September 8, 2014
Novosedley (Cz): I bet you cant even find it on a map
Ken in particular was worried about how today would go as we were off our fantastically good bikeline books and now just picking our way along. It appeared that we would have to take the road to start with but as it turned out it was absolutely fine. There was a heavy mist until about 10am so I thought I was back in Pokeno but the traffic was light and the gradients fairly mild. After our coffee the most direct route turned into a 'B' road so we took an alternative - it sure was steep and the 5km took us around three quarters of an hour. Back to the 'B' road and we saw it actually had hardly any traffic at all and was gently graded so we could just spin along. Up here is really beautiful there are a variety of crops though corn, sugar beet and potatoes are the most dominant. Potatoe harvest is well under way. We saw some huge piles of sugar beet but no actual harvesting - it seems that they dump the beet into big piles and leave it there for a while. Is it so that the sugars will concentrate while they are sitting around ? One interesting crop is pumpkins. These appear to be grown for their seeds rather than their flesh. There was a little town that is having a pumpkin festival next weekend and the whole town was decorated by quaint and most amusing figures with pumpkin faces. The small towns you pass through are very much working towns but like all places in Austria very neat and tidy with every thing done to the highest standard. The agriculture is on a very big scale so no little old tractors.
Laa is the last town before the border. Through we bowled through the usual strange duty free places and were soon in Hevlin. What a culture shock! It makes you feel very sad to see what the prolonged Soviet Era has done to these little towns in rural Czech Republic. Helven is a sad, depressing looking town. It has an information but the woman there could only speak Czech no German or English, we had hoped to change money there but there is no bank. The cycle tracks were good as was our map so on we bowled heading for Novosedley, this is on the edge of the Moravian Grape growing region and looked reasonably large may be a bank, hopefully a hotel. When we got there it had lots of spread out houses, a church, a co op store and a small market selling clothes. There was an old couple walking down the road. Fortunately the word for hotel is the same in Czech as in English. He said ne, ne, ne but she pointed vaguely towards the grapes on the low hills and said Pension Kristina. So here we are and have a very good room for 30E (thankfully they accept euros). The girl running it is fantastic - no English but unbelievably helpful and good at charades. It is fair to say we are well out of our comfort zone.
Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 2,100 km (1,304 miles)
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