The town is certainly worth the visit, but we are relieved to escape from the coaches bearing down from the north, as Mike and his GPS finds us a lovely little back road, right through farmyards at times. The little brown chickens and the farmers, picking another crop of cherries, just ignore us.
Now we are on one of the loveliest roads we have ever cycled, an undulating smooth tarmac way shared with hardly a car, past small herds of Herefords, fields of mauve poppies and woods.
Only a handful of tourists have found the peaceful village of ZLATA KORUNA, with it's monastery and ancient cottages, where we pause to eat lunch under a tree.
CESKE BUDEJOVICE, a big city with an old walled centre, is famous as the home of Budweiser beer. Again the outskirts are a large area of high rise coloured flats, and an even bigger Tesco's! There is a good river cycle route all the way through. For the first time in quite a while we meet other touring cyclists, mainly Czech.
We look for a Pension for the night at HLUBOKA NAD VLTAVOU but only see Hotels in the cobbled town centre. The tourist office give us the business card of a private house on a side road. The lady owner shows us the fantastic apartment, furnished totally with antiques and with a conservatory overlooking trees, giving us close views of Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and Redstarts - perfect. We are staying 2 nights as we are way ahead of schedule and it gives us a good chance to do the washing and get maps out to plan the next phase - 2500 miles completed.
We join other diners at tables outside a town centre restaurant. Thunder and lighting have the staff rush us inside just before an enormous deluge. The chap in charge then pulls a screen down, switches on his computer and entertains us with old black and white family photos. The little boy in beret and knickerbockers, looks familiar and then we realise it is the elderly owner, sitting quietly with his wife near us. Their wedding photos looked like something from 100 years ago!
We have castle fatigue so walk up the hill to the local pile mainly for the view, but are so glad we did, as it is a magnificent place, a hunting lodge the size of Hogwarts, with lots of nooks and crannies, though not very old as it was restyled c1850.
There is a new tarmaced cycle route up the side of the Vltava valley where the river has been damned to the stillness of a lake. It leads to tranquill villages such as PUKAREC, where not surprisingly, recreational fishing is the main activity.There is a lot of damage from last weeks storm with apple and rowan trees wrenched to the ground on many farms. We have crossed hundreds of railway lines on this trip, and now most are now without barriers , so we have to try and remember to look! Little local 2 carriage trains in red and cream chugg slowly between tiny rural stations. At BECHYNE the railway line shares a tarmac narrow bridge over a very deep gorge - I suppose the cars just move over when a train comes.
We get back onto the Greenway cycle route to Prague at the large town of TABOR, another walled old town centre with cobbled square. The campsite is in a wood on the outskirts near a small wooden restaurant where Friday night brings a folk band and a large crowd of locals. Many of the tunes sound familiar, but not the Czech words!
The cycle route sign states 100k to Prague. It is signed well most of the way and we make good progress on the village and forest roads. It is a bit of a slog after lunch by a pond as we follow a river up a valley for 20k to get through the high hills just south of Prague. At the top we have a view of Prague's suburbs stretching for miles under the cloudless sky. We stop and take a big modern room in the first pension we spot in the suburb of PRUHOVICE. The lady owner (it always is a lady) lends us her maps of Prague so we can plan how to visit the city over the next few days.
Miles to date 2,618
Location:KAPLICE to PRUHONICE
