Day 4 - Discovering Lower Silesia

On paper this was the easy day: sixteen hundred metres of climbing spread across the whole stage and no surprises. At kilometre nine, past Lubomin, the stage fell apart.

We crossed Trójgarb on trails that were more mountain bike than gravel. We had to walk some sections: loose rock and ramps at 23%, and that is not me exaggerating, it is what the computer says. Trójgarb means "three humps" and it has three summits, of 778, 757 and 738 metres. We crossed over the small one. It is volcanic rock, red rhyolite, and that would end up being the theme of the day without us knowing it.

The setting was spectacular. It had rained hard the night before and everything was a really intense green, wet, covered in mud, and fifteen degrees. Perfect temperature for riding a bike.

We dropped down to Marciszów and stopped at a shop to eat and drink something. We carried on along back roads, through fields and housing, all very tidy, and rode through Janowice Wielkie over a couple of hills. A kilometre and a half from there, without noticing, we left Miedzianka behind: a town seven centuries old that the Soviets mined for uranium until 1952 and then demolished entirely. What is left today is the church, some plaques on the ground and a brewery.

Before lunch we rode tracks through open fields to Bobrów, and from there to Pałac Łomnica, where we went in and had a look around on the bikes. Spectacular buildings, kept in perfect condition, lovely gardens and a river running through the middle. The von Küster family bought it in 1835 and lost it in 1945; by the seventies it was a roofless ruin. In 1991 a great grandson of those owners found it for sale, in pieces, and spent fourteen years rebuilding it with his partner. They sold their wedding presents to pay for the work.

We ate at Stara Stajnia, which means "old stable": two days in a row eating in converted stables. The stop went on far too long, as usual.

We carried on, set on getting a coffee in Jelenia Góra, a small city we loved. We rode through the centre between coloured façades, balconies full of flowers and cobbles. On the way out we picked up a greenway alongside the Młynówka canal, four kilometres under a roof of trees with nobody on it but cyclists and walkers. Spectacular.

Between Pilchowice and Radomice we rode within touching distance of the Pilchowice dam and never even looked at it: sixty nine metres high, built in stone between 1902 and 1912, the tallest stone arch dam in Poland, and the lake it holds back is the largest in the Western Sudetes. We also passed below Wleń castle without seeing it. That is the price of staring at your handlebars.

In Wleń we stopped at a supermarket. Alex was in a bad way, his back was hurting a lot, and we spent a good while trying to put him back together. The pain kept building and I had to carry his camera to the hotel. On the last climb he could not do it, we were going at walking pace, but he held on to the end because he is a fighter and hard as nails. When we arrived he showered, took something for the pain and stretched out on the bed; I brought him some food and he was already asleep.

We slept in Sokołowiec, at Winnica Agat, in one of those traditional houses we had been seeing from the road for days. Marcin, who runs the family business, looked after us brilliantly. They planted the vines in 2007 and it is the only vineyard in Poland growing on the slope of a volcano, extinct for around three hundred million years, in soil that throws up rock crystals and amethysts. Hence the name, Agat. We started the day crossing a volcano and finished it drinking what grows on another one, watching the sun go down over the vines.