October 23, 2013
To the high mountains: For a cold beer or hot grog???
I'm going to have to briefly summarise my first few days in Czech Republic because first of all not that much of great interest happened and second of all I think a cat named Lola Lupeck has eaten my notes.
The country continued its astonishing start, with lots of brilliant cycle routes on quiet roads. The best thing about these cycle routes was that every few kilometres there would be a big map board showing me where these went and where I was. This was really great. In Germany, for example, they have good cycle routes, but they don't have many map boards, so its very difficult to know where you are unless you buy a map, which obviously I would never do as I'm not a millionaire. Czech Republic, therefore, was proving a surprise contender for best place to cycle tour ever.
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Milan and Natalia had warned me about the big mountain range directly west, between where I was and Prague and had told me that I would have to decide whether to go around it to the north or south. I'm no good at making decisions, so I opted instead to just march triumphantly over the top of it. As a result I had to cycle uphill rather a lot, but the scenery, and the simple feeling of being high in the mountains, made that completely worthwhile. In fact I even cycled up to the top of the highest mountain in the region. Near the 1400m summit I was enveloped in thick cloud and consequently the view from the top was of nothing more than a wizard and a restaurant. There's nothing quite like struggling uphill through forest for hours on end, hoping for great views from the wild and untamed summit, only to find they've flattened out the top of the peak, covered it in tarmac, and built an ugly restaurant.
On the way down I actually had a cycle/hiking trail that was not used by cars to enjoy. This was paved, but not as well as I thought and I took the steep descent too fast. I hit a bump and my front right pannier came off at high speed, which collided with the rear right pannier and knocked it loose, causing me to make a controlled fall to my left hand side where my left front pannier also came loose. My bike was falling apart again. I went back to find my front pannier that had come off and saw that it now had a big rip in the side of it. Time to whip out old faithful duct tape again.
23/10/13 - 84km
24/10/13 - 81km
25/10/13 - 83km
26/10/13 - 108km
Today's ride: 356 km (221 miles)
Total: 8,337 km (5,177 miles)
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