VeloLiberty. Day Two. Warka — Jedlnia-Letnisko

Day Two. April 30, 2025

Warka — Jedlnia-Letnisko

I covered about 50 km from the town of Warka to Jedlnia-Letnisko via Radom. According to my calculations, it should’ve taken around two hours — in reality, it took about five. Google Maps got a little too creative and sent me along so-called cycling paths through a forest. The catch? Several kilometers of loose sand. I had to push the bike through what felt like real quicksand. Well now I know what that’s like.

After this adventure, I decided not to rely on Google for navigation anymore and to plan my routes manually. I’d recommend the same to anyone doing long-distance cycling trips: don’t fully trust Google Maps. Choose car routes or carefully check whether the road is paved beforehand.

Along the way, I met a cyclist who’s 80 years old. In the past two days, he’d already covered 150 kilometers and wasn’t planning to slow down. Just goes to show — age is never an excuse to stop moving.

Somewhere on the road, I lost my cycling glasses from Decathlon (Okulary rowerowe Rockrider ST 100). I bought a new pair in Radom, but by the next day one of the arms had already broken off. Absolutely don’t recommend them — very poor quality.

I had planned to camp out in the forest for the first time and test how Poland’s Zanocuj w lesie (Camp in the Forest) program works. But it got dark quickly, there were animal sounds in the trees, and I didn’t have a proper headlamp for riding through the forest at night. I stopped at Hotel POD RÓŻAMI in Jedlnia-Letnisko to ask if I could pitch my tent on their grounds. When the owner found out I was cycling from Warsaw to Portugal, he offered me a free room.

I also ran into a problem with the internet along the way. The Polish mobile operator Orange restricts tethering for uploading large files. Many hotels have fairly weak Wi-Fi as well, with deliberately limited speeds. I’ll have to figure out workarounds, because managing a photo and video archive on the road is a whole separate challenge.

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