Sopot Walk – Snow on the Beach

 

I quite like these Relive videos, hopefully this embeds and is easily visible to anyone reading this blog post.

I fancied a little walk along the Baltic Sea coast, so booked a night in the Novotel Gdansk Marina, a formidably good hotel as it transpired. It’s only just visible on the photo from the flakes of snow in the image, but it has started to snow relatively hard just I set off. Not entirely ideal.

This is President Ronald Reagan Park (Park imienia Ronalda Reagana) and he’s a popular figure in the country given his work in removing the Poland from the shackles of communism. It’s quite a large park and there are cycle and walking routes clearly marked throughout it.

There’s the balmy beach. OK, it’s not exactly the Pacific coast off of California as I had hoped to be this week, but it’s not far off. There are lots of access paths to the beach from the coastal walk, with a few of the restaurants and cafes open as well.

My footsteps across the sand.

And the sea…. There seemed to be plenty of locals going for strolls and taking their dogs out for walks, it was quite a busy beach. It had just about stopped snowing by this point, but it remained relatively warm throughout.

I’m not entirely sure what this is, but I understand it’s a defensive set-up constructed between 1910 and 1912 to help protect this part of the country. It was once more substantial, but sections were taken away when the Free City of Danzig was established after the end of the First World War.

It is possible to walk-in, but I didn’t feel the need. There was also a man just standing by the structures looking suspicious, although I suspect he had a friend who was in the bunker thing, another reason I wasn’t going to go exploring in it. That’s not a ghostly image in the centre of the photo (well, I hope it isn’t), it was still snowing at this time.

After a little more walking along the coastal path, this is Salvator’s Church in Sopot, a Lutheran church which has a rather pleasant park around it.

The main street of Sopot, a town which is one part of the Tri-City, the other two elements being Gdansk and Gdynia. It was once a relatively quiet village, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it grew quickly. It formed part of the Free City of Danzig, although Gdynia was placed in Poland and had an even faster expansion.

I have no idea why they still have a Christmas tree up in February.

The main street of Sopot, mostly pedestrianised as the road goes underneath all of this.

One of the quirkier buildings that I’ve seen, albeit with a slightly more generic coffee company located inside of it.

These sort of signs have been in every town I’ve visited this week, and they’re a really good idea, as they get lots of people standing by them for photos and giving the town some free publicity on-line.

Anyway, after a quick snack (more of which in another post) I then walked back to the Novotel, but this time going inland to avoid retracing my steps. This wasn’t one of my longer walks (have I mentioned that I walked 100 miles in May 2021?) but the surroundings were interesting and it was good to be by the sea.