Entering Poland & Wild Camping where you shouldn’t!

 Day 20 - 13^th June

We left Meissen early the next morning, as again it was going to be a long day of driving as we got as close to Warsaw as we could.

I had told Mum about how bad the Polish roads and drivers were and we got a taste of their dodgy driving fairly soon after crossing over the border.

For a nation of people that seem to be fairly laid back, for some reason you put them behind the wheel of a car and they always appear to be in a hurry to get somewhere.

In most cases, I would be doing the speed limit or even slightly over it but a Polish driver will want to overtake you with complete disregard for your life and their own.

Double white lines are not double white to a Polish driver and overtaking on blind corners is completely acceptable. In fact the closest we came to being hit was because a police car decided it was ok to split the oncoming traffic on a corner!

Speeding and dangerous driving has obviously become an acceptable thing within Poland as even their roadside advertising expects you to drive like a maniac.

I cannot count the number of signs where it advised that McDonalds, a petrol station or some other amenity was only a 5-minute drive away, only to find that it was actually longer at the legal traffic speed but 5 minutes at Polish Mach 3 standards.

After a couple of hours from the border we decided to stop for lunch and pulled into a wooded picnic area. Earlier in the morning I had told Mum of the ‘ladies of the night’ that actually worked the roadside laybys and truck stops for business during the day.

We hadn’t seen any during the morning, however, our lunch stop location and timing couldn’t of been better to show Mum the seedier side of highway driving in Poland.

Just before we turned in, we saw a white Ford transit van pull into the picnic area, followed by a younger lady on a bike. I said to Mum that this could possibly be a prostitute but Mum didn’t believe me as the woman looked quite well dressed and was on a bike.

Her mind changed as they quickly started chatting and she disappeared into the back of his vehicle.

After a bit of rocking from his van and before we could finish preparing lunch he was done and they went their separate ways!

We then continued on through the minor roads of Poland taking in the local farming areas and dodging oncoming traffic. As it was getting late in the day, we headed towards what appeared to be a large lake on the map with the expectation that there may be a car park or picnic spot for us to camp at.

We found a fairly secluded section at the end of a dead end road, but were met with some signs that seemed to suggest that we shouldn’t be there and the lake was in fact a reservoir for drinking water so we shouldn’t be anywhere near it.

Mum was quite uncomfortable staying there so we drove another 10 minutes up the road and found a car park on the edge of some local wetlands. There was another sign in Polish that said no entry at the top of the car park, but we wanted to get a bit closer to the water and ignored it.

We also figured that if they went to all that trouble to put a nice gravel road in down to the water that they expected people to use it.

The Nature Reserve where we camped overnight.

Nice gravel road, made for driving on! 

About an hour or so after we got setup and were cooking dinner a Lada pulled in next to our van. I was cooking outside on the BBQ, while Mum and Claire were inside and didn’t notice.

I was a little shocked when the passenger door swung upon for me to see three big burly Polish guys in military uniform. I was a little concerned as the vehicle was hardly military issue (a Lada!) and I don’t tend to trust people that wear military uniforms that aren’t in the army.

The passenger started speaking in Polish so I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but quickly determined he wasn’t too happy with us being in that section of the car park. Through some sign language I managed to tell him that we were only there overnight and I would be happy to move to the car park further up.  

Despite my offer he said it was okay for one night, but we decided to move the van anyway just in case more of these military clad people came through during the night.