A sunny evening in Oława

With only 13,000 steps on my pedometer - and aiming for an average of 17K I took a little walk around Olawa...

Although "Rynek" has been recently done up

and there is a very simple and moving Katyn memorial - with a recently placed/replaced photo of one of the victims...

There is not much else to the town - suffers from being too close to Wroclaw.

There is development and reconstruction taking place but there is a long way to go

Of an evening it still has that slightly edgy small town Poland feeling - groups of men and youths all with that typical Polish "small time gangster/full time thug" look - driving over noisily and over fast in cars that look entirely too expensive for the occupants.  I am sure that most every one of them is a nice, reliable citizen - just the "hair and dress" style makes me nervous.

A380 in Birmingham?

They cannot be serious - BHX can barely cope with two 757 departing for Corfu in the same one hour window - and when the PIA 777 arrives - then pray you have registered with IRIS - but the Airbus A380?

But there it is - painted on the tarmac outside the new "international pier"

(oops - I am too late...

http://bhxflightguide.blogspot.com/2009/09/ek-380.html

A present from George...

All I got from Gordon and Alistair was pain but from George...

 So far I have frittered part of it away on a #42 at Wagamama

Jurassic Cup 2010 - Adventures in Limestone

and so a 4 hour drive across country to Zloty Potok (Golden Steam - but golden in the poetic sense only - there was a museum to a famous Polish poet - but as it was all in Polish - I didn't much see the point of going in).  I stayed in student accommodation - 60PLN per night - including all meals - basic but very good value.

3 days of ARDF racing and lots of prizegivings - as usual the Czechs won mostly - though above you can see me in 3rd place on M40 - we were given balloons and it was a race to blow them up to bursting - I think I was in the lead at this point

A very hot and long drive back to Wroclaw

via a new confluence point

and no bumps or scratches at all...

Just a bit of dirt