Day 75: Furth im Wald to Stod

June 26, 2022

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Sometimes when you have booked your room "breakfast included" the invoice that you end up getting shows the breakfast as a separate item. In fact, it often further details breakfast food and breakfast drink. But it's all irrelevant, since you paid a lump sum breakfast included price.

But other times, breakfast is a separately quoted option. That forces you to think, how much do they want, and is it worth it? That was the case this morning, when breakfast was offered separately at 10 euros each. We took a look at it and said, naah, since we knew there was a grocery down the block. The grocery was open on Sunday, which most are not, and that was what we were counting on. But when we got there we found only the bakery and not the whole grocery was the open part, and the bakery had only sweet stuff, with none of the traditional meat and cheese sandwiches. We bought a pile of what turned out to be low quality sweet stuff - 15 euros. Darn!

We found a shady bench, ate our low quality sweets, and were off toward the Czech republic. But wait, first a peek at the Furth altstadt. Could it have an open market? No, in fact this early on a Sunday it did not even have a person.

For some reason, Furth is big on George and the Dragon.

I did not purposely make this shot look like the funny houses at Niagara Falls, but here you have it. Was there an earthquake going on? Was I falling off my bike?

Here is a straighter look at the glockenspiel on that rathaus!

We started climbing within a couple of km of Furth, and soon could look down from up on a ridge. At that point we entered the Czech Republic. It had taken us almost four years to get back, after our hasty departure in 2019. A young woman mountain biker came along at that point, and surprisingly - given our experience in the rest of the day - stopped for a moment to chat. Worried about hills for today, I asked her what lay ahead of us. Her answer only covered about 5 km, and she said it was all downhill to Babylon. I felt it was kind of early for strange biblical metaphors, but whatever! The woman continued, explaining that we could go swimming at Babylon, and seemed a trifle miffed at our disinterest.

Nice signage, but none of this actually carried on and helped us during the day.

The woman was at least right that some downhill was coming up. We passed through an extremely pleasant forest, observing the straight logs that had been cut from the managed stand, and enjoying the shady path.

Our first Rosetta Stone for Czech language. Our first word learned is Pozor!

There were some struggles behind our pleasant forest ride.

At the bottom of the forest, we reached ..Babylon. Ok, it's a place here. Who knew. Babylon is not really a town, but just an area known for its several, presumably swimmable, ponds. The sign says they are slightly radioactive, and good for your rheumatism. Oh yeah?

All we saw of Babylon, other than the ponds, was a pizzeria and a casino. Casinos make be a thing hereabouts, because we later saw one or two others.

We next embarked on the 11 km "Aquaduct Trail", one of several bits and pieces that made up our overall track for the day. The local authorities have put in a good effort, posting signs covering historical facts about sections of the route. After a while, though, we overflowed our abiity to absorb all the information.

The Aquaduct Trail started confusingly in somebody's back yard.

A nice shelter and educational signage - In Czech, German, and English.

The first, and sort of only, major town on our way today was Domazlice. We find the Czech names hard to grab onto, but in the end, since they are written in our alphabet, it is not really a hardship to remember them and deal with road direction signs. But it was not just the alien feel of place names that we were beginning to be aware of by this point. When we crossed that border, we really had instantly dived into rural, small town, Czech Republic. We noticed 100% of the not that many people we passed stared stonily forward, and did not respond to any greetings. The houses too, while ok, were noticeably crumbly compared to Germany. We would see and learn more of this during the day.

Here is the main street of Domazlice. It's very cute, but on closer inspection, in need of repair.

The church is in the centre of the main street.

From Domazlice, our route continued with a lot of climbing and descending, on paved path and on gravel. It's mostly a sweaty blur, but the photos do help to tell the story.

This gravel was step enough that Dodie pushed.

Again, climbing yielded beautiful views.

At some points, the road had many cherry trees. Though they were sour cherry, they were still good to eat, and to think about all the jams and pies one could make. Apple trees were also part of the roadside line up.

It began to look as if we were pulling a really long and hot day, as the trail was getting ready once again to head off up a ridge. But cycle signs suggested we should stay down. We found that our route is Route 3, and the signage for it was excellent.

The signage was yellow and black like this, and really helped.

It turned out that the route had been developed and improved in 2019-2022, and was now shorter and better than the one in our Bikeline book and associated track. The improved route and its signage really saved us a lot of sweat!

In Stankov the river looks like it needs a bath!

This guy was roaming in what looked like the gardens of a crumbling former monastery or government building.

On the other hand, this sure beats Italy for fruit colouring.

This shelter was one of a few built as part of the route redevelopment.

This is the name of the one who built the shelter. I took the photo because I would like to phone and say thanks for the shade.

Just by Holysov we ran into huge fields of this crop. But we have no idea what it is. Parts of it were prickly, I found!

Just when we were feeling really good about the route and the signage, it decided to take us up and down a mountain, with a gravel path that was clearly mountain bike and not loaded touring bike territory.

We pushed up and up and to some extent down and down, until at the bottom the kind trail people came up with this shelter. We flailed on past, though, and did not read any of the books.

In the same area, this recycling installation shows, we think, how much trash by type is collected, or thrown on the trail?

With some additional overheated slogging, we finally arrived in Stod. Frankly, I had to check the blog title to remember "Stod", and I also don't remember how we passed through town and found our guesthouse. I mean, I was just following Dodie, but I bet she does not remember either.

We came to a stop in front of the building, which is directly on the sidewalk. A lady exited, and gave us to know that our bikes should clear off. My reaction was the same as what Dodie's had been in Munich, but it was less effective, because the lady understood not one word of English. Still, I gave her to know that she and I were going inside to talk, before any bikes went anywhere.

Inside there were two additional ladies, whose collective English still added to zero. I am trying not to be an ugly tourist, expecting the world to speak my language, but there are 1.3 billion English speakers in the world, and collectively you would think we could get a hotel room!

The situation was stabilized by three local cyclists who were near the desk, and who jumped in to translate. Even in translation, some issues remained - like no secure place for the bikes (despite assurances on Booking), no breakfast until 9 a.m., possibility they could prepare something tonight, but no way to determine what would be prepared or for how much, the need to pay for breakfast separately (but could be by card), etc. etc.

In the end, after the cyclists had to leave, it turned out to be Google Translate that bridged any remaining gaps. So now we have our breakfast sandwiches stashed away, though we have been afraid to open them to examine what could be a weird liver pate as their major component! Our bikes are taking their chances in the back garden.

We are glad that our Euros card was accepted and worked here, because we have only 12,000 kroner, that we had brought along from home. 12,000 kroner?!, well yes, because each is worth only 4 euro cents. I gave the lady 200 kroner for the two breakfasts.

What Gave Meaning to Life today? The municipalities of Holysov and Stankov that chipped in with other communities to make our route safer, shorter, and cooler.

Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 4,220 km (2,621 miles)

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