I am now in the most recently pagan country in Europe(converted to Christianity only in the 16th century) but I am here too early ,really,a month before the Summer Solstice,which is apparently still a big thing.
The start of my journey this morning was a 90 km drive through the Masurian lakes countryside on a windy country main road, that I had pretty much to myself.This is an attractive area, with smaller farms and less good farmland.In terms of scenery it rivals,for example ,such semi-wild areas as the lowland of Scotland. While not driving through a forest the road was lined by a nearly continuous avenue of trees the whole way. Intermittently I would pass through a village or small town, usually on the shore of its own lake. I didn’t see any bison, or wild boar, although both are around here,the latter much the more numerous. Several shops and restaurants had life-sized bison models standing by the road to ensure you get the message.What I also noticed was the largest number of storks nesting on telegraph poles that I have seen for a while. Considering that they were nesting in Spain in March,they are getting off to a later start here.I also saw one enormous brown ostrich like bird in a cornfield.I had to look this up .The only thing I could find online to explain this is that there are now a small population of feral Rheas breeding in Germany: could one have got this far? I didn’t imagine it!
On reaching Suwalki I joined the main road from Poland into the Baltic states. This is a recently renewed road but is single laned and predictably there was a continuous column of lorries in both directions, suggesting to me that it is need of a further rebuild-but the drivers were all flooring it and running at a steady 90kph.
I did see a difference on crossing the border into Lithuania.For a start the gently rolling landscape of Poland flattened out noticeably, although the same patchwork of corn, oilseed rape and forest continued.The most obvious difference was that a large majority of the rural houses mostly had grey corrugated sheet roofs, faded by the sun and giving the rural villages a unique bleached look, almost like weathered wood, which blends them into the woodland. Some of the houses look quite basic.And I saw a novel farming practice:in unfenced fields groups of ten or so cattle were each tethered by their horns to a peg in the ground.
At Kaunas I turned right and joined Lithuania’s one (I think) motorway towards Vilnius, but just before arriving there I detoured to see Trakai castle. It dates from the 15th century and is in a picture-postcard setting on a little island in an attractive lake,(around which is a small national park) and it is accessed across a long footbridge. It had fallen into ruins ,though, and has been restored several times in the last couple of centuries, the most thorough being in the 1950’s,when it was comprehensively rebuilt in a 15th century style,and it is now very touristy.Having said that ,it is very photogenic.
The start of my journey this morning was a 90 km drive through the Masurian lakes countryside on a windy country main road, that I had pretty much to myself.This is an attractive area, with smaller farms and less good farmland.In terms of scenery it rivals,for example ,such semi-wild areas as the lowland of Scotland. While not driving through a forest the road was lined by a nearly continuous avenue of trees the whole way. Intermittently I would pass through a village or small town, usually on the shore of its own lake. I didn’t see any bison, or wild boar, although both are around here,the latter much the more numerous. Several shops and restaurants had life-sized bison models standing by the road to ensure you get the message.What I also noticed was the largest number of storks nesting on telegraph poles that I have seen for a while. Considering that they were nesting in Spain in March,they are getting off to a later start here.I also saw one enormous brown ostrich like bird in a cornfield.I had to look this up .The only thing I could find online to explain this is that there are now a small population of feral Rheas breeding in Germany: could one have got this far? I didn’t imagine it!
On reaching Suwalki I joined the main road from Poland into the Baltic states. This is a recently renewed road but is single laned and predictably there was a continuous column of lorries in both directions, suggesting to me that it is need of a further rebuild-but the drivers were all flooring it and running at a steady 90kph.
I did see a difference on crossing the border into Lithuania.For a start the gently rolling landscape of Poland flattened out noticeably, although the same patchwork of corn, oilseed rape and forest continued.The most obvious difference was that a large majority of the rural houses mostly had grey corrugated sheet roofs, faded by the sun and giving the rural villages a unique bleached look, almost like weathered wood, which blends them into the woodland. Some of the houses look quite basic.And I saw a novel farming practice:in unfenced fields groups of ten or so cattle were each tethered by their horns to a peg in the ground.
At Kaunas I turned right and joined Lithuania’s one (I think) motorway towards Vilnius, but just before arriving there I detoured to see Trakai castle. It dates from the 15th century and is in a picture-postcard setting on a little island in an attractive lake,(around which is a small national park) and it is accessed across a long footbridge. It had fallen into ruins ,though, and has been restored several times in the last couple of centuries, the most thorough being in the 1950’s,when it was comprehensively rebuilt in a 15th century style,and it is now very touristy.Having said that ,it is very photogenic.
Trakai castle,near Vilnius
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