Day 4. Kwidzyn - Grudziądz 45km (151 km)

Yet another hot and sunny day. The news tells of heavy raining in the south of Poland.

Breakfast is at 7, the buffet is very small and there is no hot food. I would have guessed that a pensjonat would have greater breakfast than a hotel.

The ride starts with going down to the river again and following it, there are some nice bike lanes and some bumpy ones.

As it turns out I am following a bike route called R1, it goes between Calais and Kaliningrad. The infrastructure is good and flat. Some stretches are very bumpy and some are cobblestone.

As I ride along the flooding barrier I never see the river, at one point I see a small road going up on the barrier. When I go up there I see that the river is actually far away and there is plenty of room for lots of water behind the barrier. Also it seems most towns are built outside the river valley some 50-100 meters up.

Grudziądz is a big town and I ride all the way through town to reach my hotel, the Hotel Rad, there are some really bad stretches with many, many bumps. There are also some kilometers of really nice bike lane.

Once I get to the hotel it’s full mayhem, there is yesterdays wedding guests trying to leave the hotel and tonight’s wedding guests arriving en masse making all sorts of demands to the staff. I arrive to early and there is no room yet. I sit around in the cool lobby for a while. Then I ride the bike to the Lotos fuel station and have a hot dog for lunch.

Once back I get my room and the receptionist thinks that it’s best to park my bike in the room. I like the idea very much.

While I check the bike I find that a spoke broke, that sucks, but I decide that it was better to change the spoke in my cold room than somewhere along the road in the heat and rain.

So by now I have learned that "sklep rowery" is the Polish word for bike shop. I brought 4x2 spare spokes, I had hoped that I wouldn’t need any. The wheel only has something like 4000km with full load, far to early to brake down. But once spokes start to snap they normally continue until all of the weak ones are gone.

I will try to find a bike shop tomorrow (Sunday) or in next town.

Dinner was not great at all, but it was included in the room price so I guess that is fair enough. Tomorrow is rest day so I have booked 2 nights, 270 PLN for 2 nights including breakfast and dinner.