The Rotary Club of Olsztyn, in Eastern Poland have found a useful way of fund raising and generally raising their profile by holding an event on the local airfield.  They call it “The Rotary Aero Picnic”. This amounts to a great fete with the usual sorts of sideshows, food outlets, folk singing and dancing and the rest.  It attracts in excess of 10,000 people, who pay only the equivalent of 40p to get in, but the stallholders pay rent for their pitches.  Because it is held on the airfield, and with the co-operation of the airfield Director (himself a Rotarian), there is something of an aviation flavour.  Pleasure flights in an AN-2 (a Russian biplane carrying about 10 people and built on the lines of a Russian lady shot putter) a Wilga (a Polish design all leggy and flappy and looking like a stork) and a Cessna 172 were on offer, but not a display, as such.

This year, they had invited IFFR (International Fellowship of Flying Rotarians) in Europe and the UK to participate by way of a fly in (and bring along some cash to go into the kitty for a Rotary Foundation matching grant to buy surgical equipment).  Past World President of IFFR Angus Clark resolved to make the journey in the Robin and recruited a crew consisting of Jim Mundell, of the Greenwich club and myself, a member of Sheffield Vulcan club, like Angus.

The plan was to leave Netherthorpe (near Worksop) in the middle of the day on Thursday 24th May, returning on Bank Holiday Monday 28th May.  We would overnight at Munster (in West Germany, not the Republic of Ireland!) on the Thursday picking up Jim at Cambridge on the way, as it was pretty much on track.  The first sector was not too bad, bits of cloud and clag, but as we coasted out of the UK via Clacton everything became settled and nice over the sea and over Holland and through to our destination.

Munster seems to be a medium sized regional airport, with very good facilities, used by Air Berlin and what looked like a fairly modest amount of business and light aviation.

As we stopped engines and got out at our parking space, an official soon arrived and greeted us most cordially.  “I do not have you on my database” he said, “may I have some details?”  The details turned out to comprise a full scale check of all the documentation pertinent to the aircraft, the journey and the pilot.  Although all this is legally required, lots of people cheerfully fly around without all of it.  However, the ever meticulous Angus was able to gleefully produce everything in good order.  Although the man’s manner throughout was most correct, we couldn’t help feeling that it would really have made his day if he had been able to find grounds for grounding us.

On Friday, we were planned to Stettin, just over the German/Polish border, as Olsztyn, our destination is non customs/immigration..  It was noticeable that as we left the airspace of the old West Germany to the East, the quantity of air traffic declined amazingly.  There still seems to be an economic split between the two halves of Germany.

Entering Poland and refuelling at Stettin, we set off on our final one hour forty minute leg to Olsztyn. As we approached Olsztyn we called the airfield. There was some kind of brief, though unintelligible response when we called, but then, silence. By this time, we were overhead and there seemed to be no signs of traffic.  Keeping a good lookout, and transmitting our intentions and positions we made an approach only to see an aircraft trundle out and cross the runway.  He positioned on a parallel grass runway, so we landed anyway.  The field turned out to be “staffed” on the occasion by a young chap with a hand held radio, who spoke practically no English.  So we parked up and took a short taxi ride to the Novotel, which was everything it should have been and inexpensive to boot.

On the Saturday, we were taken under the wing of the Rotary Club, who took us around and about before the evening function, a wild boar roast over an enormous open fire. This was held in part of a forest in which were planted trees from all over the world. This arboretum is part of the forestry service and local university and is managed by another Rotarian. We met at this point their first District Governor, from ten years ago, when Rotary in Poland had been set up by  Rotarian John Gillott, a former member of our own club in Sheffield, as coincidence would have it.  By this time, we had been joined by several members of French Section IFFR.

While the wild boar was roasting, we were invited to partake of other Polish delicacies all accompanied by various kinds of vodka.  Indicating a large plate of circular, bony looking things, a burly Rotarian said to me “You like smoked eel!”  “I don’t think so, thank you”  “They very good, you try!”  Completely intimidated, I picked at one with a fork, only to discover they were utterly delicious!  “Now you have vodka!” he cried.

The boar roast was punctuated by a tree planting ceremony, but by this time I didn’t know or care why.  All I remember is that Angus did the honours with the spade.

Back at the airfield on Sunday we discovered a hive of activity, with thousands of the locals having a good time.  Jim fancied a ride in the AN-2, but in the end had to settle for the Wilga.  


                    


Now we had had glorious weather all weekend, but the track home had forecasts of wall to wall thunderclouds over Germany. Accordingly, we set off in mid afternoon to see if we could get back to Munster, via Stettin, of course,. As we landed at Stettin, the first flashes of lightning were seen to the West.  We refuelled, but the weather got worse and we resigned ourselves to an enforced overnight stay.  With the aid of a couple of local air taxi pilots, we found a little B & B hotel which, including a couple of rounds of drinks, set us back all of £16 each.  We could still get back on the Monday, although it would be a long day.

Up bright and early and back on the airfield, we were hampered by poor visibility, but managed to get away before too long.  We had changed the routing to stop and refuel at Groningen, in Holland, rather than Munster.  Most of the flight was in pretty reasonable conditions and it seemed that we would be able to refuel and get on our way to Cambridge, though it did begin to cloud up nastily as we entered Holland.  We  arrived in a rain shower, refuelled and set off to see the Met man.  It soon became obvious that there was a horrid circulation of cloud and heavy rain lying across the North Sea and East Anglia.  It looked as if we might be able to fly North about it and make landfall above the Wash in Lincolnshire, but it was itself moving North and discretion being the better half of foolhardiness, another overnight stay was decided on, this time in the little hotel on the airfield, to facilitate another early start.

In the air bright and early (about seven o’clock) we made our way across Holland, coming into heavy layers of cloud as we crossed the coast, and we soon landed at Cambridge.  After our farewells to Jim, we made our way through the scud back to Netherthorpe.

Rotary and the Rotarians of Poland seem pretty much the same as we are used to, and get up to much the same things.  We were struck by the fact that the young people of Olsztyn looked bright and confident and well turned out, but the older people still had a subdued look to them.  Olsztyn itself is quite a pretty place, set in hundreds of square miles of lakes and forests, and doubtless well capable of developing a tourist industry in the future.