Powiśle on a cold, clear autumn morning

My favourite bridge in Warsaw, Most Poniatowskiego. (See also night-time photo here). I arrive at W-wa Powiśle a few minutes early to discover that the Koleje Mazowieckie train I'd boarded was not the 9:07 from Jeziorki, but a far earlier one that finally arrived in town a whole 60 minutes late!

Still, it gives me an extra ten minutes to snap some snaps. The bridge looks good through the trees, too. Although November (listopad/'the leaf-fall month') has just begun, the process of deciduous trees shedding their leaves seems nearly complete.

Strong, low sunlight creates the ideal conditions for dramatic photography that captures spirit of place and the sublime aesthetic.

Right: block of flats on Powiśle, just off ul. Leona Kruczkowskiego. I note they've been repainted since the current photo on Google Earth was taken - they were all white back in March 2007! Below: flats along ul. Czerniakowska.

Where's the afternoon gone?

It's a week after the clocks have gone back. Sunset in Warsaw today is 16:09 - just 48 minutes later than the year's earliest sunset (15:21 between 9 and 17 December). The day is ending real early nowadays. Above: The sun sinks below the cloud line, ul. Karnawał. This is where Węzeł Lotnisko will soon appear - the junction between the S2, S79 and eventually S7. Today - rural tranquility itself.

I was witnessing a contest between the wind blowing the clouds westward and the sinking sun. All the while, I thought the sun would be overtaken and the afternoon would become dull and overcast, yet the sun to the end was outpacing the clouds. Right: the railway lines near the ul. Karnawał level crossing. It's just possible to cycle along the side of the tracks from Karnawał to ul. Hołubcowa, although it's very much a technical trail.

Left: The sky full of wires; overhead lines for the railway, electricity and telephone lines running along ul. Baletowa. For a moment, a merging with the sense of the infinite.

Below: sun disappearing through the trees, ul. Kórnicka. In the foreground, tansies (wrotycz), common on Jeziorki's fallow scrublands.

We decided not to visit cemeteries today; traffic jams and accidents, crowds and cold.

S2/POW work hinders local traffic

Driving to Platan Park on Friday, I observed that ul. Poloneza was closed. That's it - this road will be out of action (so I read on SkycraperCity's excellent Polish road infrastructure section) until December 2010. By then, a bridge should have been built over the railway line. Below: Roadsigns at the level crossing. The authorised diversion is via ul. Gawoty - useless for me, as it does not cross the tracks, which is where I need to go. Heading east is a three-wagon ballast train heading for the Warsaw Metro.

Below: Poloneza is closed from the north too. No crossing for pedestrians (which suggests that this stretch will soon become a building site with intensive work going on).

Further west, ul. Hołubcowa was meant to have been closed last week, but today there's no sign of road closure. It is inevitable that it will be closed sometime soon. This will leave just one level crossing between Jeziorki and Grabów; this is located on ul. Oberki, just visible to the right of the photo below. Here we see where the S2 will run. Amid the impassable mud are neat stacks of asbestos roofing, removed from the farmhouses that stood here until very recently. They are on pallets ready to be taken away.

A propos of local traffic, while I was in the UK, the roadworks on ul. Karczunkowska were completed. Karczunkowska was restored to two-way traffic, the buses came off their diversions, ul. Jeziorki was also restored to two-way traffic, speed humps returned there. Traffic lights at the junction between ul. Ludwinowska and ul. Puławska returned to their normal timings, causing traffic to flow more freely along Puławska. The rat-runners have returned to Trombity. But - a bonus. Though the Z-9 temporary bus route has disappeared, it has been replaced by a new hourly service, the 209, linking W-wa Jeziorki station with Ursynów Płn.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2011: Running nearly a year behind schedule. The bridge was partially completed in summer 2011, yet there's no asphalt, the road's not complete, traffic is diverted via Hołubcowa. Dreadful.

A touch of frost in the garden

Ah! What a beautiful start to the day. The temperature dipped below zero in the early hours, enough to cover the lawn and shrubberies with a light ground frost (szron as opposed to szadź, the latter being fog freezing onto trees.)

Bad bad news too. Number one - I opened my curtains to see a molehill on the lawn - the first since last winter. I have a patented method now for dealing with the critters - send an e-mail to me for more details! Number two - light though the frost was, it burst a pipe (or rather a joint between pipe and tap) in the outdoor watering system. Someone had forgotten to turn off the water going into the garden.

Above: the silver birches at the end of the garden this the morning, looking resplendent with their gold leaves against a clear blue sky (enhanced by polarising filter).

Małopolska, from the train

The train makes its way from Kraków back to Warsaw. Late afternoon, 16:00 departure. As the sun declines in the west, it casts a delicate light on the autumnal colours of northern Małopolska.

Above: The town of SŁOMNIKI, the twin spires of the Church of Divine Mercy on the background as autumnal russets flash past, mists rising from the low-lying fields mix with smoke from the home fires.

The tracks between Kraków and Tunel are forever being upgraded. The journey from Warsaw to Kraków this morning was 40 minutes late, still what's new. North of Słomniki and the train pulls up once more at a red light, and waits, while in the wagon socjalny standing on the other track, railway workers dry their socks and watch TV. Below: Panorama of Małopolska from the train window.

Just like the old days

Here and there in Poland you can still find scenes redolent of the old days of communism. Above: The grain stores in Kraków, on ul. Mogilska. These drab brick warehouses put me in mind of childhood trips into Poland via Czechoslovakia. Nothing here has changed since the 1960s.

Autumn gold, Powiśle, Łazienki

The day began with blue skies and strong sunlight, ideal conditions for catching autumn at its finest. Top: Łazienki Park, near the Bagatela entrance. Sun streaming through the leaves, much greenery still in evidence. Below: As I hopped off the bus at Rozbrat, this wonderful riot of colour caught my eye.

The Śmigły-Rydz park (below) a mixture of trees in different stages of shedding their leaves. The one in the foreground is quite golden - but look how many leaves are already on the ground beneath it.

Below: The cycle path crossing Śmigły-Rydz park winding past red bushes, trees of yellow, amber and green, and neo-classical architecture. Above this scene, the skarpa - the Vistula escarpment, leading up to the Sejm (Polish parliament).


Returning via the Łazienki park, the sun had gone in, so a bit of fill-in flash was required for portraits of the park's most famous fauna - the peacock and the red squirrel (left). The squirrels are getting quite aggressive - one darted up to me then climbed up my trouser leg, before jumping off, clearly annoyed that I had no food for it.

Imagine being just eight inches tall and getting into a fight with the fellow. Look at those powerful forepaws that can dig a trench in seconds. Those powerful shoulders and strong hind legs, that steely determination in those eyes. You wouldn't stand a chance. As an eight-inch human.

The peacocks can get quite stroppy too - crossing the park one morning last summer I had my way barred by a gaggle of five or more large males, tail feathers extended and sounding aggressive. But this guy (right) was more interesting in posing for the photographers (everyone in the park today seemed to be wielding a camera!) I managed to get eight shots at different exposures and flash settings before a child running past caused the peacock to move. As you will have noticed, the peacock has moulted; no goregous tail feathers to display. Behind the peacock, the Palace on the Water.

Clocks go back - but when to set them forward?

At 03:00 this morning the clocks went back for winter. An end to Daylight Saving Time. For the next five months.

We revert to winter time (CET in Poland, GMT in the UK) just two months (more or less) before winter solstice. Summer time (CEST in Poland, BST in the UK) returns three months after winter solstice (late March). Why the assymmetry?

So I say - let's set the clocks forward for summertime not at the end of March, but at the end of February. Let's have winter time for four months of the year, not five.

There are three very good reasons.

One is energy saving. The extra hour of daylight represents a huge saving when the entire northern hemisphere is taken into account. A 2007 study estimated that winter daylight saving would prevent a 2% increase in average daily electricity consumption in Great Britain, which is at similar latitudes to Poland. Now that's for five months - I'm talking here about one month as there are advantages in waking up later in mid-winter. So if five months would be a 2% saving, one month would be a 0.4% saving - 240,000 tonnes of CO2 just for the UK alone.

Two is road safety. By late February, the sun rises early enough for children to go to school in daylight even with the clocks set forward an hour. But the extra hour of daylight in the evening ensures that the evening rush hour takes place before the onset of darkness. This would save lives.

Three - perhaps most important - is psychological. By late February, the body is yearning for the longer day and for spring. The sun rises at around half past six in the morning and sets just after five in Warsaw. I'm sure we could live with a sudden jump to a half past seven sunrise to balance out a six pm sunset. This would lift the moods of millions in the northern hemisphere, not just those suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. This affects some 8%-9% of populations living in our latitudes.

By late February, the day is three hours longer in Warsaw than it is on 22 December (winter solstice), but it's still a hour and half shorter than at vernal equinox (22 March).

This academic group wants GMT+1 imposed in the UK (ie the same time as Central Europe has in winter and the UK has in the summer) all the year round. This has the drawback that the UK will be out of step with Continental Europe for seven months of the year.

I'm offering a sensible compromise - all of Europe still changes clocks on the same day, but let's move that day one month forward - to the last Sunday of February - across the whole of the EU.

What'd you say?