helmet hire, financial security and a donation to local causes aligned with The Slow Cyclist’s values. theslowcyclist.com