A cold frost carpeted the landscape as we ran the morning checks on our cars that had spent the night parked outside in -15 while we all enjoyed the insulated warmth of Artur’s house set deep in the fields and forests of northern Poland near the town of Drawsko Pomorskie. This was our first visit to Poland to look at the possibility of running some adventures here and we came with three cars at a time of frosts and snow.

Seven very enjoyable and enlightening days were spent travelling through this countryside, exploring numerous tracks in bright winter sun as well as sampling warm hospitality of the highest order during cold frosty nights in wooden lodges set in amongst the tall dark forests. During the day we often came across hearths, set with roaring fires and benches set around the heat. Here we stopped and brewed a coffee or enjoyed lunch whilst the owners of the fires were out hunting in the forest for wild boar and deer, looking forward I do not doubt to a return to the fires warmth to enjoy some fresh meat and Polish beer.

There were two contrasting impressions that stayed with me as we left this European country that has sat at the crossroads between the west and the east for countless centuries: bullet and shell holes in buildings left so many years after the Second World War and a very beautiful wild countryside bursting with miles of tracks. Both were tainted with a sense of hardship and fear from the past that still sits in the back of my mind even today.