It was a lovely sunny day in Mikolajki so we started the day with a bike ride around swan lake – or Lake Luknajno. It’s a swan breeding lake. 

The bike track was very rough. Sean was fine with his gravel bike and cycling skills but the sand and mud was no good for heavy e-bikes or bikes with narrow tyres as we sank right in. 

Glenn heard cranes overhead at one point – there were 4  – and then another group of 2 calling to each other. They are big birds. They are shy and hard to see in the UK but we have seen a lot of them here.

We arrived at a bird observation tower. We saw literally thousands of swans covering the lake – it was amazing. 

We saw 2 cranes in a nearby field.

Glenn had been here last night and got some good shots of them.

We saw lots of laden apple trees again so we helped ourselves to some.

There are a lot of shrines like this everywhere.

We found a damming station controlling the water levels. It’s kept to be quite shallow – perfect for the swans.

We got back to the vans around 12.30 – we had to get out of carpark by 1.30pm to pay only 60 zloties for the 24 hours there. 

We drove south around 30km to Gościniec Zapiecek, near Krutyn. We saw lots of places hiring out kayaks as we drove down the road to our next stop.

Our campsite also hires out kayaks to go down the famous Krutyn river where thousands come every year to kayak.

We arrived and were met by Hubert the young enthusiastic guy. He found us a quiet spot in no 2 campsite on the other side of the road from the beach. It’s pretty packed in campsite no 1 next to the river. We have our own new toilets and showers and wash up spot.

We checked out the beach on the river. It’s very lovely and peaceful.

We walked up to the town of Krutyn.

We saw a bus load of elderly people. We realized that the Germans like coming here to do boat trips down the beautiful Krutyn river.

We found the large flat bottomed boats on the river – it’s similar to the traditional rafting we did where the river is shallow and the boatmen – called gondoliers – punt it down the river. 

There were quite a few tourist shops for the boat trippers selling sheepskins, honey, pottery etc. 

We walked back to the vans. I made dinner of thai red curry chicken and apple crumble. 

Glenn did lots of peeling apples and I stewed the apples that were excess to crumble requirements. Turning on the oven heated up the van as it’s getting pretty cool at night. 

We enjoyed dinner and went to bed at 9pm ready for our kayaking tomorrow morning.