To Hel and back in 36 hours

As a small child in Polish Saturday school in London, I'd pore over maps of Poland looking at places called Łódź and Lwów, Bydgoszcz and Białystok. Less confusingly, there was this dangly thing over Gdańsk called 'Hel'. No map of Poland is complete without this feature. What's it like?

As a young person visiting Poland with Montserrat (two coachloads of 15-20 year-old boys and girls of Polish parentage going to the fatherland for a religious pilgrimage organised by the Polish parish in Ealing) I visited Hel in 1976. Back then, the place was of strategic military significance for the Warsaw Pact. Our guide told us in no uncertain terms to keep all cameras hidden as penalties for Western spies were severe. Passports were checked; paranoia total. Our coaches made their way along a narrow spit of land, at times so narrow we could see the sea on both sides of the road.

Hel is a textbook peninsula at the end of which is an intriguing town. Hel is a place you have to visit if you are ever to have a complete mental picture of Poland and its diversity - from Zakopane to the Mazurian lakes, from the Białowieża forest to Wieliczka's salt mine and dozens of fascinating historic cities in between.

The night train tourism concept is now proven; a concentrated dose of travel experience crammed tight by doubling up on transportation and sleeping time. Board a train in Warsaw on Thursday evening, wake up on the beach Friday morning. Spend one intensive, never-to-be-forgotten, day there. Then board a train home on Friday evening and wake up in Warsaw on Saturday morning. This way, you still have the entire weekend free. The cost of the train ticket is little more than the cost of a night's stay in a hotel, with the added bonus that this particular hotel transports you 547km as you sleep.

Above: arrival at Hel of the night train from Warsaw, eleven and half hours after leaving the capital. It's just gone nine in the morning so time for a cup of coffee.

Above: one of the oldest buildings in town, dating back over 180 years; Maszoperia, once the HQ of the local fisherman's guild. Inside, it's full of nautical horse-brasses, reminding me of the Tŷ Coch in Porthdinllaen, North Wales and pubs of this nature all around Britain's shore.

Compared to my day trip to Międzyzdroje last month, this time, it was perfect beach weather; even the Baltic was warm, so at the age of 53 I took my first swim in morze nasze morze. It being the end of the season, the clothes shops were busy depleting their stock, so I bought a decent pair of swimming trunks for 19 zlotys (£3.75). I use the word 'decent' advisedly, for at their last outing a few summers back, my pair of silver-grey Speedos purchased in 1983 were deemed by my own children to be too, er, skimpy for a middle-aged guy.

Like most beaches on a hot day, it gets crowded around the entrances; but wander off down the sandy beach and the crowds soon thin out. Indeed, by late afternoon, the beach was quite empty. The clean, soft sand reminded me of Porth Oer in North Wales, a beach also known as Whispering Sands; as you walk along it, it squeaks. Above: the Baltic sea gets very deep very quickly. Notice how close to the shore the trawler is sailing. I was surprised by the lack of tidal amplitude; the low tide mark is just a few metres from the high tide mark, so unlike the British Isles, where the difference can be hundreds of metres.

On a day like yesterday, the beach at Hel is perfect; pure sand stretching for hundreds of kilometres. From here, the very tip of the peninsula, one can walk to Jurata, Jastarnia, Kużnica and Chałupy to Władysławowo on the mainland, 35km away. Past the port, then onwards, westwards, past Łeba, Ustka, Kołobrzeg, onwards past Międzyzdroje to Świnoujście and the German border. Essentially, Poland's Baltic coast is one endless sandy beach punctuated by port towns and fishing villages, and of course Gdańsk and Gdynia.

Compared to Międzyzdroje, slightly snooty with its Promenade of Stars, classy hotels and German tourists, Hel is unpretentious, middle-market, with a stronger smattering of historical authenticity.

Night train travel offers spontaneity and intensity of experience. Check the forecast. Unnecessarily, I took wet- and cold weather gear that merely served as rucksack ballast. (But can you trust the forecasts? New.meteo.pl got it right this time - pure sunshine, hot, no rain, few clouds. Yet the website forecast no rain for Warsaw for either Wednesday or Thursday - and on both days it poured in the afternoon.)

The Hel Peninsula was important militarily to pre-war Poland, guarding the approaches to the country's only Baltic port, Gdynia. As such it was turned into a fortified zone in the mid-'30s. In September 1939, soldiers and sailors defending the peninsula held out against the Nazis for a month. After that, the Germans re-fortified the area, and after the war, the Warsaw Pact strengthened it further still.

Above: Hel was ready to defend itself against a seaborne NATO invasion that never came. To this day, a vast network of bunkers, observation posts, command posts, look-out towers and communications centres is scattered along the peninsula. Most objects are now open to tourists to visit.

Above: a local trawler takes tourists for a spin around the bay. In the background, a ferry headed for Scandinavia.

When in Hel, eat locally caught sea food and sample the nautical culture. I can recommend cod in beer cake here. Sea shanties were being played at Chëcz, above (Chëcz is Kashubian for 'house'). Poland's sea shanty tradition goes back to communist days, when the authorities, wanting to give its youth something to sing other than songs coloured with religious, patriotic or martial overtones, stumbled upon English sea shanties, had them translated them into Polish, they were sung on training vessels, yachts, canoes or around camp fires. Wild Rover, The Leaving Of Liverpool or What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor in Polish? Why certainly! Ależ prosze bardzo!.

Left: the lighthouse (built by the Germans in 1942) at the very tip of the peninsula. Strolling back from the beach towards the end of a Most satisfying journey, the sandy forest that covers the area between the town of Hel and the beaches puts me in mind of childhood holidays in Stella Plage in northern France. Back in Jeziorki, I'm looking over the photos taken that day, listening to Brian Eno's On Some Faraway Beach...

Below: it's eight in the evening and time to board the night train back to Warsaw. A memorable day out; my taste of the Polish Baltic far exceeding my expectations. On returning home, Moni, who spent part of her lengthy holiday with friends on the Hel Peninsula, asked me why anyone should want to vacation anywhere else.


This time last year:
Poles, stretch your facial muscles

This time two years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time three years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

This time four years ago:
Late August cultivation