Well, looks like I did it !
I won't lie, I didn't think I'd be crossing things off my to-do list so quickly, but I'm glad I did.
Excitement aside, I'd like to share with you how it went and what I would do differently if I was to tackle such a distance in the future.
But first, some statistics:
Distance: 104km/65miles
Elevation gain: 2716m/8910 feet
Net walking time: 26:45
Gross walking time: 32:00
Net pace: 3.9km/h or 2.4 miles/h or 15:26 minutes per km
Gross pace: 3.25km/h or 2 miles/h or 18:27 minutes per km
Day 1: It's raining, man!
It was a rough morning. We got up before 4am, to be at 9am at the start of the trail in village Gołoszyce. First few km went smoothly. A walk through a quiet forest with a small climb up here and there. We knew that it will be raining later, but we were not in a hurry. Our backpacks were full of supplies. Each of us carried extra water and food. Because of this we ended up with 10kg backpacks. In retrospect, we could've saved some weight on clothes and sweets. We both took a plastic raincoat and a dry windjacket. I don't think there was a single time we thought about putting on those windjackets, let alone actually using them.
At 2:30pm it started to rain.. It really wasn't fun to walk in the rain, but we still had around 5km to our lunch spot at the top of Łysa góra. I'm glad it was there and it wasn't closed. After a good lunch (and god awful mulled wine) we got underway for last 12km of the day.
Rain stopped, but exhaustion kicked in big time. Some knee and feet pain were present when we made our way down from the Łysa góra and continued our hike through the forest. I think we had worst time in the last hour of the day. Last 5km were on a asphalt. We passed through village Kakonin and headed to our hotel for the night.
Those last 5km... eh where do I begin. I think I can sum it up with a single word: blisters
Day 2: Pain breaks the rhythm
Yeee, blisters. It turns out that walking for over an hour in soaked shoes on hard tarmac can really mess with your skin. I took care of them in the morning and was able to walk almost normally. Also, most of the knee/calf pain was gone after a good night's sleep. No rain in the forecast, it's looking good!
On the second day we had a 42km route to do, so we started our walk at 8.30am, a little early to make it to the next hotel in time.
2nd day started with a steep climb up to Łysica - the highest mountain in whole Świętokrzyskie mountain range. I have to admit, it wasn't impressive. The highest in this region is still only 613m above sea level. There were literal trees in our way of a nice view. Also way down was sketchy. Lots of rocks and logs, still slippery after rain from day 1. After 2km walk down, we got off the mountain and headed to another climb.
Not gonna lie... most of day 2 was like this. Steep climbs followed by a downhill and then again up. All so tiring, with little to no nice views to stop and look at.
Lunch at 4pm, and a nasty realization "we're on the trail for 7,5 hours already, and we're only halfway done. At this rate we will be at the hotel around midnight". We seriously picked up the pace. We finished 2nd half of the trail (20km) in 5,5 hours. After lunch we walked for 3 hours straight. New blisters were starting to form, knees were hurting again, but it's not like we could just stop mid way and rest wherever we wanted.
I want to mention last 10km of day 2, because... it was not listed as a trail !!!
Yeah, I was also suprised to learn this. We took a shortcut through a forest (really muddy and full of puddles) instead of walking near a highway and going by some underground passage. We ended up going above the highway ! Weird stuff doesn't end there. When we thought we were back on trail, all markings on trees were blank. Instead of 2 white stripes with 1 red in the middle, there was just a while square.
It turns out this part of the trail was closed for maintenance (lol). But it was only closed from one side. So we learned that we shouldn't go there on our way out from this section.
(it's getting long, sorry) Rest of the day was pretty uneventful. As the sun started to set we reached out last climb for the day. We climbed Tulmin Gród, had a nice view on quarry and an old chapel in the middle of the forest (not haunted). Around 1.5h later we arrived in hotel at Tor Kielce. By 9:30 pm we were in our hotel room, and pain just kept on going...
Day 3: Last push
Knock knock
Who's there ?
Exhaustion.
I don't think I've ever been so exhausted in my life. To the point that I barely wanted anything for breakfast. Unfortunately it wasn't like the first night, we both woke up with stiff legs and more pain. After breakfast we eventually got moving, but first few hundreds meters were not fun.
Last day was... moody. I think it's a fair way to call it. There was some motivation because we had only 23km to go, evevation also wasn't crazy big or anything like this. It's just, eh....
Enough complaining, I think I made it clear that I was way more tired than I thought I would be.
From fun parts, we finally got some nice views ! Day 2 was also full of them, but as we were going closer to civilisation we had few nice views on small villages dotted around the mountain range. We also we had a good view of Kielce, far in the distance.
2nd half was way more interesting. We stumbled across some sort of educational trail. There wasn't much to it, few bulletin boards with info about flora in forests we were going through. Also some information about animals (mostly birds) that live here. There was a raised platform with a last proper view on most of the mountains in Świętokrzyskie. I felt really happy to see how far we went already and we had last 6km to go.
Around 5pm... we made it. Last beep from my watch to leave the forest, last few hundred metres and it's over ! Despite an awful pain and blisters, I was happy to be there. Quickly took a picture of the "end of the trail" board and headed to a bus stop to go back home.
I had no idea that one can feel euphoric at the end of such hike. It wasn't much, but it was way more than i expected I would feel. A silly smile and tears in my eyes when I knew that I made it. A hike that was meant to be a reality check for me and first test of strength before "the master hike".
I'm posting this around a week after I finished the hike. I'm already 95% back to health, so hopefully I'll be back to full strength soon to continue with my training plan. I want to cross a few more things off the todo list this year, stay tuned.
