To be honest it was not a trip to Gizycko. It was only the biggest city, we reached on our way. In fact it was an urge to do something after the last year of secondary school and mature exam. Good to know that in Poland holiday after a mature exam is the longest in whole life (nearly 4 months). Enough long to do make something stupid. I had the idea to gather friends and go for a little trip. To visit interesting places that are so close to our city, and (what a shame) we don't know them. So I designed a route, phoned friends and after 3 days we were setting off.

No sooner did we ride 10 km, we saw incredibly beautiful forest. It was the first sign, that this trip is going to be special.

What a pity! After 11th kilometer David got a puncture.
It could be only him, to do it so early. After a real battle with tires, valves, not working mobiles (we were in the heart of forest), mother of David and eventually his younger brother, we fixed the bike and set off again. Anyway, we were 3 hours late and Klaudi had to wait a long time in Reszel to join us. We were betting on that, how angry she will be.

But after all we were not so late to pass the village of Lezany without taking no attention to it's palace. Villages like this one are very impressive.

As You see, she was angry a bit. But things like a puncture just happen during trips like this and you can't help it. What is more, it would be not so memmoriable without that strange events. After visiting castle in Reszel we headed east to look for a place to spend a night.

Few words about Reszel.

As majority of towns in the land of Warmia, Reszel was founded by the knights of the Order of the Teutonic Hospitalier Brothers of the Holy Virgin in Jerusalem (such was the official name of the Teutonic Knights). It sill has it's original unique town centre erecter on a medieval scheme and many bulidings are original too. However, the most important architectural monument is the castle of Bishop. Built out of red brick and wood, spared during both world wars is quite significant and impressive castle of this region. Reszel is a very poor town but and I think many monuments are going to collapse, but without doubt it has a real charm. It is the only town in my region clasified as a UNESCO heritage.

More about castle of Reszel You can find here.

It was a high time we had gone sleep.
So we found a good looking meadow and pitched a tent. Before going sleep, of course, we frightened each other of strange events that could have happened here in the past.
In the morning we were woken up by the sound of a tractor working on a neighbor field. It turned out, we were sleeping on a private field. Anyway, no one disturbed us.

The next stop was a castle in Brciany. It was one of many castles of Teutonic Order on the land of Warmia & Mazuty. Teutonic Order was one of orders of knighthood that rose in Europe in 11th century in the atmosphere of crusades. One of Polish Prince's invited them to help fight against Prussians - giving them quite big peace of land on the north of Poland. Not only did knights of Teutonic Order defeated Prussians but also they started to threat Poland. It took few ages for polish kings to defeat them.
Now on our land there are many castles made of red brick - sign of many wars that happened in the past.

As shown on the photo we tried to find as many old mansions as possible. There is one of them - it's so sad that after the 2nd world war polish communistic government forced polish aristocracy to give back all they properties. It happened very often that authorities used these beautiful buildings as storage houses or prisons for instance. Now we can see how horrible effects it had.

It's high time we had a break!

What the hell is that?!

It's hard to describe... For many many years people living here (Polish, German or others) tried to link lakes and rivers of the Mazury land so that it would be possible to sail far from the land into the sea. They decided to dig many miles of channels but there was one big problem. Levels of the water in many lakes and the Baltic sea differed very much (on all the way - over 100 meters). They came up with few ideas. One of which was to build special water gates (I'm not sure how does it work, but it's smart idea anyway). On the photo there is one of them - not finished due to the world war that came.

Sometimes it was too hard to cycle...

Bunkers

Here I could write for ages. I'll try to make it quick and painless. During the 2nd world war Hitler firstly signed a pact with Russia to smash wipe out all Poland (Pact Ribbentrop - Molotov). After he conquered us and the Western Europe he didn't want the help of Russians any longer and he decided to defeat them also. To be as close to the eastern front as possible he decided to build big complex of bunkers in the eastern Poland. For many months his advisers were looking for the perfect place for this. Finally they agreed that the best situation will be near the biggest polish lakes.

They built fortifications on enormous scale and they were so cunning that till the end of the war nobody knew where it was (it was huge but perfectly masked). The main complex was called Wolfsschanze (ger.) and was the masterpiece of war fortification art. When it turned out that Hitler's army is no strong enough to stop Russian army going West, he decided to destroy it. It's interesting that the main complex was so strong, that Germans had to gather all explosives from the region. That's why they destroyed Wolfsschanze but they didn't destroy other complexes in Mamerki and on the other site of Niegocin lake.

On the photo my friends in front of a bunker in Mamerki.

Unforgettable mixture of colors...

Sometimes it happens...

It was quite hard trip - the Land of Thousand's of Lakes is in fact covered with millions of hills and so that it's not so easy to cycle. One of my friend - Klaudi complained on back ache, so we decided to stop and think...
There is one Polish saying which I especially like: "Polish can manage". So we sat and thought how to "manage". After some time and short conversation with lorry owner we knew how will we get home...
By lorry!