Having a folding bike with me in this research trip for the upcoming Bradt Guide to the Czech Rep has been a revelation. A train can get you anywhere major. A bus from there can you get you anywhere minor. And a bike from there can get you anywhere at all. Even places so small they don’t have a pub.
Up in ‘Czech Switzerland’ – the rocking and rolling lands aside the Elbe in the far north, on the German border – I’ve been exploring Swiss-ish looking villages, and making my way via train, bus and bike to or at least near to a Czech speciality: lookout towers.
If there’s a hilltop or mountain summit with a half-decent view, there’ll probably be a tower of some kind that you can climb for a splendid panorama. There’ll usually be a small charge – if it’s open, which it may or may not be depending on day and time – and a lot of steps. But as they say, no pain, no Instagram pic.
Anyway, The last couple of days have been delightful, up in this scenic, quiet and friendly corner of the country. Yesterday, having cycled around the villages of Vysoká Lípa and Mezní Louka the day before, I took a bus to Krásná Lípa which actually had a bike trailer. (Weekend services sometimes do around here.)
I headed along lovely little lanes through some, yes, Swiss-like villages with Helvetica-ish wooden cottages, sort of, up to the village of Vlčí Hora. I thought the roads were quiet – odd, no cars at all – and soon found out why…
…There was a series of bike races going on, as I found when a huge long peloton whooshed right past me. They were very polite and didn’t remark on my presence. I came off the road and pushed along the verge as a few more pulses of differently-timed races hurtled past. Finally I found where their route diverged from mine, and I could resume road cycling.
I bagged the first lookout tower at Vlčí Hora (the mountain itself, rather than the village of that name). It was a short cycle from my rather lovely cottage for the night (Sakura Tiny House). The lookaround view was awesome, and I could even see the famous ‘space-age’ tower of Jěstěd in the distance, round Liberec way.
The second lookout tower was on a gravel bike route not far beyond – a smaller affair, only a few metres high.
The third, at Dymník, was shut by the time I got there, fiveish on Saturday evening. I consoled myself with a view of a ‘Czech Stonehenge’ – more like Callanish, really, a 21st-century bit of fun with some likeably daft premise about spirituality, energy lines and mystery forces. A couple of beers and hearty Czech dinner provided further solace.
Today, after a beautiful and tranquil night in the garden of Sakura Tiny House, I cycled west to Mikulášovice, right on the German border. Just outside town is another lookout tower, that of Tanečnice.
This offers perhaps even better views and panoramas, and you can cycle right up to it at the top of the hill, plus it has one extra major advantage: a super little pub, Koliba, right at the top. (So, OK, in the Czech lands, even the most remote places might still have a pub.)
Here’s a bottoms up, from the top, anyway!
And now, it was all nicely downhill back to Mikulášovice, then a bus, then a train, and I was back to the major places. It has been a fabulous few days of lookout-tower bagging. And that’s not just my point of view.