Author: Rob Ainsley

As Robert Burns said, the best laid plans of cycle tourers gang aft agley. We finished the Czech End to End today, though things ganged a bit agley. We didn’t have time to explore all that Frýdek-Místek has to offer – we must come back one day when we have a spare ten minutes –…

Another terrible night. I wouldn’t wish long-term seafood poisoning on too many people (although I can think of a few populist politicians). Breakfast was only apple juice and water. I clearly wasn’t going to be cycling all the way to our target of Frýdek-Místek today, our penultimate day. But I managed half or so in…

Things were looking up this morning: my breakfast stayed in, and I quickly got out, reversing the situation of the last few days post-food-poisoning. We followed the path north from Brno along the Svitava River, a lovely little trail on an untrafficked lane that hugged the woodsy waterside. Eventually we rejoined the road, and Nigel…

It was a dishcloth morning: damp, grey, cold, with recent ones unsettlingly indistinguishable from much older ones. Anyway, untrafficked and unfenced lanes trickled their way through farmland and woods, up and then down, flat and then down and then up. At times I felt stranded in some sort of eternally repeating GIF. Not unpleasantly, though….

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…

You never know what a bike tour is going to throw up. This morning, unfortunately, it was the contents of my stomach. At 7am, after a sleepless, writhing and uncomfortable night, I frantically shooed Nigel out of the bathroom, where he was doing what you’d expect – working on his bike – and acknowledge the…

The super-simplified gloss on why Czecho- split from -Slovakia in 1992 is down to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Czechs were essentially Austro, and the Slovaks Hungarian. Clearly there’s far more to it than that; argue with me in the comments below. (NB Comments not available on this page.) But, in terms of guesthouse breakfast, today…

The serious stuff started today. Our destination promised the great hat-trick of Czech features: cheap beer in local bars; a fine historic castle; and the ř, one of the world’s rarest and hardest sounds. (Imagine saying a trilled ‘rrr’, and ‘sh’, while stifling a sneeze. But whatever you do, don’t try to actually say it.)…

The Czechs have wandered about the continent during my lifetime. When I grew up they were in Eastern Europe. After the fall of Communism they were transported to Western Europe. Now, as Czechia, they have resettled in the heart of the EU. All without actually moving a centimetre. The country’s vibrant intellectual and artistic tradition…