A full day’s cycling today, involving a lot of hills, and Czechia’s most bizarre garden. I managed to ride the whole rather challenging route thanks to (1) a long sleep last night and (2) bland supermarket food, curated to not further upset a stomach chaotically overturned by those radioactive mussels in Prague.
Heading out of Kolín in the early morning I glimpsed the pleasant town square that I’d missed yesterday when I had other things on my mind, and in my stomach.
After some country lanes – very quiet this Sunday morning – we passed all too quickly through Kutná Hora.
The town boomed on silver-mining money in medieval times, and its fine buildings and squares rival Prague’s. If you photograph them from the right place, which we didn’t. I must come back.
Czechia seems a good place for cycle routes, I must say. There are lots of decent to excellent bike paths, off-piste and even some on-piste roads are generally quiet, and you see a fair number of traditional cycle tourists with steel frames and panniers.
There are also lots of leisure cyclists, many of whom we passed today. And many more of which overtook me.
It was a scenic but wearying ride today, though. Everything was either up or down, and you could hardly hear the birdsong for the clacking of my downtube shifters as I roamed through the gears.
In the village of Rváčov, one particularly long and sapping ascent through woods revealed an obscure surprise. It was a roadside garden crammed with hundreds, maybe thousands, of mannekins, dolls, dummies, and other human effigies. Many consist only of heads; many others lack body parts.
It’s a grisly, unsettling vision. Revenge of the Crash Test Models. The dressmaker’s apocalypse. An overenthusiastic 1970s episode of Dr Who. The work, apparently, of one Lubomir Votava, a tractor driver turned extreme-right politician. And, now, artistic assembler of gruesome humanoid tableaux.
Shuddering a little, we continued through the woods, which now felt spookier than hitherto. A final grateful descent took us to our Wellness Penzion, a calm, light and airy oasis of clean rooms, sauna, and inexpensive restaurant.
Mindful of those vengeful mussels, I ate and drank cautiously. There were still hills to climb both topographic and gastric.
Miles today: 63
Miles since Cheb: 236