Pomeranian Voivodeship

Pomeranian Voivodeship changes character with every few miles of road. The Tricity conurbation, Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot, is a working port with a historic core, where cranes and shipyard steel sit beside baroque merchant houses. Move inland and the mood softens into Kashubia, a country of hills, glacial lakes and dark forest, where villages keep their timber cottages and the language of the people is still spoken at kitchen tables. To the south-west, Kociewie opens into flatter farmland and river meadows, quieter and more agricultural. In the east the Vistula delta runs out into the long sandy Spit and the narrow Hel Peninsula, where the land is so thin that you can see sea on both sides from the road.

A day here can begin in Oliwa, where the cathedral's organ fills a stone nave and the park beyond it is laid out with formal walks under old trees. By midday you can be on the Long Lane in Gdańsk, its façades painted in ochre and rose, the wind coming off the river with a salt edge to it. Afternoons suit the coast. On the Hel Peninsula the dunes are pale and high, marram grass bending in long combed lines, and the sea on the western side is rougher and more open than the calm bay behind. Further along the shore, in the Słowiński National Park, the moving dunes shift slowly over the forest, a reminder that the coast is still being made and unmade. Evenings bring a different pace: fish grilled simply, bread torn by hand, and the sound of gulls giving way to the rattle of a tram somewhere in the city.

What lingers is the mix. A morning in a stone cathedral, an afternoon with wind in the dune grass, and an evening in a lakeside village where the only light is the lamp over a door. The coast is part of the region in the same way the lakes and the brick towns are, one landscape with many faces, each reached on foot or by a slow road. Leaving is easy to postpone. There is always another lake to walk round, another gable to find at the end of a street, and the sea keeps appearing at the edge of every view, as though it had only stepped out for a moment and might return at any time.