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.)
I started with a bit of dawn bike maintenance, putting on new brake blocks in the hotel lobby in Karlovy Vary. Being able to clean up not just with a hand-wash but a sauna was a welcome feature, though it did make me want to go back to bed. With in-room coffee and leftover brioches as breakfast we set out at half eight into a sunny but cold morning.
We climbed up a forest road through woods. Nigel’s Brompton coped effortlessly with the gravel surfaces; all this bumping and clattering was clearly doing his hub gear and luggage support bracket absolutely no harm at all. (Sub – please cross-check with later blog entries in Danish bike shops.)
There was no sound apart from tyres on gravel, birdsong, and the faint sound of Nigel’s ‘hill climbing’ playlist from his onboard music system far in front of me, and I was happy.
I wasn’t quite so happy over the next hour or two, as the route – Eurovelo 4, no less – proved to have many terrible surfaces. We did a lot of pushing. Good quiet minor road would be followed by rutted farm track; fine smooth bike path would turn into a rocky, rooty plummet. Often it was too technical for us, by a margin of about 10% gradient and 20mm tyre width. It would have challenged even a teenage mountain biker. Which neither of us is, by a margin of about 50 years.
Eurovelo, we’re not angry with you. Just disappointed. We just want to know who told you that this was an adequate surface.
Going was so slow we had lunch over halfway through the day timewise but under a third of the way distancewise, at Žlutice. The town has a historic centre, albeit an unphotographable one today thanks to the roadworks. Google phones’ image apps don’t yet have a ‘remove diggers, fences and barriers from foreground’ tool.
We had another lunch, in village further on, at one of the copious and welcome picnic benches. It was nearly two and we had over fifty miles to go, but it was downhill from here. Not very busy B-roads, empty B-roads, car-free riverside paths: it was all rather enjoyable.
I saw some wildlife too. Actual moving wildlife, not squashed roadkill. Deers, herons, buzzards, kestrels. I did see a kingfisher too, but only a wooden statue.
So, we got to Křivoklát about six, a small town but well-provided with bars, restaurants and guesthouses thanks to its castle, dramatically overlooking the place from the top of a bluff. Our friendly guesthouse host spoke German but not English, which was fine as we can drink beer in German, and he had two bottles in the fridge waiting for us.
Dinner was in a pizzeria and bar round the corner: £5 for the house special and under £2 for a ‘pint’ of Zlatý Bažant – a Slovak beer actually – all of which I ordered in Czech to the amusement of locals. Zlatý bažant means ‘golden pheasant’, so maybe that’s another bit of wildlife I can add to the list.
Another excellent day.
Miles today: 70
Miles since Cheb: 115