Działkaland floods north of Warsaw

Działka - is one of those hard-to-translate Polish concepts, but bear with me. It is something akin to the British allotment garden, though larger, with a summer house on it. The concept of the Russian dacha is similar. Many urban Poles who live in flats like to have a plot where they can put up a small house and grow fruit and veg, where they can get away from the city's noise and bustle.

Działki vary from a thirty square-metre wooden shack on a hundred square-metre plot right through to veritable palaces on large, forested plots that are hard to distinguish from normal houses. If there's one factor which distinguishes a działka from a proper house, it is that one does not commute into work each day of the week from a działka.

Large or small, działki are not inhabited the year round, typically during weekends and holidays from late spring through to early autumn. The idea is to get away from the noise and fumes of the city and relax in the countryside - where most Poles are from.

And what to do once you get there? A quote from a taxi driver who many years ago drove me to the airport one Saturday morning. After he drops me off, he says he's headed for his działka for 'browar, praska i grill' - beer, papers and barbecue.

Warsaw is surrounded by a broad belt of działkaland. It extends as far as one can reasonably travel on a Friday evening with all the necessities of weekend life - children and their playthings, dog, bicycles, boxes of provisions. In practice then, a 90 minute drive or train journey tops. This explains the traffic snarl-ups (and full commuter trains) coming into Warsaw on Sunday evenings in summer.

This weekend I took up Adam R's kind invitation to join him at his family's działka a little way north of Warsaw, I took my bike on the train as far as Pomiechówek, two stops beyond Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki and cycled on from there. The area is quintessential Działkaland, out where the pines grow wild and tall, sandy soil, slightly hilly, and lots of well-built wooden działka houses. Two stories, proper kitchens and bathrooms, three or four bedrooms. Civilised conditions for weekend rural living. In every drive, a car on Warsaw plates.

Above: flooded działki of Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki. ND Maz is a dormatory town north of Warsaw, these modest działki belong to the locals (whose flats are visible in the background). When people lose their farms, livestock, livelihoods, when their principle houses are flooded, the media take notice. But działki under water is no story.

Below: The river Narew at Modlin, near the confluence of the river Wkra. These rivers join the Vistula some three kilometres downstream of here. The area between my vantage point and the far horizon is very prone to flooding.