W-wa Jeziorki: February 2026

Sunday, 1 February 2026

Warka in winter

Frosty morning! Minus 17.7°C, but the sun is shining, the air is crisp and dry. On a whim, I decide I'll take a train to Warka and go for a stroll along the banks of the Pilica river. Has it frozen over?

I get off at Warka (rather than Warka Miasto, closer to the town centre), to get a photograph of the war memorial 'to Polish airmen who died fighting all all fronts of WW2' (below) in a wintery setting. Am rewarded.

Below: passing the town square – entirely empty at half past eleven on a Sunday morning.

Below: looking down ulica Mostowa ('bridge street') towards the Pilica.

Below: further down along ul. Mostowa, with a wider angle lens. The buildings on the left appear in pre-war photos of this view.

Below: I reach the Pilica. Looking east. In the foreground, the river adjacent to the left bank has frozen solid, but midstream there's plenty of open water. This view gave me a profound blast of anomalous qualia memory or exomnesia.

Below: from further downstream, looking southwest towards the road bridge (just visible on the horizon).

Below: approaching Winiary, the eastern end of Warka, I cross a bridge taking the footpath over a minor tributary just before its confluence with the Pilica.

Below: in Winiary itself, I visit the Savannah Café in the grounds of the Kazimierz Pułaski museum; here (having covered over 10,000 paces in temperatures below -10C), I warm myself up with a spiced tea and large slice of apple charlotte before moving on. (Pułaski, the 'father of American cavalry' was fatally wounded at the Battle of Savannah in 1779. He grew up in the house below.)

Below: my favourite street in Warka, ul. Lotników, which in summer, with all the trees in leaf, looks quite Mediterranean. Not quite so today!

Left: Warka Miasto station, three hours after my arrival at Warka station one stop up the line. "Real-time digital arrivals indicator? Why doesn't Chynów get a real-time digital arrivals indicator?" Answer: despite only being opened in 2022, it is already seeing 25% more passenger traffic a day than Chynów. (According to rail regulator UTK, Warka Miasto sees around 2,000 passengers a day, whilst Chynów sees only 1,400. Data from 2024.)

Below: a rare selfie, taken at -12C, an hour into my winter trek. All equipment functioning perfectly! My USAF N3B parka is so warm that beneath it I'm wearing no more than a cotton shirt and cotton cardigan; and my Lowa Renegade boots are performing flawlessly. Winter lined trousers from Lidl and all's good. Two and half hours and 17.5k paces, I felt no discomfort from the cold at all. And my Nikon D3500 performed perfectly too