Driving to Poland from England - any tips?

I don,t have any safety worries really , but i do take a few precautions.... If you are travelling in some countries where you can appear to be a rich and vunerable westerner all alone , there are some people who can see you as an easy target...

The first thing is to travel in a vehicle that does not look really expensive , and when camping for the night don,t pick a layby next to the main road where every passing scoundrel can see you are all alone...One of the reasons i drive a 4 x 4 is so i can drive deep into the forest to camp , miles from the nearest town..The logic being , if there ain,t nobody there , nobody can do you any harm... People feel safer in a busy truckstop , but its not the safest place really , its the very place the dodgy people hang around...

One of the best lessons i learnt was...don,t look like a tourist..!

I dont drive to Poland every summer , i can,t afford to visit the UK that often , most of my time is spent on my farm in Zachodniopomorskie... My last road trip was to Kiev in Ukraine to spend nine blissfull days with my Russian girlfriend who is from Moscow...We can both travel to Ukraine without any visa , so its a good place to meet up untill we can sort out getting married and living in the same house in the same country.... She is currently trying to sell her flat in Moscow to get a smaller one that we can use when we visit there...

I am not familiar with Ustron , but you are not so far away from Zakopane and lots of other nice places...I recommend you get somebody in the UK to send you a copy of.. ROUGH GUIDE TO POLAND...its a great book with information on all areas of Poland , sadly , my copy got lent to some German visitors , and i ain,t got it back yet...

so your alot futher north then us in poland.

if im correct your not to far from a place called Hel is that the correct way of spelling it.
have you ever been there, we were thinking of going there for a week to a hotel or something.

i hope everything goes to plan for you and your girlfriend :O) i was going to say lucky for me mine lives with me but then i thought about it lol.

she comes from poland her parents still live there so we visit every year, i am finding it very hard to learn the langauge lol

Yeah i am quite a lot north of you , actually between Drawsko pomorskie and Polczyn zdroj , and yes Hel is not too far away from me , i have not been there as yet , but i want to go , so i can say i have been to Hel and back..!

The nearest place i have been over that way is Kolobrzeg which is also on the Baltic coast , a very nice seaside town , but very touristy....

Yes , learning Polish is not so easy , but i guess having a Polish lady in the house makes it a lot easier....I have been here five years , and still only speak basic drivel...

Now of course i need to learn Russian too...eeek..! Well i don,t need to , Ksusha speaks good English , but i want to...

What exactly do you do in PL.
How did you find yourself here ?
Are you an old hippy or something ? lol
I,ve been round your district dealing with timber mills.
I could have called in for a cuppa. lol.

What do i do..? Well at the moment i am looking for a job , funny enough , the last job i did was working in a Tartak , not much money tho , just about paid for my fuel to get there...

A hippy , noo not me . i am a biker.... How did i get here...Well , i organised and led convoys of aid to Belarus , then got involved in collecting and taking stuff to a kids home in Polska...fell in love with Polska...wound up buying an old farm here....

wildrover,

so where were you born, UK?

trust me having a polish girlfriend doesnt make learning polish any easier lol

so you own your own farm that call, can you not use that for work. that makes no sence at all.

Man,ain't that the truth!

scottie,

i assume that you have a polish girlfriend and that your trying to learn to speak polish

how are you doing with that ?

Yes , i was born in Scarborough Yorkshire...moved to Poland after falling in love with the place during aid trips to Belarus....

My farm in Poland is not a working farm with cows , pigs and stuff , its just my home...i don,t know the first thing about farming...!

The plan is...to use it as a base for expeditions for groups of 4 x 4 drivers , Harley owners , and other asorted nuts....but i need some money first...!

I can just see you now, looking after your cows and growing crops... :P

Cows..??? thats them things that are like chickens...only bigger...is it..???

yeah and the go moooo, unless that do something else in poland lol

When travelling from the UK to Polska...don,t forget to purchase some mushrooms from the girls by the roadside....these two seem to have run out of mushrooms....

• 
  
  

Looks like fungi to me, or is it French snails ?

Hmmmm. I must have been on a different road.


With Iwona? or with Polish? Both are complicated. :) But I study Polish every day, try to learn a few words, and speak as much Polish as I can. It's not an easy language to learn. Reading and writing are easier, because I have time to think about how to write something, and I can also use a dictionary when I get stuck. Speaking is always impromptu so I don't have that luxury. I figure in only 17 more more years I'll have progressed beyond piwo, dwa piwa. :)

Sounds to me like your revenue could be right in front of your nose.
Farm ?........ sounds interesting and it doesn,t have to be a farm the way people envisage it. Depending on its location, size, etc.
I have some ideas, and what else could be better than being your own boss in PL. where employment for foreigners is a myth. ( unless you teach boring English )

Ye... I am doing the trip from Swindon on the 14Th July heading to Dover for the 2am Ferry from Dover To Dunkirk for 5am. Driving a Mitsubishi 4WD. Hope to get well into Holland before taking a catnap or two. Heading for Nowy Sol for a few days and then heading via Krakow to South East Poland.

Does anybody know what the roads are like south of Nowy Sol towards Krakow after the floods??

Floods didnt make much difference, the roads in Poland have always been crap.
Just be glad you,re driving 4x4 it should get you anywhere.

Well..you have my attention.....Tell me more...?

Are you likely to be near Wejherowo anytime this year ?

Except end of August time when I will be away for a wedding.

I could mail, but I hate typing too much. But if push comes to shuv, then........ well.

Well i am not doing a whole lot at the moment...and its not so far away....

Right, what I had in mind was an hour or two if you were passing through.
But no worries.
Here,s what we will do, so to save you some money as you,re job seeking.
I,ll spend a few minutes tomorrow when I find some time to put some questions together and e-mail them to you.
Then we,ll carry on from there, via phone or email. I assure you I am genuine, having been here 7 years myself before finding a way forward.

Here,s an e-ml address I set up so as not to get bugged by idiots. ( otter-robe@wp.pl )
Send me your contact details. Look forward to hearing from you shortly.
rgds.

Hey everyone,

Ok i have been talked into driving to poland again, not sure when lol.

i wanted to ask what is the best route to take.

my route took me from calais to Hannover over to berlin then down into Poland.

one the way there i found the motorway petrol station is to get to, but on the way back the same route, you had to come off the motorway some what to get to a petrol station.

any thoughts would be awesome

Thanks

Will

yeh, take someone with you that can read a map or install GPS, and what ever happens dont go left at the first junction from Calais. If you do it adds about 2 hours and you'll be heading straight for Paris, then have to drive about three hours through Belgium, then you'll find yourself having to drive through the Czech Republic. Yep i did that a couple of weeks ago.

The correct route is Calais, Dunkirk, Antwerp, Eidhowen then pick up the A2 or A4 straight across Germany bypassing Dresden then Liepzig.

Wroclaw boy,

i do have a tomtom sat nav, the device seems to plan the router that i described above, but when i goto the web site and use the router planner is gives me the one you descibe it is very strange.

I think that would be the quickest way to Poznan using the A2 but for Wroclaw or any city in Southern Poland you'll need the A4 or A3, i actually set my record from Southampton, UK to Wroclaw using the A2, drive time was just over 13 hours. I attempted the record on the way back to the UK last time using the A4 and drive time was about 16 hours.

I think if you use the A2 coming you're on that autobhan for about 300 miles, which is quite handy in terms of not having to worry about exiting - just keep cruising, you can really make up some time on that road.

The last trip UK to Poland was about 22 hours drive time, considering that we took a wrong turn at Calais and drove straight through the night only averaging 65 MPH.


Yes, ive just realised that the A4 motorway section when you enter Poland from Germany has only recently been completed, that may be the reason as it used to be a single lane road for about 45 miles.

keep a handful of change in euroes and zloty for when you visit the toilet.

Not sure if you are using petrol or gas. A few years ago Germany didn't sell gas on autobahns, not sure if it has changed.

If you mean Nowa Sól near Zielona Góra, there's now no danger of falling into anything wet (except possibly as in the photo in post 166).

Hey all,

ok me and my Girlfriend have just informed her parent's that we will be driving there again next summer. we plan to leave 9th july which is a saturday. would you recommend driving on a weekday or weekend?

also i decided to by one of those train passes that gives you a 24 hour window of travel, because of the last time i travelled.

also not the best thing, i will be doing it in a citreon c3 1.4 ROFL i can only go about 80mph tops in it lol, better fuel consumption. i will be doing over 1 day again and staying there for 2 weeks. will be going to ustron.

anyone else planning to drive there next summer or soon?

Merged thread:
Driving from UK to Wroclaw

Hello,
Is driving from Huddersfield to Wroclaw with two kids (10 and 8) a bad move. We are going to a friends wedding in July.