Angkor Wat, the Terracotta Army, Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, and… the Schwarzenberg Canal. They’ve all been called the ‘eighth wonder of the world’, and even if the Czech Republic’s contribution to the list may not be quite as famous as the other tourist must-boast-abouts, it has the major advantage of being cyclable. And free. And (fairly) easy to get to.
The Schwarzenberg – or Schwarzenberský, or Švarcenberský, depending on where you sit on the German-Czech spectrum – is a 40- to 50km-long contour canal built around 1790 to swoosh logs from the southern Bohemian forests down to big rivers below, and ultimately to Vienna. There’s a cycle path almost all its length, and it’s a very popular leisure route for family-friendly biking.
I joined the canal today at about its halfway point, south of the town of Nová Pec. I’d got there by one of the Plzeň Region’s many cycle-friendly buses. Normal services don’t take full-sized bikes and have miserable, grumpy drivers who hate cyclists. These however do, on a big trailer towed at the back, and have miserable, grumpy drivers who hate cyclists.
I was in good company: there were a couple of dozen other cyclists using the service. There are also trains to Nová Pec too: public transport gets Czechs almost everywhere in the country. It was great fun chatting to my fellow bus passengers, whether about bike touring, beer or American politics, with Google Translate coming in useful for phrases such as ‘wide knobbly tyres’, ‘IPA’, or ‘scarily dangerous lunatic’.
Riding the Schwarzenberg Canal is a relaxing sort of experience: a flat track of decent gravel or tarmac that follows the twists and sometimes abrupt turns of the narrow watercourse through thick woods and forests.
It’s a highlight of the Iron Curtain Route, which takes cyclists all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea along the old Cold War border. Tim Moore wrote a very funny book about doing the trail on an old East German shopping bike. I was on a small-wheel cycle too – a Dahon touring folder – which was less promising for comedy value but not the metaphorical and literal pain in the arse Tim had.
Occasionally, such as near the eastern end of the canal at Zvonková, there are views over the plains below, on this occasion thanks to a cafe-refreshment stop with draught beer.
I didn’t actually have a beer, but instead a Kofola, a Czechoslovak-era soft drink designed as a sort of Communist rival to Coca-Cola meant to use up surplus industrial coffee syrup. The name is a mix of ‘coffee’ and ‘cola’, so called because it tastes nothing like either.
I left the Schwarzenberg at Zvonková and headed down to the Lipno reservoir, crossed by a ferry with dozens of other cyclists. Good paths took me back to Nová Pec and a bus to Prachatice, with its lovely main square and local brewery.
The brewery also sold Kofola, I’m pleased to say. I’m also pleased to say I didn’t have any. Because thanks to the earlier bus journey, I know the Czech for ‘IPA’.
