The beauty of Portmeirion

Portmeirion in North Wales is one of those places that you simply must visit in your life. Testament to one man's dream - this is an architectural folly, an Italianate village built over a period of 50 years by architect Sir Clough Williams Ellis. He bought the land in the 1920s, and over the next five decades, he turned his fantastic vision into reality. Below: a general view of Portmeirion from the gazebo overlooking the village.

Below: let's zoom in to take a closer view. Remember - we are in North Wales (Cymru Gogledd) - a rugged land of volcanoes and chapels, and these domes and spires of Italianate architecture are somewhat unusual here.

Below: the Welsh estuarine setting, looking out over the river Dwyryd. Portmeirion served as the location of 1960s cult TV show The Prisoner - a series which has not lost its resonance to this day. Both Eddie and his cousin Hoavis are Prisoner fans, so our trip here today was preceded and followed by viewings of episodes of the TV show.

Below: the first views of the village are breathtaking. Be sure to come here on a sunny day to catch that Mediterranean climate.

Below: Eddie, wearing his grandfather's 1960s shades, overlooking one of Portmeirion's piazzas. Eddie was stricken by the place - an inspiration; something to draw, to emulate, to dream about. Portmeirion is such a success, culturally, historically, economically - one wonders why there aren't dozens of places like this all over the UK. Indeed, why isn't there such a place in Poland. Or why there aren't such places in Germany, the USA, Australia - the idea is so brilliant, it should be replicated world-wide.

Below: the stone boat, a famous feature of the Village. It's called Amis Reunis - reunited friends. It features in the Prisoner episodes. It is indeed symbolic. What is true - and what is false. A boat that looks the part - but can never set sail.

Below: the domed building, which in the Prisoner serves as the house of Number 2.  "I am not a number - I am a free man" - the central message of the series continues to inspire people watching it for the first time. A message as important to Britain today, where citizens are invigilated by the State's CCTV cameras, as it is to Poland, where every citizen is reduced to a series of numbers.

This time last year:
On motivation - what makes you... go?

Mediterranean climes in North Wales

Portmeirion is the kind of place that deserves to be visited again and again. Never mind its starring role in Patrick McGoohan's cult TV series The Prisoner - this amazing creation is a marvel, testament to the vision and tenacity of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis. The architect worked for over half a century to build an Italianate village on the North Wales coast.

Today, we can see Chinese copies of Venice, London and other European capitals - but what makes Portmeirion unique is that it was conceived soon after the First World War. I've visited the village eight or nine times, each visit is a great experience, each one offers new glimpses and vistas.

Like last year, I was here with Eddie and Cousin Hoavis; we spent a long day at Portmeirion. Below: Eddie strides towards the Council Building.

Below: the post Portmeirion Hotel, which consists of the buildings in this picture, as well as many dotted around the village itself.

Below: yet another folly - non-functioning lighthouse overlooking the estuary

Below: the smaller of two fountains that grace the village. Note the light-blue on white colour scheme.

Below: a cannon guards the approaches from the sea.

Below: general view of Portmeirion from the Gazebo feature up on an opposite hillside

This time last year:
Beach day, Llyn Peninsula

This time two years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time three years ago:
8am and 26C already

"Where am I?" "In the village"

Am I in Italy? This is Portmeirion, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate folly near Porthmadog. It was here that cult 1960s TV series 'The Prisoner' was shot. We were lucky to visit on a blue-sky day when the strong sunlight creates a truly Mediterranean feel to the place. Click here for link to video directed by Nick Morris for pop group The Times, shot at Portmeirion.

The day was sufficiently beautiful for me to take hundreds of photographs that do justice to this splendid folly. Below: View of the village from the estuary of the River Dwyryd. In the lower centre of the picture is the Stone Boat, a famous Portmeirion landmark.

Quarter of a century in Poland

Life catches up on you... it feels like yesterday that I arrived in Pyry, to a rented house on ulica Gajdy, our home for our first four-and-half years in Poland before moving into our own brand-new house in Jeziorki. I was a couple of months short of my 40th birthday, and after 16 years with one employer, nine years in one job, the chance to move to Poland was too good to turn down.

I arrived on 22 July (the rest of the family arrived a month later), and moved into to a redecorated but unfurnished house which I shared with a thousand blood-sucking Culex pipiens (Polish - komar, English - mosquito? gnat? midge?). My bedroom (I slept on a mattress) walls and ceiling were splattered with hundreds (no exaggeration) dead C. pipiens, each squashed onto a blot of my blood. That summer, 1997, saw record rainfall, the flooding of Wrocław, and the area around Jeziorki/Pyry had several streets under water. From memory, ulica Baletowa and ul. Farbiarska were both impassable.

Arriving with little more than my laptop and trusty Brompton fold-up bike, the first few weeks were unreal - working each day from my new office near Hala Banacha, cycling each way - the weather hot and humid, frequent thunderstorms, and the abiding memory of the smell of ripe mirabelle plums from the suburban trees that had fallen onto the pavement to ferment in the heat. With fruit too small to harvest commercially, mirabelle plum trees have since then largely disappeared from the streets. The other smell that lingers in my memory, that I can easily conjure up, is that of floor polish. The house (new-ish, built at the time of Poland's economic and political transformation, so no more than eight years earlier) was comfortable though with exceptions - the bath was about one metre long because there was no choice in the builders' merchants, the tiles were, shall we say, unfortunate in colour for the same reason. 

That first month, on my own, was strange - a feeling of being on holiday, an entirely different atmosphere to London, yet busy in my new job, working long hours, getting to meet new people, brushing up my (very) rusty Polish, and spending weekends out of town with my bike, which I could take with me by train.  As I wrote in the posts from three years ago and five years ago (see below), by 1997, Poland was no longer a 'hardship posting'. The denominisation of the currency occurred on 1 January 1995, reducing sticker-prices by four orders of magnitude (a set of kitchen chairs no longer cost four million złotys). And there were cash machines! And mobile telephony! Foreign supermarkets were opening all over Warsaw - Pyry was within easy reach of the Auchan and Géant stores, with Rema 1000 and Billa shops elsewhere. Poland was on its way to NATO and EU membership, so the future was less uncertain than it was six years earlier, when there were still Soviet troops stationed in the country.

Twenty five years, of which more than 15 has been blogged here; more than 15 years with a digital camera (I have nine-and-half years'-worth of colour prints in the attic but can't be bothered with the fuss of getting them out and archiving/digitising them all). The digital revolution has also changed my life massively.

Looking back - WHOOOOOOSH - hasn't that time has rocketed past. In hindsight, it was an excellent decision to move out of the UK and to settle in my fatherland, and watch it grow and mature. If there was one thing that unsettles me about Poland - it's Kaczyński. And of course Putin, but that's not one for the Polish voter. Brexit has shown what happens when a politician takes a gamble and dark forces bend the arc of future development in the direction of ideological obscurantism. 

This time three years ago:
22 years on the 22nd

This time three year:
A tale of two orchards

This time five years ago:
My 20 years in Poland

This time six years ago:
PiS, Brexit, Trump and cognitive bias

This time nine years ago:
Portmeirion, revisited, again
[My last summer holiday - not had one since!]

This time ten years ago:
Beach day, Llyn Peninsula

This time 11 years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time 12 years ago:
8am and 26C already

Times pass, things go, things remain

At the western end of ul. Świętokrzyska, the block of flats is being torn down to be replaced by the 155m-tall PHN/City Tower. Construction begins next year. Communist-era flats are coming down across Warsaw; their presence in the centre of the capital are de facto social housing, a reason why so many elderly people live right in the middle of town (something unthinkable in, say, London). While social diversity may be judged a good thing, these buildings are rigid with asbestos. This particular block was built in the mid-1960s for foreigners, and was home for many Western firms that set up offices in Warsaw in the early 1990s. This view, with the top of Spektrum tower (formerly TPSA Tower) reminds of Marineville from the 1960s children's TV series, Stingray. Photo taken from the bus stop outside Costa Coffee, Rondo 1 on 4 October. All pictures in this post: Nikon CoolPix A.

Below: update, photo taken two weeks later on 18 October. Here's the progress in the demolition for you...

An InterCity locomotive with interesting heritage. This is a retro-liveried EP07 at Warsaw Central station. Most InterCity EP07 locos are painted blue and grey like the carriages, but this one's paint scheme harks back to the 1980s. Back in 1962, Poland bought 20 electric locomotives from English Electric, serving PKP as EU06 (Elektryczna Uniwersalna 6), along with a licence to build more locally. These were the  EU07 series, built from 1963 on. Many were converted to EP07s (Elektryczna Pasażerska 7), with more powerful motors and different gearing appropriate to stop-start passenger work. Originally built in 1987 as EU07-442. it was converted to EP07-442 in 2003.

Rarely does one see a mode of transport that's nearly 140 years old - but here in Warsaw I chanced upon a penny-farthing based on original parts from a 1878 German bicycle.. I stopped and had a chat with the friendly owner, who told me that the Polish for penny-farthing is bicykl, while the Polish for bicycle is rower, from Rover, the British brand that had two wheels of equal size, the rear one chain-driven by pedals. Before Rover became such a language-changing hit in Poland, the word welocyped meant any human-powered two-wheeler without chain drive. So a bicykl is a welocyped, but a rower isn't!

Which reminds me that last week saw the 50th anniversary of the first airing of British TV of the cult series, The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGooghan. Shot in Portmeirion, the fictitious village featured in the series had as its logo a penny-farthing.

Left: Finally, the passing of time does not bypass me. On my way south to do some real-estate scouting - I'm looking for a działka to buy. Today, for the first time ever, I got a old folk's discount on train travel. All 35% of it. So instead of paying nearly 14zł for the return ticket from W-wa Jeziorki to Ustanówek, I paid 8.80zł. Neither did the conductor on the way out nor the ticket inspector on the way back want to check my ID to ensure that I wasn't lying about my age. Haven't done that since I was 17!

This time last year:
Feels like the U.S.A. again

This time four years ago:
Warsaw's craft ale revolution kicks off

This time six years ago:
Poland's president inaugurates Moni's academic year 

This time eight years ago:
Autumn evening, central Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Short-term future of suburban development

This time ten years ago:
"You'll look funny when you're fifty"

More about Walking and Health

An interesting piece appeared in the BBC's newsfeed yesterday, headlined "Fewer than 5,000 steps a day enough to boost health - study". 

So - should I trim my long walks down to 5k a day? 

I read the intro: "It has long been touted that 10,000 steps a day is the magic number you need to stay fit and healthy - but a new study shows fewer than 5,000 may be enough to see a benefit."

For the physically lazy - this sounds like good news. And the intellectually lazy will probably not go on beyond the intro. 

But read on: "The more you do, the more health benefits are seen, researchers said. Every extra 1,000 steps beyond the 4,000 reduced the risk of dying early by 15% up to 20,000 steps." This is great news! Referring to my fitness spreadsheet, I see that since 1 January 2014, I have on average walked 11,400 paces a day, every day. For over nine and half years. And I'm on target for 12,000 paces this year.

But I wanted more information on this research. Turns out it's a meta-analysis of 17 studies with a total of almost 227,000 participants, making it the largest such study ever conducted. It was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. And the lead researcher was Maciej Banach from the Medical University of Łódź. [Link to paper here.]

Below: graphical abstract from the paper (CV = cardiovascular).

The walker's age is important - the sooner you get into daily walking, the better it is for your long-term health. That 15% decrease in risk of premature death falls to 7% among the over 65s. Presumably because they have already avoided early death.

The paper's conclusion is straightforward: "our analysis demonstrates that ‘more is better’ with respect to step counts in both sexes - irrespective of age and the location where walking takes place. In addition, the results indicate that as little as 4,000 steps/day are needed to significantly reduce all-cause mortality, and even fewer steps are required for a significant reduction in cardiovascular death."

It was interesting reading the comments below the BBC's reporting of the story; there's still a hardcore of idle folk who cannot be persuaded to stop driving short distances - despite the overwhelming evidence that walking benefits health outcomes. Out sedentary lifestyles need the physical punctuation of long strolls. Evolutionarily, Homo sapiens has spent 90% of its time as a separate species in hunter-gatherer mode. Sitting for hours at a time is not something we are designed for. 

It was also interesting to see that "This research received no external funding." Well, of course not. The pharmaceutical industry has no incentive whatsoever to promote walking, sleep or healthy eating.

My walk today (13,508 steps), through the woods around Jakubowizna, Machcin II, Dąbrowa Duża and Gaj Żelechowski, returning through Widok and Chynów in perfect summer weather, was boosted by fresh air, hardly any traffic, and a friendly chat with an old guy along the way.

This time last year:
Older, wiser - more credulous?

This time two years ago:
Powerless in Jakubowizna

This time three years ago:
Kilometres of new asphalt for Gmina Chynów 

This time three years ago:
One man went to mow
[out with the scythe on the działka]

This time six years ago:
My father's penknife and airport security

This time nine years ago:
Post-holiday detox diet starts today

This time ten years ago:
Cycle ride up and down the S2 and S79 before they open

This time 11 years ago:
Kraków and back in a day by train 
[The new timetable of 2 September 2023 will see journey times between Warsaw and Kraków cut further - to a mere 2 hours and 10 minutes!]

This time 12 years ago:
Fountains by the New Town

This time 13 years ago:
Old-School Saska Kępa

This time 14 years ago:
The land, the light

This time 15 years ago:
Rainbow over Jeziorki

This time 16 years ago:
Previously in Portmeirion

Train travel - Kraks and back in a (full) day

Some reflections about yesterday's train journey. Friday was long; my TLK train to Kraków which would get me there in suitable time for breakfast left W-wa Centralna at 5:05, before the first Metro train of the day could get me there, yet long after the last suitable night bus had passed Jeziorki. Indeed as it did so (at 3:20) I was just waking up. The Metro Park+Rides don't open until 4:30 (too late), so I drove to Stokłosy, parked on the street near to the Metro station and caught the N37 night bus that came punctually at 4:16, depositing me (and a surprisingly large number of other passengers) at Dw. Centralny 20 minutes later.

The long ticket queue moved quickly; I was on Platform 4 with seven minutes to spare. At five am there are plenty of passengers at the station, but nothing's open, so no chance of a newspaper or snack. I brought my own sandwiches (wholegrain bread and smoked tuna steak) and a couple of mouthfuls of red wine in a small plastic bottle - to help me sleep soundly all the way down to Kraks. (Coffee at this time would have had disastrous repercussions - keeping me awake on the journey, but rendering me sleepy by the afternoon.)

Now - a word about TLK vs. InterCity. My second-class ticket for the 5:05 from W-wa Centralna to Kraków Główny on TLK cost 61 złotys. The train was clean, it arrived five minutes early, there were six seats to the compartment, with electrical socket by each seat. On the way home, my second-class ticket for the 18:51 from Kraków Główny to W-wa Centralna on InterCity cost 119.50 złotys. Nearly double the price for the same journey. On InterCity, seating was bus-style (two rows of two seats with a central aisle), there were no electrical sockets and the toilet wasn't working. I cannot understand PKP's price/quality proposition, other than the departure time - filling the seats on trains running at ungodly hours by selling the tickets cheap.

Another train operator linking the two cities by rail is Interregio (IR). Price for Warsaw-Kraks is 49 PLN; unlike TLK and IC, you cannot reserve seats on IR trains. They are often overcrowded; a downside of travelling on an IR service is that you may have to stand all the way. IR trains also tend to get routed the slow way (Kraks to Warsaw via Kielce and Radom) and use local-service rolling stock, fine for commuting but hell to be stuck in for six hours.

At Kraków Główny (view of the main building above), the station announcer who does the English version is not (as is the case in Warsaw) a native speaker. Pociąg osobowy is translated as 'passenger train' (presumably because samochód osobowy is 'passenger car'). It is not. Pociąg osobowy is 'local train' or 'slow train' - what distinguishes it from express trains is that it stops at all stations, not that it carries passengers.

The InterCity train to Warsaw is hauled by a EP09 loco painted in England livery for the Euro 2012 championships (below).

On the way home, the first hour or so of the journey was blessed with beautiful evening light. Here are some photos of Małopolska landscapes, shot from the train, between Kraków and the town called Tunel.





This time last year:
Fountains by the New Town

This time two years ago:
Old-School Saska Kępa

This time three years ago:
The land, the light

This time four years ago:
Rainbow over Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Previously in Portmeirion

Wes Anderson's Asteroid City

A film I just had to see: about  flying saucers; set in mid-1950s America, and Wes Anderson's visually stunning aesthetic - so close to my own tastes. My experience of Asteroid City was very similar to that of watching Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel - a delightful confection, very funny - but ultimately, it could have been deeper in meaning. The Coen brothers would have done a better job. 

Nevertheless, I found myself thoroughly entertained, laughing out loud many times (good that the cinema was nearly empty). I loved the comic touches, the homages to the era, the cultural references and the  overall klimat. And a soundtrack that contains Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Slim Whitman and other C&W acts from the early- and mid-1950s. And that train at the beginning...

The UFO conspiracy/cover-up theme is right on time - just as whistleblowers are about to be grilled by the House Oversight Committee in real life, the presidentially imposed quarantine on the Asteroid City mirrors the paranoia around the subject. The Military-Industrial Complex, supported by private  foundations, run the show. Who will own the intellectual property of alien-derived tech - free enterprise or the government?

I have a habit of watching a film's credits to the end; there were are large number of Spanish surnames involved in making the set and props (such as the railway - see below) - I naturally assumed that the film was shot in Mexico - but no - it was shot in Spain in a specially made set near the town of Chinchón, some 30 miles south-east of Madrid.

This is, I feel, a film made by a savant about savants for savants - quotable quotes aplenty, details to spot and laugh at (vending machines that served Martini cocktails and sold title deeds to tiny parcels of arid desert land), obsessively symmetrical shots. A sure-fire cult film that will be loved for many years to come by a small die-hard group of devotees, able to single out arcane references to this or that (alien symbols or cattle-ranch brands?). And indifference from the mainstream.

Below: example. Augie Steenbeck*, war photographer, in Asteroid City with his son, nicknamed 'Brainiac'. Note the camera. A Müller-Schmid Swiss Mountain Camera. Well, no. It's a prewar German Contax III or its postwar Soviet copy, the Kiev 4A. My guess is it's the latter, Contax cameras were used by American war photographers, Kievs weren't, so Wes Anderson had the front plate mocked up. Nice touch.

If you enjoy Wes Anderson's movies, you'll know what to expect; it's certainly one I'd want to see again. And then dive into a subReddit (r/AsteroidCity) with hundreds of nerds seeking Significance. You'll find more in The Big Lebowski or A Serious Man. Don't let that put you off - Asteroid City is still a highly likeable movie.

And if you like trains, have a look at this... (and then scroll down this post from 2017.)

* Steenbeck - manufacturer of flatbed film editing machines, used to edit 16 mm and 35 mm optical sound and magnetic sound film.

This time last year: 
Quarter of a century in Poland

This time four years ago:
22 years on the 22nd

This time four year:
A tale of two orchards

This time six years ago:
My 20 years in Poland

This time seven years ago:
PiS, Brexit, Trump and cognitive bias

This time ten years ago:
Portmeirion, revisited, again
[My last summer holiday - not had one since!]

This time 11 years ago:
Beach day, Llyn Peninsula

This time 12 years ago:
Down with cars in city centres!

This time 13 years ago:
8am and 26C already

Zamość the Magnificent

Day three of the road trip brings in Zamość; I've been here before a few times, it's a fantastic place to visit. (An introduction to it here.)

Stunningly beautiful, unique in Poland in its scale and splendour, Zamość was designed as the ideal Renaissance city. Ain't it beautiful? Just as Edinburgh or Prague are best visited on gloomy days in late November or early February's perpetual dusk with street lights reflecting off the wet cobblestones, so Zamość, Sandomierz and Portmeirion should be visited on cloudless blue-sky days that suggest the Mediterranean. Below: the town hall dominates the northern side of the market square.

Below: the square of the Great Market (Rynek wielki), around which Zamość was planned in 1580, is flanked by merchants' houses with colonnaded arcades. 

Beauty overload. Down every side street a new vista.

A walk through the historic centre of Zamość is so rewarding. Italy has been brought north by Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, commissioned by Jan Zamoyski to design a Renaissance 'ideal city', the only one in Central Europe.

Below: classical perfection, proportioned with the humanist ideals of the Renaissance in mind. The Great Market is popularly said to be exactly 100m by 100m although the metre was not being defined for another two hundred years as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris. And yet a quick check with the 'measure distance' tool on Google Maps shows that it's pretty damned close!

Below: not just streets, but courtyards and communal gardens set back from the thoroughfares. Pop through this arch, and enter a more private space.

Below: over three hundred years before Ebenezer Howard came up with the concept of the garden city, Zamość was providing its citizens with a quality of life that Victorian Britons would have envied.

Church architecture fits in perfectly. The Baroque Franciscan church dates back to the late 17th century.

Whilst I have bewailed the overtouristed nature of destinations such as Prague, Kraków, Sandomierz and Kazimierz Dolny, Zamość as yet has to fall victim to its own attractiveness. The holiday season is in full swing, yet the crowds are not here. There are plenty of places to sit down and eat, and the side streets are not choked with throngs of gormless folk grazing on ice cream and fizzy drinks.

It's quiet and peaceful, and I love it. The optimal tourist/attraction ratio.

As night falls, the sky remains immaculate, the town remains peace with itself. 

A beautiful town that has maintained its soul. The atmosphere takes on a dreamlike quality, real and surreal in equal measure, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting.

Morning calls for another circuit of the old town; an exploration of the fortifications which ring Zamość from the south and east.

Below: Zamość skyline from the top of the defensive wall.

The Franciscan church, this time from the back, this time in the morning.

Another visit is in order; but the weather must be like this to get the vibe right.

This time last year:
Assessing the passage of time while asleep

This time two years ago:
Summertime dreamland

This time four years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time seven years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time eight years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 14 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 15 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 16 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 17 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Post-holiday detox diet starts today

After nearly two weeks in the UK in which Eddie and I massively over-indulged in salt snacks (Doritos, Skips, Walkers Salt'n'Vinegar Crisps*, Monster Munch, Space Raiders, Frazzles, Scampi Fries, Hoola-Hoops, Knick-knacks etc) it is time to start eating sensibly again. My body - newly accustomed to sodium diacetate, tartrazine, sodium caseinate, maltodextrin, benzaldehyde, and other choice chemicals found in British salt snacks - needs shock therapy, followed by a swift return to a healthy Polish diet.

So - for the next two weeks, it will be nothing else other than fruit and vegetables and fish - as much as I want, but nothing else. No dairy, no wheat-based products. No confectionary, no potato-based cuisine, no rice. And no alcohol, while I'm at it. Day One was today, plenty of salad, raw carrot, guacamole (thanks Marta), Polish apples (#jedzjabłka !), tuna, mackerel, a peach, a banana, two nectarines, beans. One coffee in the morning followed by fruit tea, unsweetened fruit juice, and unflavoured, unsweetened soya milk - the nearest thing to drinking liquid cardboard. A short, sharp diet half-way between Lent and the next Lent.

It will be interesting to see whether cutting out dairy and wheat has the same magic effect on me that other middle-aged people are reporting - such as various minor ailments cured, higher energy levels and better all-round samopoczucie.

The concept is to dramatically reduce the number of food groups being eaten, see the difference, then one-by-one bring back the proscribed foods into the diet to see which ones negatively affect well-being. Day Four is apparently the hardest, but as a seasoned veteran of 24 Lents, it should be a doddle.

Back also to doing sit-ups, after a three-month laziness break. Today a mere 33 in one go, one-third of the old bare minimum number. As Eddie says of sit-ups: "I don't mind the 'sit' part, it's the 'up' I object to."

*Britain's semi-detached stance on Europe has its roots in the fact that you can't buy salt and vinegar flavour crisps on the Continent, and you can't buy paprika flavour crisps in Britain.

This time last year:
Cycle ride up and down the S2 and S79 before they open

This time two years ago:
Kraks and back in a day by train

This time three years ago:
Fountains by the New Town

This time four years ago:
Old-School Saska Kępa

This time five years ago:
The land, the light

This time six years ago:
Rainbow over Jeziorki

This time seven years ago:
Previously in Portmeirion

Zamość - beautiful must-visit town of Poland's east

Time to de-stress, get away from the trauma of last week and seek solace in the beauty of Poland.

I've long promised myself a return visit to Zamość, which I passed through 11 years ago on business, though the visit had to coincide with a period of Mediterranean weather.

For those of you who've not been, Zamość is a UNESCO world heritage site. This is what UNESCO says about the town: "Zamość is a unique example of a Renaissance town in Central Europe, consistently designed and built in accordance with the Italian theories of the 'ideal town', on the basis of a plan which was the result of perfect cooperation between the open-minded founder, Jan Zamoyski, and the outstanding architect, Bernardo Morando. Zamość is an outstanding example of an innovative approach to town planning, combining the functions of an urban ensemble, a residence, and a fortress in accordance with a consistently implemented Renaissance concept. The result of this is a stylistically homogeneous urban composition with a high level of architectural and landscape values. A real asset of this great construction was its creative enhancement with local artistic architectural achievements."

I stayed at the three-star Hotel Senator, on Plac Solny (like Wrocław, Zamość has its main square and a 'salt square' set off it, for salt trading). My apartment had splendid views and cost a mere 240 zł (about £45 even after Friday's devaluation of the pound) for the night.

Below: the Town Hall, and the main square. By coincidence, a festival of Italian song was taking place that very evening. The stage and seating are visible to the right of the frame.

A hot day. I arrived around 5pm, it was still over 30C. And that Italianate architecture... like a real Portmeirion, set out on a grand scale, made me feel I was a thousand kilometres to the south-west.

Colonnaded walkways line the square, which is full of bars, cafes, patisseries and restaurants. The entire town is evidently well-policed aesthetically; no garish signage is allowed to advertise premises.

Left: Many people watched the concert from the steps of the Town Hall. Ticket holders sat in an enclosed area in front of the stage, but the amplification was loud enough (not too loud) to ensure that everyone in the square and the side streets could hear the songs. Italian songs attract listeners of all ages, the audience included the very old and the very young.

A magical atmosphere descended on the town. Once you leave the main square and the concert, the other streets are almost empty, I feel I have Zamość to myself.

Left: as day turned to night, the town hall was lit up. The music, provided by various tribute bands backed by a proper orchestra, was to be heard right across town, adding to the Mediterranean feeling. As did the fact that it stayed hot, around 23C at 11pm. Note the pristine walls - a zero-tolerance to graffiti on the part of the local authority.

Below: view from my hotel window at dusk...

...and shortly after dawn. I was woken at 06:35 by the chiming of bells from that church tower visible on the skyline (below).

One small gripe about Zamość was the total lack of interesting beers. All I could see was Perła and the usual Lech, Warka Żywiec and Tyskie. Not one pub or bar with craft ales, no IPA to be had. At all. Yet the Perła cost but 5zł (92p) for a half-litre; when I told the proprietor that beers can cost 20-26zł in Warsaw, he could not believe me.

Everything else being fine, if Zamość could go up-market and move with the times in terms of its culinary offerings, I'm sure it could extract more earnings from the tourists' wallets. I ordered a pizza in a restaurant on the main square called Bohema. The most bohemian beer I could order was a Żywiec wheat beer on tap, and the pizza diavolo contained ham (rather than chorizo) under the chilli peppers, cheese, and tomato sauce. Would happily pay more for something more autentico!

Below: view of Plac Solny with my hotel in the distance. My windows are in visible in the roof. Room 301, worth asking for it. Breakfast at the Hotel Senator was commendable; sausage and scrambled eggs, various salads and lots of fresh fruit.

Zamość is definitely worth visiting!

This time last year:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget

This time two years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time three years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time four years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time six years ago:
Literature and biology

This time eight years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time nine years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high