Day 29: Jindrichuv Hradec to Tabor

April 16, 2019

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Even though Jindrichuv Hradec is a fairly big town (about 1/4 the size of our own BC capital of Victoria), once you pass out of the peaceful central square through the town gate, you find yourself in just in the peaceful area beyond the gate. And in a minute, you are on a riverside path. Actually, let's not get carried away. The GPS seemed to lead us from the riverside path to a real riverside "Greenway". But wait, the track in the GPS is blue and the river is blue. Pretty soon we could be swimming!

Dodie compensated for this glitch by having the GPS show the track in red. No red sized roads to be confused by here, only blue rivers.

The centre of town is uncrowded and peaceful

But what will we find when we venture outside the wall?

Ok, but too much Greenway is not a good thing! Better re-jig the GPS.

As we cycled along now, we had not the slightest idea of what sort of terrain, ecology, road conditions, or sights we would run in to. I struck me that this differs from us in Canada, U.S., England, France, Austria, or Germany. With these countries we have a fairly good idea of the regions and cities, and what to generally expect in each place. But in Czech, as least for now, it's all new and mysterious.

Who built this and why? There is stuff like this all along our ride.

We rolled into the central square of Dirna shortly thereafter, and spotted a post office. At least it had all the traditional signage. But inside, nothing. a man nearby said be sure to close the door when we go. Mystery. Now when I said "central square" of Dirna, I sure don't mean Times Square. I mean this:

We returned to the road, and as seemingly every day, it was easy to get a representative picture that looks really ideal, like this:

Typical road today, sort of. Unlike other days or roads, we were having about one car, or more likely big truck, overtaking us per 30 seconds.

Passing through various villages, I began yattering to Dodie about how unique it was that the villages had certainly no illuminated signs, and in fact very few signs overall. No McDonald's, no traffic lights, Just the predictable fairly plain (and closed) church, huddled buildings, central square.

But the part about not knowing really where we were began to take over, as stuff popped up that did not fit my simple model. First we passed over a real autobahn style road. But ok, at least it had no cars on it. That fits.

But next was some suburban house development, or at least newish detached buildings in primary colours. This set me up to be blown away by a real city type street that even had a traffic light. And after than, a row of ticky tacky houses. My effort to find a stable understanding of where were travelling was shot!

What was going on was that we were approaching Tabor. With a population of 34,000, this is the biggest town we have been in. We could see Tabor up on a hill in the distance. The main town is on a hill or ridge, with a lake on one side and a river on the other. We crossed a bridge and then had the chore of climbing the ridge. There were not a lot of routes by which one could do this. In fact, all we could see was a narrow path that comprises the official Greenway way. Up we went, barely pushing the bikes. But halfway workers had both ripped up the path and blocked it with equipment. They waved us away, but maybe only half heartedly. Dodie carried on up to the workers and engaged the first one in conversation. This is a good trick, since the workers spoke only Czech. Dodie showed her GPS screen and indicated if not here, then where? That was too hard for the workers, so they took the easy way out. I pushed and carried my bike through a narrow opening in the obstruction, and they helped Dodie push hers. A big dumptruck backed down the narrow track - good work backing! Beep, beep, beep. The truck occupied the whole space. Ok not quite, we sneaked around it. And yes, we emerged in Tabor.

A difficult conference. Our way ahead is straight forward in this picture, if you can believe it.

Dodie informed me that our destination was the "Grand Tabor" hotel. This seemed normal to me, as why would renowned travellers stay in anything less. (How quickly he forgets that two days ago they were scoping out bus shelters!).

The Grand Tabor turned out to be directly in front of us as we emerged from the steep path.It was indeed a large structure, but cloaked in scaffolding. I don't think whatever they were doing that needed scaffolding was actually going to enhance the building. It clearly had lost a lot of its character in previous renovations. For better or worse, it also had a Billa grocery store in its lower level.

The Grand Tabor, under (dubious) renovation.

The hotel in the early 20th century. It was built 1835.

We found that "Reception" was accessed through one small door. I went through that and up some stairs. I am an expert now, so I was not phased when what I came to was mainly a hairdresser.

Well now, here was another (locked) door. Let's ring that buzzer. Things improved from that point, as a lovely couple appeared from the door. (We later learned they are soon to be married.) Yes, they were expecting us. They would both come to the street and help with the bikes and bags. The bikes would be living in a room up one set of stairs, so help would be good.

This stuff will be sorted out in no time.

Yes, in no time we were in a very serviceable room, and able to walk out to look at the town. And hey, at least here, no traffic lights or ticky tacky.

One of our first stops was in a toy shop. Sorry grandkids, we didn't actually buy anything. But we were struck by how free the place was of plastic junk. The toys were high quality wood and fabric, puppets, music boxes, puzzles.

The streets also, while certainly boasting shops, and more than one eis cafe, were very conservative. No glitz, no crowds, modest signs, and buildings of interesting design.

This building near the hotel is being put to a modern use.

We found that the church was open, and went in for a quick look. It is called the Deanery Church of Lord's Transfiguration, and is from 1451!

Interior decoration seems to take something from the style of the buildings outside, with appliqued plaster.

Back at the Grand Tabor, we went and had a peek over the ridge at the lake.

Then we dove into the Billa. Dodie was sorry there were no bikes to guard, so she got me going around with her inside. She says I always want to buy the wrong things, and want to look at everything in the whole store. Maybe true! But here is just one observation. We have seen literally no flat out "bakeries" in Czech, so different from France. So where do you get your ponski's? It looks like Billa could be a player, in addition to the "Co-op" grocery stores we see in each village. And what of those really weak sort of baguette buns? Same answer.

These weak buns have been the mainstay at many of the breakfasts.

Ponski's - though the sign has some other words.

Another piece of "glitz" seemingly missing from Czech life is prepared or convenience food - like salads or microwave meals. But there is a micro down the hall here, and I grabbed a packaged Kung Pao chicken in Billa. So in a few minutes we will leave Czech and travel over the microwaves to exotic Sichuan Province!

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 1,583 km (983 miles)

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