Spring explodes in Jakubowizna

I left for Poznań on Tuesday and returned from Wrocław on Friday; back in Jakubowizna those three days had experienced an explosion of blossom and flowers. 

Below: cherry blossoms (white) before apple (pink); the apple trees are still a week or more from flowering. As they make up the bulk of fruit trees in the area, it means the best is still to come. In the meantime - I just love that feeling of not having to wear a scarf, gloves, woollen hat and parka when going out for a walk. Sunshine on skin is delicious at this time of year (and in autumn too).

Dandelion is particularly spectacular when growing on lawns, like the one bordering the apple orchard (below) - it won't be long before the dandelions go to seed and the yellow flowers turn into white puffballs.

Below: focusing on the silver birch on the forest's edge, commercially grown pines making up its bulk.

Below: where orchard meets forest. Little wind today, the clouds moved slowly.

Below: cherry blossom still unfurling. Fruit in about six weeks' time. 

Below: wood anemones carpet the forest floor...

Below: ...and the small wood near the end of my street

Left: Dandelions in my own garden. With forget-me-nots. Rough wood surface, old enamelled mug found on a walk - full-on cottagecore/ goblincore aesthetic in the sun. Today is Earth Day.

Below: gratuitous shot of my Unikat Road Chief-inspired Drag Star, battery fully charged, and ready to set off for a shake-down cruise round the neighbourhood. The klimat was pure nostalgia; riding slow through Staniszewice, Wincentów, Linin, low-rev V-twin burble, taking in the qualia experiences - quite magical. It's 1951 all over again.

This time six years ago:
Litter makes me bitter
[six years on, the brudasi are as filthy as ever]

This time nine years ago:
Lent's over - now what?

This time ten years ago:
Completely in the dark

This time 11 years ago:
Ruch Palikota - a descent into populism

This time 12 years ago:
I cross two unfinished bridges

This time 13 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'grumpy'?

This time 14 years ago:
Do not take this road!

This time 15 years ago:
Seated peacock, Łazienki Park

This time 16 years ago:
Spirit of place: 1930s Kentucky - or Jeziorki?

Bike ride to the Past

This is what it's all about! A cloudless sky, 31C, no rain predicted all day. Riding a motorbike in these conditions is pure joy. Jacket unzipped to scoop up the cooling air, this is perfect. Time, then, to go out hunting those exomnesial moments of past-life qualia congruence! And indeed, they came thick and fast! Below: round at Deke's place, Galatea, Ohio, 1952. All that's missing is the Schlitz neon.

[Kinda what I''m getting – AI-generated  image to my prompt.]

I have written often about the need to live in comfort (as opposed to luxury) – here's a village just south of Chynów – Wygodne – which literally means 'comfortable'.

Below: the landscape at the crossroads. South for Trzcianka, west for Zbrosza, north for Leżne – and east for Koziegłowy (lit. 'Goatsheads'). Orchards in every direction. 

Below: the reverse shot. Catching the vibe? I've Photoshopped a 1952 presidential election poster to make the scene complete.

I cross the Pilica at Warka, carry on briefly along the rather busy road towards Kozienice. Orchards are fewer south of the river – the Puszcza Kozienicka extends in a broad swathe towards Radom. Below: following the tracks – the Warsaw-Radom line between Grabów nad Pilicą and Strzyżyna. Does this road await asphalt, or will it be left like this to inevitably decay after a few seasons of rain, mud, snow, ice and thaw? 

Below: "It don't matter which way I'm comin' from, it's which way I'm goin' to." A quote from the greatest-ever biker movie, Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless (1982). There's no rush. I rarely exceed 60km/h; I slow down to 30km/h as I ride through villages – not as much for safety, but to give the villagers more time to admire my bike.

Having covered 132km, I burnt four litres of petroleum, turning them into CO₂ and particulates - for which I apologise to the planet.

Below: Back home in Jakubowizna, time for an evening stroll - and on the DK50 in Grobice, just after sunset, I'm still catching the klimat... "C'mon radio relay towers/Won't you lead me to my baby" – Bruce Springsteen, Open All Night.

This time two years ago:
Muscle memory

This time four years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time five years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time seven years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time eight years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time nine years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time ten years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 12 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 13 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

New phone camera vs. Nikon D3500

The downside of travel on a motorbike with a camera is it must either be around your neck, where it can be a nuisance - banging into fuel tank every now and then - or tucked away in the rucksack. My Nikon D3500 is not a heavy camera, but its presence around my neck is not welcome while out riding. My Nikon Coolpix A is smaller and lighter, but it lacks telephoto capability. It's great for landscapes and architecture but little more. So my new Samsung Galaxy S20FE looked like a promising answer - not least because it has three lens built in, wide, ultra-wide and telephoto. On Wednesday, I left the Nikons on the działka and set off for a ride. 

To my huge disappointment, only one photo I took actually registered on the phone's memory! I assumed that, just as on my Huawei P9 Lite, the simple act of touching the white button centrally located on the bottom panel under the image would capture it. The Galaxy S20 vibrates - there's the impression of the image coming into focus - but it turns out that this isn't enough. You need to ensure that the tiny icon to the left of the white button is filled with a thumbnail of the image. Only then do you know you've got your snap. Which means pressing the white button twice after an unlock.

So the following day I went out for another ride, having taken some test photos the previous evening. It's not all that intuitive! This time, I took the Nikon in the rucksack as a back-up.

Below: where the orchards end and the forest begins; my evening walk, Jakubowizna. Still not convinced by the blueness of the blue in this image taken on the Galaxy S20FE, on this walk I left the Nikon at home to test the universal suitability of the smartphone and its camera. Taken with the ultrawide lens, the equivalent of 13.5mm on a 35mm camera. Given that the number of pixels is half of that in the Nikon, and that the sensor is much smaller, it stands to reason that the image won't be nearly as good if blown up to 30" x 20". However, as an image on a blog page - it will do more than adequately.

Now for a shot using the telephoto lens (below). This is the equivalent of 76mm on a 35mm camera, so a very mild telephoto, more of a portrait focal length. There are also digital (rather than optical) zoom possibilities, but because of potential camera shake it makes more sense to crop the image in Photoshop rather than to zoom in digitally. This is the farm track leading up from Grobice towards Adamów Rososki.

 

Let's look then side by side, how the camera and the phone compare. Below: not identical shots, but you get the picture. On the left, the Nikon D3500 with lens set at 27mm (35mm equiv.), with polarising filter. To the right, the Galaxy S20FE image taken with its ultrawide lens (13.5mm in 35mm equiv.), and taken from closer in. The .RAW image was processed in Photoshop Camera Raw, something you can't do when shooting .jpg-only shots on the Galaxy S20FE. Yes, you can use Photoshop - but compared to Camera Raw, Photoshop lacks the fine control when it comes to extracting the most detail from highlight and shadow areas, as well as colour balance and saturation. In the final analysis, the better image is the one that most accurately matches what the photographer saw and felt at the time - the one that better reflects the qualia experience of the moment. In this case, for me, it's the Nikon image, left.

Below: the other great plus for the Nikon is the ability to use filters. The circular polarising filter is an essential part of my photographic style, bringing out a Kodachrome-like crystalline blue from the skies. For me, this is an integral part of my sublime aesthetic.

Opożdżew, Nevada. I do like it when local wags play around with the road signs this way. Incidentally, the shot above was the reverse of this one, the one I stopped for. Also taken on the Nikon.

On the plus side - the Galaxy S20's size and universality mean that if I'm ever forced to leave the camera, for whatever reason, I will be always able to get a reasonable shot for the archives, even though it's not as perfect as my soul would like it. The pictures are qualitatively better than the snaps taken on my old Huawei P9 Lite for one main reason - three integral lenses rather than just the one, even if the process of shooting is more complicated.

This time two years ago:
The second day of my father's last visit to Warsaw

This time three years ago:
Karczunkowska viaduct takes shape

This time four years ago:
My father's return to Warsaw, 2017

This time five years ago:
My father's first visit to Warsaw in 40 years

This time six years ago:
What's worse - unemployment, or a badly-paid job?

This time seven years ago:
A return to Liverpool

This time nine years ago:
Too good to last (anyone remember OLT Express airline?)

This time ten years ago:
Poland's Baltic coast as a holiday destination

This time 12 years ago:
The Warsaw they fought and died for?

This time 14 years ago:
Floods, rainbows and hope

Muscle memory

One of the joys of greeting a new day is a cup of freshly made coffee from my espresso machine. One medium black coffee, then off to work (in the old days of course!). At the station, I'd wonder - did I switch the espresso machine off...? If not, the thing spends all day using electricity heating itself, and if the water level is low... I dread to think. Fortunately, I have long since learned how to avoid this anxiety - by switching it off with the mains switch at the back, rather than with the chromed knob on the front which merely cuts off the flow of coffee into the cup. As the cup nears full, my right hand darts round to the back of the machine and flicks the switch. Muscle memory. It's the only way I ever switch off the machine, and one of several hacks I have instigated to ensure I've not overlooked something.

Another is the gas cooker. When a pan is taken off the stove, the gas is turned off, and then a plate or bowl is placed on the still-hot ring. This has two functions. One is to warm the bowl and keep my food warm for longer - the other is to ensure I don't place a plate or bowl onto a gas flame. This muscle-memory habit ensures I'm never worried about "did I leave the gas on when I left home".

Muscle memory is a wonderful thing. I'm using it now in touch-typing, something I learned on my postgraduate journalism course at the City University in London 40 years ago. 

It is something that I'm developing but have not yet perfected while riding my motorbikes. Each is slightly different, but the principles are the same - namely changing gear and remembering to cancel the indicators! I started to ride motorbikes six years ago, and since then I have limited my riding to warm, sunny days. I also avoid as far as possible riding in or through big cities, and it his here that one acquires the muscle memory needed for motorcycling the fastest. All those stop/starts at traffic lights, all those cars to contend with.

In total, in those six years, I've covered a mere 18,400km on motorbike, slightly more than the average car-driver would do in one year, the vast majority of it on quiet, country roads on sunny days between late-April and mid-October.

Decades' worth of muscle memory on show here.

In the same way that riding a bicycle or driving a car (with manual gears) is about muscle memory, learning to ride a motorbike is moving from the stage of unconscious incompetence (you don't even know what you don't know), to conscious incompetence (you are very much aware of the skills you don't have) to conscious competence (you are doing it right, but having to think about it), to unconscious competence (when you're just doing it automatically, right every time).

I've yet to get to that stage. Many's still the time when I give a friendly left-handed salute to a fellow motorcyclist coming the other way to be greeting by a more frantic hand-waving - which I then realise to have meant that my indicators have been flashing right for the past two kilometres. Or when I look down at my instruments and see that green light blinking, meaning the same thing.

Worse is when I change down gears as I approach a junction, and as I see all's clear, I rev the throttle to zoom into a gap in the traffic - only to discover I'm in neutral. There is no substitute for getting kilometres under the belt, getting good habits ingrained as muscle memory, so after a winter's break from riding, they come back naturally the next spring as unconscious competence.

The hardest part of learning to ride a motorbike - as with driving a manual-gearbox car - is clutch control - feeling the biting point, coordinating right hand (clutch release), right foot (gear selection) and left hand (throttle). There's nothing more embarrassing on a motorbike than letting the clutch lever go too early and jerking forward suddenly (often on rear wheel, though this is impossible on a cruiser). You can also embarrass yourself all too easily at traffic lights by attempting to start in second gear having failed to put it in neutral as you stopped.

One major muscle-memory trick I have acquired from my nine years of cycling in Central London has been the habit of looking into side-roads for traffic. Approaching a junction, my head involuntarily swivels left or right; something that can be a real life-saver.

As one grows older, so forgetfulness can creep up. It is therefore worth working on those mind-hacks that prevent accidents - caused by leaving appliances switched on, and muscle memory can make up for shortcomings in the mind. We are always tiptoeing on the edge of chaos - getting older, one becomes naturally more careful, more risk-averse - but on the other hand, the rim is getting narrower, the precipice steeper.

This time three years ago:
The journey there, and the journey back again

This time four years ago:
Sandomierz - another outstanding Polish town to see

This time six years ago:
Food hygiene and lies as Russian foreign policy tools

This time seven years ago:
Asphalt for ul. Poloneza (to Krasnowolska at least)

This time eight years ago:
A welcome splash of colour to a drab car park 

This time nine years ago:
To Hel and back in 36 hours

This time 11 years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time 12 years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

Getting there

"I've got everything I need," sings the eponymous Urban Spaceman of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's most successful hit single - who then carries on to tell us in the last line - "I don't exist". Ian Dury expands this thought in This is What we Find: "O vanitas vanitatum/Which of us is happy in this life?/Which of us has our desire,/Or having it, is gratified?" 

Well, yesterday's bike ride was a huge philosophical study in fulfillment. This is it! I've found it! Yes, the bike could have a bigger, more powerful engine - but then: 1) there'd be more guilt about pollution, burning irreplaceable fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions; 2) the temptation to ride faster than my mind can focus, and with that - risk and danger; 3) this beauty costs pennies to run and insure.

So - pootling around the backroads of South Mazovia at a steady 60km/h (40mph) on a bike I designed to fulfil my aesthetic longings is ideal. A perfect, cloud-free, rain-free time is needed - in the past I've been chased by thunderstorms and sat out downpours in bus shelters - no fun.

Yesterday was perfect. Being based in Jakubowizna, I no longer have to spend the first half-hour of my ride getting out of the metropolis - it's out of bed and straight onto country roads. Down to Warka, cross the Pilica river, first left onto the DW736 [droga wojewódzka = province road, as opposed to DK = droga krajowa = national road]. This is an interesting road, as it's cut in half by the Vistula (below). One of several DWs that start on one side of the river and end on the other with a significant missing link (bridges that were never built, ferry services that have been curtailed). This means less traffic, because the cars and trucks don't end up going where they were meant to go.

Riding the DW736 from its source (the DW730 just south of the Pilica) to the banks of the Vistula was the purest joy - 19km with barely any traffic around. Through the small town of Magnuszew for a kilometre the DW736 merges with the main DK79 Warsaw-Sandomierz-Kraków road before the left turn for the Vistula. Otherwise - it's just me and the Road. Below: the DW736 between Łatków and Przewóz Tarnowski. Those chromed orbs sparkling, the asphalt, the crystalline sky...

Images like this burn into the retina of the soul and will resurface as 'memory hiccups' for the rest of my days - and beyond. They feel immediately familiar, too, like I've been doing this before - except I haven't (I started motorcycling a mere six years ago).

Below: a few hours of blissful backroad riding later, I hit the village (formerly town) of Jedlińsk. It used to straddle the old DK7 (Warsaw-Radom-Kielce-Kraków) road, but then they built a bypass. The place has become quieter, safer - but much of the business, the passing trade, has died. I felt I was in New Mexico on a sleepy afternoon in 1952.

I passed Bartodzieje to see what was going on by the station there (see yesterday's post) and then headed home to Jakubowizna, aware that the weather would turn and that a storm was brewing. As in previous posts, I'm amazed to see how much new asphalt has been laid on Poland's roads this year. Lovely to ride over. Smooth - not bucking backward and forward over potholes, ruts and cracks.

On the way back, I dropped into the Orlen gas station in Warka to top up the bike and grab a bite and a coffee. The vibe - it's right. Straight out of the opening scenes of The Loveless.

"You don't look like the type to stay in one place for too long..."

"Yeah? I never had the urge."

Back at four, at five the heavens open, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The day had been seized. For such days, one lives.

This time last year:

Best and worst rail journeys in one day

This time two years ago:
What's new around Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Hydrology - droughts, floods and sandbanks

This time seven years ago:
Radom air show - Part 1

This time eight years ago:
Restricting passenger movement and safety

This time nine years ago:
Seasonal fruit - eat it in bulk, while you can!

This time 11 years ago:
Russia-Polish 'unification', 1939-style

Twilight ride

When you find joy, turn it into a replicable experience, burn it into your memory. Getting to the działka in the evening after a week's work, get bike out of garage and do a spin around local roads, at a modest pace, to catch the dusk and its afterglow - bliss. With Nikon Coolpix A slung around my neck, set to full auto, and triggered by a remote-control cable running down the inside of the sleeve of my leather jacket, it's safe. And look at the speedo - 45km/h. "I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. ...Takin' her easy for all us sinners."

Below: between Dobiecin and Rososz. Entering forests yields a wealth of olfactory experience and a sudden faceful of cooler air.

Below: today's photo of bike with water tank in Appleland.

Below: into the setting sun - heading west towards Chynów and the petrol station.

Below: back in Jakubowizna, having another go along the fresh asphalt laid only last week.

Fingers crossed as to the outcome 100 miles east of here, across the border in Belarus!

This time last year:

Are we Bodies or Souls?

This time four years ago year:
Popping out for a drink

This time ten years ago:
In search of happiness

This time 11 years ago:
Mercenaries and missionaries

This time 12 years ago:
Spectacular sunrise, Jeziorki

Ride to Roztocze

A two-day motorbike journey to the Roztocze hills of south-east Poland. The weather was ideal - no rain forecast, hot - but not scorching. Jakubowizna served its purpose; giving me a base outside of Warsaw's exurbs, so I didn't have to negotiate Saturday-morning shoppers in Piaseczno before getting out onto the open road. Total distance there and back: 662km (411 miles).

The route: Jakubowizna - Warka - Głowaczów - Brzóza - Pionki - Sucha - Zwoleń - Chotcza - Boiska - Solec-nad-Wisłą - Kamień - Wandalin - Boby - Urzędów - Kraśnik - Rudnik - Wysokie - Frampol - Biłgoraj. Backroads as far as possible. Main roads are boring. When the engine revs stay the same mile after mile the noise becomes a monotonous drone. But backroads are so much more rewarding. Winding, rising and falling, passing through villages (slow down!) requires a constant change of throttle and frequent gear change. Then you can really savour the exhaust note!

Below: the Road favoured by few. A typical Droga Gminna, no kilometre markers, no verge. But now, new asphalt. And most important - hardly any traffic. Downside of travelling these roads is frequent map-reading stops, but in a way, that too can bring joy. This is the forest west of Kozienice, around Przejazd. Looking at this same stretch on Google Maps Street View (dated 2012), one can see huge progress.

The face of Poland's roads is changing as EU money makes its way down to the smallest local administrative level. New asphalt makes riding old motorbikes more comfortable. Below: "I got a new road, I got it good" - south of Opole Lubelskie. Road awaits markings.

This is not travel for the sake of blasting quickly from A to B. It is to get to one's destination gathering as many qualia - subjective conscious experiences - as possible. Travel should involve taking the bare minimum. No more than a small rucksack. Camera and two lenses, toothbrush and credit card.

Below: I took an road atlas, published around 2010, easier to refer to than Google Maps on a phone (hard to see the screen in harsh sunlight). So much has changed since then. I crossed a new bridge near Solec nad Wisłą, a little south of Chotcza Dolna, where I took this photo (below).

 

I stay the night in Biłgoraj. Devastated by war, there's little of heritage value to see here - but there will be. Below: a nicely done Kresy-shtetl theme park is nearly complete; as well as a restaurant and hotel (opening next month) there are apartments to buy or rent in the same style. The architecture is compelling. This is, after all, the town where Isaac Bashevis Singer spent some of his childhood. I'd have loved to stay the night, but was too early. So I stayed in a motel by a petrol station across town, paying a mere 120 złotys (£25) for the night with a good and massive breakfast.

The next morning, I set off to Zamość, avoiding the main road, taking in the Roztocze National Park along the way and stopping off at Zwierzyniec, a popular tourist spot, to see the old brewery there. 

Built in 1806 for the Zamoyski family, the master brewer who set it up was a Scot, John McDonald. Currently part of the Perła - Browary Lubelskie business, the Zamoyski family is still trying to get the place denationalised. While taking snaps, I could hear native English spoken - and could see a full car park. Tourism is returning (though so, sadly, is the pandemic - second weekly rise in the number of new infections).

I continued through the National Park, taking the scenic route to Zamość, one of Poland's must-see towns. Also built by the Zamoyski family, Zamość is a perfectly conceived Italianate Renaissance town, a precious gem of European culture. I last visited in (again on my motorcycle) in June 2016, to get over the shock of the Brexit referendum result. That visit was longer and more memorable - crystalline blue skies are essential to get the Mediterranean feel of the place. That and the fact Zamość was hosting the Festival of Italian Song during my first visit. This time, the sky was slightly overcast; the sunshine charm wasn't quite there.

I pushed my bike, engine off, of course, across the square to get this shot. As always, it attracts admiring glances. Like Zwierzyniec, the tourists are back; I hope the holiday season Covid blip is just that rather than the start of a second wave... Click here for fuller pictorial coverage of the splendour that is Zamość.

Along the way, I seek, as ever, the Perfect Stretch. Just as surfers pursue the Perfect Wave, I search for the ideal stretch of road. Winding through a forest, rising over views of wheat fields - or just dead straight and flat, under a big sky. The Perfect Stretch depends on lighting - weather, season, time of day. You can find it on the Droga Wojewódzka something-or-other between two small places. Come back again and the magic's no longer there - the sun's at a different angle. But come back yet again, and the magic can be even stronger.

Below: I'll always stop for a plane or train mounted on a plinth. But just look at this one! It's a TS11 Iskra trainer, commemorating the Polish Air Force's technical school (Szkoła Techniczna Wojsk Lotniczych), which was here in Zamość between 1944 and 1995.

Below: a view looking north from the DW837, a beautiful stretch of road starting just north of Zamość and heading north-west; hardly any traffic, rolling scenery to please the eye. Puts me in mind of Eric Ravilious. Frequent stops for landscape photography.

Below: looking west along the DW837. PAFF! Instant past-life anomalous memory flashback xenomnesia event big time! Kentucky!

This stretch of road is also notable for garlic. Every farmhouse has a sign outside saying czosnek. Like the stretch of the DK48 between Klwów and Potworów is famous for its red peppers.

Below: the sleepy town of Urzędów. I drove through on Saturday and thought - a nice enough little place - will have to return. Which I did - on a Sunday. Everything's locked shut with the solitary exception of a Lewiatan grocery shop; tiny, yet crammed with people like a rush-hour tram. Mostly buying ice cream in five-litre tubs. I'd have happily stopped in Urzędów for lunch, but there was nothing. This picturesque small town is developmentally retarded by not having a cafe or restaurant on its otherwise lovely town square. Result - no life, no vibrancy; people scoffing ice cream at home rather than partaking of social life and creating a sense of community. And so I rode on a further 24km to Annopol and had a pizza there in a little restaurant filled with families and young people enjoying their ice cream and cold beers.

Local authorities should do more to encourage entrepreneurs to open what's called 'mała gastronomia' ('small gastronomy') - it does wonders for the economy!

Below: Poland has some great village names! There are three named Babilon - this one's just outside Lipsko, southern Mazovia.

Journey back: Biłgoraj - Zwierzyniec - Zamość - Krzak - Płonka - Wysokie - Dębina - Popkowice - Urzędów - Księżomierz - Annopol - Kamień - (cross Vistula, boring part of trip to get to Lipsko along DW747 then up DK79 to Zwoleń) - Sucha - Pionki - Głowaczów - back onto the DK79 but far nicer, less traffic and lots of forest, plus the allure of dusk), Grabów nad Pilicą - Warka - Jakubowizna.

The level crossing at Chynów, 600m across the tracks from my działka, is still closed as the finishing touches are being added. This necessitates a 12km detour to get home from here, because I can't get across 12m of unfinished crossing! A bigger problem for my neighbour, who drives an ambulance.

For the journey, I used 20.9 litres of irreplaceable fossil fuel, giving me fuel consumption of 3.15 litres/100km (89.5 miles per UK gallon).

I got back to the działka, locked up the bike, and headed for the shower. Shock. I have sunburnt skin between the left cuff of my motorbike jacket and my left glove. When I stretch my arm, it looks like the flag of free Belarus - white fist, red wrist, white forearm!

The most important takeaway are the memories: "For oft when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood/They flash upon that inward eye/Which is the bliss of solitude". The Road shall come back again and again.

I give thanks for the safe journey.

This time last year:
Poznań and Wrocław - two boomtowns

This time seven years ago:
Scaling the highest peak in Wales

This time eight years ago:
Beaches of the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula

This time nine years ago: 
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time ten years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris
[Ten years on - still no imperfections to report whatsoever]

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 13 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever

Homage to Americana

Jakubowizna puts me in mind of the big skies of the Great Plains illuminated by a midsummer sun, snapped on Kodachrome through a polarising filter, the aesthetic of mid-century America. Home to GIs, who grew up in the Depression, then fought in the Pacific or in Europe, and returned to a land of plenty. They grew into maturity in Technicolor to a stereophonic soundtrack in hi-fi.

The land south of Warsaw at this time of year resonates with that feel, especially with a polarising filter on the lens to accentuate the contrast between the blueness of the sky and the whiteness of the clouds.

Below: Scrub land between Chynów station and the orchards of Jakubowizna. Ranks upon ranks of clouds file back all the way north to Warsaw and up towards the Baltic. The days are long, and at long last - warm. Warm enough to ride a motorbike.

Below: although nowhere to be seen on the municipal development map, it looks like a new road is being built parallel to the the tracks. The 'up' line still functions for trains to and from Warsaw, while the 'down' line is nearly ready, with just a short stretch between Chynów and Sułkowice awaiting new rails and final electrification.

Below: on my way to W-wa Jeziorki station, passing along ul. Dawidowska, the blue skies giving more of a Mediterranean air to the place. The road has been widened slightly as work on new sewage pipe running the length of this stretch has just been completed.

Left: my brother Marek referred me to the black & white American Road photography of Robert Adams, so here's a Robert Adams-inspired snap of my motorbike outside the J&B snack-bar in Chynów. I had my first hamburger since the start of Lent on 26 February.

Today was also my first proper motorbike ride since last October; not a particularly long one, but enough to instil confidence in both my skills - my seventh season - and my machine. Note: the level crossing between Chynów and Jakubowizna is closed for the new track laying; the detour around Grobice via a string of villages is long and convoluted, and requires riding along the DK50 (Warsaw's de facto southern bypass, below).

Below: the działka's looking good. The geodeta (legal or sworn land surveyor) is booked for next week; he will formally demarcate the eastern edge of my land so I can fence off the entire plot (see the post from this time last year, below, for details). My father's passing, winter and Covid-19 have put back formalities somewhat.

Below: just down the road a piece from my działka, walking through a charming wood.

This time last year:
This land is my land

This time five years ago:
The day, seized.

This time eight years ago:
Classic British cars for British week

This time nine years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time ten years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 11 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 12 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs