Twilight rambler

A restless urge to travel seized me this evening; I checked the online train timetable (click here - a brilliant starting place for any adventure), saw a departure for Czachówek at 19:34, grabbed my bike and camera and raced for W-wa Jeziorki station to catch the train. The 17km journey took 21 minutes; shortly before eight I was in Czachówek, in time for Magic Hour, when the twilight creates that sublime mood. The return ticket, from Warsaw's boundary to Czachówek Górny and back again, with bike, cost a mere 13.50 zlotys, or three quid in English money.

I set off from Czachówek towards the east. Above: A shop in Czarny Las. A sign in the window says 'no to windmills'. The building itself is the definition of the Polish adjective zapyziały. Just ten miles from Warsaw's southern borders and the built landscape looks entirely different. There are more and more new detached houses appearing here and there, but this is essentially still wieś rather than exurbs.

Above: a column erected to the glory of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Czarny Las. The fields, the forests, the gardens, the dirt-track roads - all are sodden with rainwater. It's been a wet July, the water table is high, there's nowhere for the water to run off.

Above: a goods train made up of cement wagons trundles slowly eastwards through Czachówek Wschodni station (left); the sun has just set over Czarny Las.

The forest itself exudes an intense smell of mushroom and moss; the air at dawn and dusk smells quite different from how it does during the day.

That golden time of day again; my mind drifts to another time, another place, a lost world from before my birth, I feel it...

Above: waiting for the train home, Czachówek Górny station. Scheduled at 21:08, it arrives on time. During my wait (no more than a quarter of an hour) I am so assaulted by mosquitos that I'm forced to don full wet weather gear - Goretex hooded jacket and over-trousers - despite the pleasant warmth of the evening. This has been a bad year for the mozzies (culex pipiens), the worst I can remember since that awful summer of 1997. Last summer, although also wet, there was a large number of dragonflies about, that feast on mosquito larvae. Very few this year.

(It seems this is the first time I've ever posted on 2 August!)