June 25, 2025 – Kruszewiec to Węgorzewo – 39 kms – Apartamento Żeglarski Vęgoria

June 26, 2025 – Węgorzewo to Pluszkiejmy – 62 kms – Agrotyrystika Kociołek

June 27, 2025 – Pluszkiejmy to Gulbieniszki – 58 kms – Cisowe Sioło

June 28, 2025 – Gulbieniszki to Stary Folwark – 55 kms – Przystań Stary Folwark

June 29, 2025 – Stary Folwark to Augustów – 72 kms – City Centre Apartments Mostowa 17A

Gordon:  We have rounded the northeast corner of Poland and we are now headed south.  After tracing the border with Russia, we passed along the short frontier with Lithuania.  We were within 8 kms of Belarus today, and we will be near that country for the next week.  We saw armed border guards checking out a vehicle today, a scene that may be repeated as we pass near Belarus and Ukraine.

The Green Velo makes a small detour to visit a monument marking the triple border point shared by Russia, Lithuania and Poland.  Tourist brochures show people lounging on the monument, but those pictures were probably taken a few years ago.  The monument is now behind coils of razor wire, which stretches off into the distance along the Russian borders.  The border with Lithuania has no fencing, but I did hear some automatic cameras clicking when I walked over to see if the weather is any different in Lithuania.

One of the tourist brochures described the countryside in northeastern Poland as “storybook”, and that seems about right.  It is a rolling, post glacial landscape with oddly shaped hills and many small lakes, all covered with a mixture of forest and farmland.  It would be easy to imagine the doorway of a hobbit house poking out of many of the hillocks.

This region, without natural obstacles to impede movement, has long been a cultural mixing pot.  As well as the Lithuanians, Russians, Germans, Ukrainians and Jews, there were smaller communities of Tatars and Orthodox Old Believers.  We visited a tiny Old Believer village a few days ago, and our plans include side trips to other ethnic minority villages in the next few weeks.

Although stories exist of the Catholic priest, Tatar imam, Orthodox priest, and Jewish rabbi in some of these communities going out for coffee together, the tragic story of Polish history is never far away.  Today, for example, we stopped for lunch at a pretty church in a small town.  It is set in a large forest, and reflecting the local culture, the interior was finished with wood liberally decorated with painted images.  To accentuate the woodland theme, there was also an impressive rack of elk antlers between each of the stations of the cross.  Just outside this charming church, however, there are two monuments.  The first is to remember two local priests who were killed in German concentration camps during the Second World War.  The second honours the victims of the Augustów Roundup.  

While the War ended for Western Europe with the surrender of Germany, it continued in Poland.  Polish troops had fought with the Allies, but at the end of the War they found themselves on the wrong side of the descending Iron Curtain.  Militias continued to fight the Soviets in Poland and the Baltics, and the Augustów Roundup was one of the notable atrocities of this struggle.  Thousands of Poles were arrested and perhaps a thousand of them were executed.  The Poles still consider it to be an unresolved war crime.  Though one of the most notable, this is only one tragic historical incident in the many that we see marked by monuments almost every day.