More much-needed snow

Marvellous! Overnight a new dump of fresh, fresh snow, covering all the footprints and tracks. Delight for the cats after their breakfast to go out for another romp in the powder. Below: Wenus, haunch-high in snow. Precipitation on this scale is what the soil has been crying out for.

Below: Céleste enjoying herself thoroughly. Temperatures this morning around -5°C, little to no wind. Not the -16°C it has been recently.

Below: snow on the car shows how much has fallen. Arcturus, unable to burrow under the fence, goes over the top to get back in my garden.

Below: Czestuś spent a long time outside. Came back with an appetite!

After spending a while in the snow, I lead the cats back in the house, and set off for my long walk. Passing the auto workshop at the bottom of my lane, impossible to identify cars under the snow.

Below: a Koleje Mazowieckie Służbowy ('service'/'official') train north of Chynów station, almost certainly an empty stock movement or a rescue run. When a train is shown as a Służbowy, it is running as a non-commercial service (przejazd próżny). It carries no passengers and is prioritised by dispatchers to get it to a specific location as quickly as possible (podsył). Note it is a five-car single-unit set, not the more usual ten-car double-unit set. Something's gone wrong up the line to Warsaw...

Below: I pass the car breaker's yard on the DK50, covered by snow. Sad to see an Audi A2 up there (middle), with its rust-resistant lightweight aluminium body and extreme fuel efficiency. Production ceased in 2005; I reckon it will be a collector's classic in years to come.

Below: the snow-ploughs and gritters were out in force along the DK50 (I saw two in the space of about five minutes) and two cars from national highway operator, GDDKiA, monitoring the state of the roads.

As I'm still not doing big grocery shops, I decide to go to Zajazd u Latoszków for my lunch, with mushroom soup and grilled barbecue chicken breast with salad, beetroot and potatoes, all for 30 złotys (£6.20). After walking for half an hour – much of that through deep virgin snow – a piping hot bowl of soup was just the thing. 

Below: another five-car single-unit set, this time heading south towards Radom, this time carrying passengers. Evidently many trains breaking down.

Below: my apple trees. It should be a good year. 1) Biennial bearing, 2) The snow cover, 3) lots of natural fertiliser stored up (coffee grounds). Blossom by late-April, apples by late-September. 

This time last year:

Week with new kitten

This time two years ago:
Warsaw railway interstitials

This time three years ago:
Qualia memories – snowy Greenwich, January 1970

This time five years ago:
Meagre, disappointing snow

This time 12 years ago:
The sad truth about Karczunkowska's pavement

This time 13 years ago:
About Warsaw's kebab restaurants
[In 2012, a king-size lamb kebab in pitta bread cost 13zł, today it's around 30zł.]

This time 16 years ago:
Making the most of winter

This time 17 years ago:
Progress along Ballay Street

This time 18 years ago:
Shortest, mildest, winter?

Bright autumnal moods

Since Wednesday morning, the weather has been begging for my constant presence outdoors. In response, I have been breaking up my walks to get some paces in early, then some more around lunchtime, and then again around sunset. Below: golden leaves on silver birches against a perfectly blue sky, on the farm track between Jakubowizna and Grobice

Below: around the corner from my działka, returning from a morning walk, the sun still low in the sky.

Below: early afternoon, the level crossing between Chynów and Węszelówka. A local Koleje Mazowieckie train on its way to Radom, and in the distance, the PKP InterCity Lubomirski TLK service from Szczecin to Zakopane heading down the 'up' line, about to overtake the local train.

The sunset walk: this is the currently vacant Sala Venus, the restaurant behind the former BP (now Transoil) petrol station. Once a thriving venue for wedding receptions, the premises await a new operator.

Below: the Droga Krajowa nr. 50 (DK50), Warsaw's de facto southern ring-road. Will this become a motorway within the next eight to ten years? Keep following this blog.

Below: frozen with a 1/500th second exposure (rather than a long exposure like here), the Koleje Mazowieckie Radomianka limited-stop double-decker service approaches Chynów station at the end of my lane.

The combination of a full/almost full moon and a clear sky prompted short nocturnal strolls to the end of the asphalt and beyond a bit further into the orchards.

"Don't the moon look lonesome, shinin' through the trees" – moonrise from my działka.

My weather app suggests that the spell of four days of blue sky and relatively warm weather is an approaching an end; a foggy start tomorrow. Nearly two weeks of early-to-bed, early-to-rise, plus lots of sunshine, and the Hammer of Darkness is nowhere to be felt.

This time last year:
Memories, memes and dreams

This time two years ago:
Fully automatic – intuitive intelligence

This time four years ago:
A deeply spiritual experience

This time five years ago:

Poland experiences its first wave of Covid

This time eight years ago:
Gliwice's new station

This time ten years ago:
Reanimated – my father's car 

This time 11 years ago:
Defending Poland against hybrid warfare 

This time 12 years ago:
Another office move

This time 14 years ago:
PiS splits again – Solidarna Polska formed 

This time 15 years ago:
Tesco vs. Auchan

[Since then Tesco has left Poland and I'm still boycotting Auchan – let its owners choke on their fucking roubles.]

This time 18 years ago:
My father's house

Will a motorway roar through Chynów? And if so, when?

The DK50 (Droga Krajowa Nr. 50), Warsaw's de facto southern ring-road, runs from Sochaczew to Mińsk Mazowiecki, crossing the Vistula at Góra Kalwaria. It is the official east-west transit route bypassing Warsaw. Together with the DK60, the northern ring-road, the DK60 forms an orbital route around the capital. But the DK50/60 is a series of local bypasses, typically with one carriageway in each direction, connecting roads that run through villages. A bit like London's North and South Circulars. There are plans to build a proper orbital motorway around Warsaw, with a minimum of two carriageways in each direction. 

This is the AOW (Autostradowa Obwodnica Warszawy), or A50 (motorway-grade sections)/S50 (expressway-grade sections). 

But which route should this new orbital motorway take? 

Now, between the A2 east-west motorway in Sochaczew and the S7 north-south expressway in Grójec, there are four optional routes marked out by Poland's highways agency, GDDKiA (Generalna Dyrekcja Dróg Krajowych i Autostrad). Three variants have been staked out for a long time now, a fourth has come into play. This fourth option assumes a route that will emerge south-east of Grójec and connect with the existing stretch of DK50 between Grójec and Góra Kalwaria. And that the DK50 will be widened to form a stretch of the A50 between those two towns – with no junction in between for Chynów. So Chynów, Sułkowice, Grobice, and other villages strung out along the DK50 will get all the noise and nuisance that building and operating a motorway will entail with none of the benefits. 

So! "Say No! To Option Four!" is the view of the people of Gmina Chynów. But then "Say No! To Options One, Two and Three" are the view of the people of Gmina Tarczyn, Gmina Mszczonów and Gmina Pniewy. One way or another, the motorway will cut through people's lands and orchards and blight their views and their peace; the only question is which people? Us or them?

The people of Tarczyn (pop. 4,500) are clear on this one: they want the motorway to run through the land of the people of Grójec and Chynów. Options 1, 2 and 3 all run to some extent through Gmina Tarczyn, so clearly its citizens want it shoved off to their south. They are already promoting Option 4 on the social media (below). My disagreement is marked in red.

This evening, there was a public meeting held in the village hall in Chynów (pop. 1,100) to discuss this. The hall was full, with maybe 10% of the village's adults present, there was much interest in the topic, and much concern about the fall in local quality of life for those nearest (within 750m) of the motorway. There will be compensation for those living within that distance; my działka is 1,250m from the DK50.

One way or another, the stretch of A50 linking the A2 in Sochaczew to the S7 in Grójec will not be completed until 2032 at the very earliest, and work on extending the A50 eastwards towards the Vistula will not begin until 2035 at the very earliest. Knowing how slow projects proceed, how many missed deadlines along the way, it's likely that the full ring of the A50 will open around 2037-38 or so. However, the decision as to which of the four options will be chosen has to be taken fairly soon. This will affect land values.

To follow the debate online (in Polish), the best source of information and opinion is Skyscraper City, which has sections on every major infrastructure and construction project in Poland. Click here for the OAW A50/S50 thread (from the beginning, in 2019). Back then, building works were foreseen to start in 2026 with completion by 2029, so it's already slipped a lot.

There are no voices calling for the project to be scrapped, just a heated debate about where the motorway should (or rather should not) run. On the basis of those who protest the loudest are most likely to be listened to, the NIMBY in my suggests that the people of Chynów lock arms with the people of Grójec (pop. 17,000) and jointly Say No! To Option Four (and indeed Four A). Option Four cuts through the top end of Grójec itself, its edge-of-town shopping centre, and many orchards. Option Four A swings round south, bypassing Grójec, but then ensuring that the A50 has no other path to take than along the current DK50.

All of this is going on against the backdrop of a spirited election for wójt (mayor) of Gmina Chynów, following the unexpected death of Tadeusz Zakrzewski. All of the candidates are against Wariant 4 (option 4); the winner may be decided by which candidate demonstrates the most convincing strategy to ward off the prospect of a motorway running through our land.

This time last year:
The pathetic fallacy – are animals sentient?

This time three years ago:
Sunny Sunday meditations

This time nine years ago:
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back

This time 14 years ago:
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time 15 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One

This time 16 years ago:
Łódź Rising