EV10: Day 16: Rowy to Łeba

July 17, 2018 - 53 km

Instagram post:
#day16: words or these pictures cannot describe my frustration yesterday. I understood before that the #ev10 is not fully developed, but didn’t expect the roads to be in this bad shape.

It started with heavy rain during the night - even though none was predicted.
The first bit through a national park was mostly ok road-wise, not great, with only a few sandy patches.

However, things got a lot worse right after the little town of Kluki. There was some swamp with only a tight, very bumpy single trail leading though it. And then there were maybe around 30-40 wooden bridges - each only maybe 20 m long - to avoid some wetland/swamp. They were not interconnected. However, all bridges had a 10cm hard border at every end - and due to my baggage it meant I had to constantly get off and on my bike. These two kilometers already took ages and a lot of time and strength. At the end of the wetlands!!! - when I was in the middle of nowhere - there was a sign that this trail is not suitable for bicycles - with the official cycle route signage underneath.

This was the first of many times today that I shouted explicit words in the middle of nowhere.

I now thought I had managed the worst for today, but I was mistaken. Over many kilometers there were shaky 80 year old military concrete slabs followed by sandy hell between Gac and Lebafelde. For the longest part I had to push my heavy bike. Oh yes, and it was raining.

How they can label this as the official Eurovelo 10 / R10 bicycle road is beyond my understanding. And I am angry that there were no warnings.
Anyway, I finally made it to Leba and I was totally done with my nerves. The prospect of putting my tent up in the rain didn’t suite me, so I booked myself some room. Booking.com said great WiFi, but it was broken right now - go figure.

And half a kilometer before I was at the apartment, my old Android phone I used for navigation, popped out of the bag and the display broke. So I hope the battery on my other, newer phone is sufficient to navigate all day long.

Yesterday was just not my day. #53km #cycle2finland #wtf #sandyhell #eurovelo10 #ev10 #r10

In retrospective, this was probably the 2nd worst day and exhausted I had during the whole trip. If you’re traveling along this route, I can only recommend you to avoid this stretch and chose the highway instead.

I now learned after my trip that it might have helped to take out some pressure of my bike tires to move ahead on the sandy stretches.

I slept here.