Kotlina Valley Doesn’t Like Hot Dogs with Ketchup

The morning didn’t feel like the start of an adventure at all - it felt like my body had RSVP’d to panic. Heart racing, stomach doing somersaults, adrenaline already running laps before the first pedal stroke. “START?” it seemed to ask, with a wink. 

This season had been brutal - draining every ounce of energy I had. The last two weeks of off-season were proof of that: watching my Coros Dura drop to 0% and finally letting myself slow down. I even came back to running after a while… but somewhere in the back of my head, a bikepacking trip kept calling. For two years, I’d been waiting to ride the Kotlina400. I promised myself that this would be the year - and once that promise took hold, it took exactly two hours to pack my bags and be on my way at 5 am.

Outside the window: rain pounding so loudly, it sounded personally offended by my plans. Any reasonable human would have gone back to bed. But I might not be a reasonable human… I am doing bikepacking in November. In Poland. By the time I reached the station, I was already soaked from head to toe, while my bike gleamed as if it had just rolled out of a car wash. At that moment, I could have easily turned around and gone home. But instead, I got on the train, the first irreversible decision of the adventure.

In Bystrzyca Kłodzka, I stepped off the train and saw, directly across from me, a large penis spray-painted on the wall. A beautiful, classy monument of local culture. Weirdly, it wasn’t raining anymore, and the air was warm. A good omen? Hard to tell. The first climb - 500 meters and practically fully burgundy on the Coros screen. After the first 100, I was already boiling. A woman on her way to church spotted me crawling up and started cheering like she had just discovered a rising cycling prodigy.

“You’re amazing! I will pray for you!” she called. That blessing carried me farther than any Italian €1 espresso ever could.

I passed peaks - Huta, Barć… and about 10 others, most names immediately erased from my brain. And then came Zieleniec. Visibility: one meter. Wind: pure evil. I didn’t feel like I was riding a route anymore - more like crossing purgatory, doing a full audit of my life decisions. And then - as if the Valley wanted to apologize - the sun. Singletracks winding through the forest, golden patches of grass. Heat returning to my skin. While taking photos, two roe deer showed up in front of me and froze. I froze too.

“Hi, how are we today?” I asked, like a deranged nature influencer. They nodded - I swear they did - and slowly ran off with grace. 

Three hours passed before I realized I hadn’t eaten a single calorie. Emergency Żabka (an almost 24-hour shop in Poland that every cyclist simply loves). Classic hot dog with ketchup - warm, fast, never betrayed me. I was saved. Exactly one hour later, I joked to myself:
“I think Kotlina Valley doesn’t like hot dogs with ketchup.” And apparently, the Valley heard me. Because from that moment, the weather transformed from unpleasant to hunting me for sport. The clouds began chasing me, at first slowly, then like they were fighting for their lives. They surrounded me tighter and tighter, pushing, screaming in their own unearthly language: “Run or we’ll catch you.” That feeling stayed with me till the end of the night. Escapism. 

Climbs continued their love language: brutality. Every section marked in burgundy on the map felt like the trail was pushing a finger into my shoulder, making sure I understood who was in charge. And yet… I loved it. The feeling of being out of shape, combined with that burning ache in my calves.

Just before some guarded area, a man shouted: “Where are you rushing and why not on an e-bike?. “Four hundred kilometers on a battery doesn’t really work,” I answered. He paused, pointed at me, and shouted: “My heroine!” And I disappeared again into the mountains.

Then came the Mountain of All Saints (seriously, that’s the name). I would call it a climb, but that implies pedaling. This was a pilgrimage. Piko messaged me that if I was there, the worst climb was behind me. A climb? I had just walked the entire way up like a medieval wanderer with a bike instead of a cross, „a spiritual ascent with wheels.”.

The thing about the Kotlina400 route is that you don’t really meet other humans. So whenever I finally came across people near a shop, I instantly transformed into the most social version of myself - borderline desperate to talk to anyone who breathed. Żabka in Nowa Ruda - a boy tells me I have a cool bike. I asked what exactly he thinks is cool. He said: “The color is  n i c e”. I said - “I thought the new Di2”. Conversation over. Expectations reset. Nice try Justine.

I climbed the Great Owl (1,014 m) with visibility of exactly one meter - which is a fun way of saying I basically summit­ed a cloud. Reached the top, began descending, instantly turned back — the wind shelter looked like a five-star hotel to me. And I always dreamed about wild camping there… Sweet. Coffee from my stove into the thermal bottle for the morning. And kisiel (a warm fruit starch dessert) - my personal symbol of childish freedom. Fell asleep feeling like the world’s happiest goblin.

At night, I heard scraping. It happened again. In the morning, I discovered the truth - my breakfast sandwich that I’d left on the bench was gone. Outside stood a fox staring at me with the exact mischievous look of my dog Chilli. Something possessed me, and I threw him a stick. He chased it. We didn’t speak the same language, but we understood each other. He kept a respectful distance and company until I packed up. When I left, he watched me with sadness and tiny regret in his eyes: “Come back sometime.”

Snow came later. I stuck out my tongue to catch flakes like a six-year-old. That’s the thing about these trips - you become feral and innocent at the same time. The Silver Mountain - an area I know by heart. But the route teased me, leading beside the enduro trails I ride for fun and train on. I even climbed toward Trail B for a moment, tempted to feel the rush of descending it… Why not? But I moved on.

Cold returned, headphones died, thoughts drifted. For no reason at all, I went back to thinking about hot dogs - and about that Fizik hoodie that still has a ketchup stain from one. Strange what the brain chooses when it’s tired. And then: 15 km before Bardo - the plot twist no one writes about in training plans. Two roe deer crossed ahead. I slowed down, checked both sides, waited - clear. I rolled forward…

Seconds later, I got full-body rugby tackled by another one. My hand reached out instinctively, my wrist twisted weirdly, and my ribs slammed into a rock. Cold vanished. Fatigue vanished. Adrenaline took the wheel (perfect place for a “surprise motherf****er meme”).

I rode, walked, stumbled toward Bardo with one arm hanging like a sling over my backpack. In Żabka - breakfast at last. Another hot dog. But when the woman handed it to me, the bun was black. I stared. Did I hit my head? I asked a random lady next to me whether she sees the black bun too. She confirmed. We both processed it with WTF faces.

Direct train to Wrocław from Bardo in 30 minutes - salvation. Just 800 meters of walking and a massive staircase to reach platform 2. No elevator. No ramp. I growled like a wounded animal dragging its bike up a castle tower. People stared.

On the platform, covered in mud and grime, someone’s daughter asked:
“Mum, what is that lady doing, and why is she so dirty?” The mother whispered, “She doesn’t have a home.”

And you know what? In that moment, after everything Kotlina Valley put me through…
It didn’t feel entirely wrong. Because for almost two days, home wasn’t a place. Home was the route, the trails, the climbs and singletracks, the fox, the snow, the wind, the freshly brewed coffee, and every smile along the way.

The Kotlina400 organizer/ Piko Puławski wrote:
“This route lives its own life, and you can expect everything to happen.”
He wasn’t joking. This trip reminded me of something I tend to forget: I need more random bikepacking trips. More wild decisions. More learning how to handle stressful situations alone in the forest and accepting the moment as it is. Because truly - how many times in your life do you get rammed by a roe deer in the middle of nowhere?

And about the title "Kotlina Valley Doesn’t Like Hot Dogs with Ketchup” - let’s just say that every time I ate one, the Valley got angry. Rain, storms, clouds chasing me like debt collectors, bad omens… So if I ever come back  - and I will - maybe I’ll just order a croissant.

Event page: https://kotlina400.pl/
Link to the route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/50249342
More about it: https://bikepacking.com/routes/kotlina400/