Last night, my Czech friend Mirek wrote to me, offering to pick us up. He said the weather looks really bad, and you don’t want to finish the trip so wet.

I ‘politely’ declined. Tony and I both agreed that it would take something horrendous weather wise to agree to that. We wanted to finish, what we started, on our bike. Besides, our final day was a shorter, easier ride…well on paper we thought it was!

We checked the forecast. We could see his point. Weather forecasts can change overnight, and we had our fingers crossed. On the plus side, it was not going to be cold.

Waking up I checked and it was pouring down big time.

By the time we finished breakfast and changed clothes, the rain was easing! YES!

We headed out of Kutna Hora, up a hill and onto nice quiet country roads. The first village was Grunta, boasting about 20 houses and this amazing church.

We passed through the large town of Kolin but did not stop until we were back onto a bike path that followed the river Elbe. We had ridden through Kolin on our very first day.

It was a great sealed path and we enjoyed it…shared pathways are slower to ride on, but you can relax as there is not the traffic to contend with. Many are also used by local residential traffic so you can’t totally switch off.

Some photos from this section. There were taverns along the way. I imagine on a sunny summers day it would be a very pleasant place to chill out.

Note the cycle path signage. The Czechs have done a great job. No new infrastructure for bikes. What they do is use existing infrastructure, work our routes, map them, signage and at infrequent intervals larger area maps on the side of the road. This would be simple to do in Tasmania with minimal $ spent.

The plan was to stop in Podebrady for a coffee. I like Podebrady. The weather was looking ok.

The approach to Podebrady was very nice. Different aspect to my previous visits there.

We headed straight to a coffee shop we were familiar with adjacent to the main town park. We had not seen this part of the park before.

Whilst sitting in the cafe I was texting Mirek our whereabouts. I asked him the following…and then his response…

Awesome! We had enjoyed our ride on the sealed bike path to Podebrady and we looked forward to continuing on a ‘sealed’ path to Cekalovice, which is situated adjacent to the same river.

It started off nicely. The town in the distance is Nymburk.

The town fortification was interesting. It began soon after the town was established around 1275, with the more significant work carried out during the reign of King Vacaville II from 1288 to 1305,and a latter section in 1337 during the reign of John of Luxembourg.

The fortification is around 7-8 metres high, and had 50 towers. A deep defensive moat once existed in front of the walls.

The walls were badly damaged during the Thirty Year War in the 17th century, and reconstructed during the early 1900’s.

The town has a nice tower clock.

On the other side of town the sealed path turned to a single track. Narrow and slow. As we went on it became quite muddy and slippery in patches, and I ended up walking, pushing or using my bike as a scooter for the worst sections up twisting slopes.

I made a mental note to have a chat about the word ‘sealed’…I don’t think it translated! 😂😂 . Having said that though, it was ‘kinda’ fun, and slowed our progress to finishing our odyssey. Let’s face it, I did not really want to finish.

After fiddle farting around on the dirt for 10 km or so, drops of rain were felt. Wind was getting stronger, and we were at a bridge crossing the river Elbe.

We made an executive decision to hit the true, sealed road and head directly to the finish post.

12 km or so, and it was all over bar the photographs, memories, some scars from falls, 2 refrigerator magnets ( our sole souvenir purchases), 2 dirty bikes and lots of stories to tell.

Todays map….

Would I do it again? Heck Yes! I would start it all over tomorrow, no questions asked.

Tomorrow we train into Prague so keep,watch!

Another great day to ride. We have had five days straight with no rain! Garmin told me it was 26 degrees Celsius at its peak!

Our bikes were not in our rooms ( up two steep flight of narrow steps), but stored here surrounded by linen and stuff! When we headed to our room after our dinner the previous night, there were table cloths on the bikes, disguising them! We were the only guests in the penzion.

Leaving Tabor was slow…the cobblestone shuffle!

Looking back along the river this was the view.

The views today were not dissimilar to yesterday. Lakes, rivers, agricultural fields (wheat and canola), dotted with villages every few km or so.

We stopped for coffee in Vlasim.

More lovely water scenes…this one has a guy fishing.

Beautiful fields, and we did wonder what the beautiful maroon coloured plant was.

About 10 km later, I investigated….notwithstanding the fact that I inadvertently walked through a bunch of stinging nettle in the process. Both legs got well and truly ‘done’! A pretty plant. Any ideas what it is? The leaves were like a three leaf clover.

Tony and I have been impressed with all of the newer sealed roads in the Czech Republic. They have a really thick layer of bitumen and no obvious joins , like ours on the Bass Highway, where a thin seal is applied. Then they are constantly patching it up like a patch work quilt.

We encountered a reasonable amount of roadworks today. Here they have scraped back ready for a re seal on a side section. Take a look though…there are three layers, and those top two are thick. I put my drink bottle there for reference.

Shame we cannot do a better job with our bitumen.

Today was quite hilly, and as I mentioned earlier, quite hot. It was a pleasant surprise, at the top of a climb to find this little pop up shop. Yes, we had an icecream.

More nice scenery.

On the outskirts of Kutna Hora this amazing church came into view.

I had one main goal in Kutna Hora, and it was not this church, but one a few km on the other side of town.

After finding accomodation and the usual routines, we headed off on foot to a very ‘special’ and ‘entirely different’ church. The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossiary, a world famous, UNESCO listed church since 1995.

It is the memorial site, final resting place for 60,000 people! The church was part of the oldest Cistercian monastery in Bohemia, founded in 1142.

The cemetery was greatly extended during the 14th century epidemics, with around 30,000 buried there.

In the spring of 1421, the Hussites troops captured Kutna Hora, attacking the area of the church, killing another 10,000 people requiring burial.

At the end of the 15th century, the cemetery was reduced in size, with bones from abolished graves were relocated to the ossuary.

The bones were decoratively arranged in the 16th century, then rearranged some 30 years later, then again in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It is certainly mind blowing seeing so many remains….some skulls have shiny heads from people rubbing them.

Extensive renovation and archeological works are currently underway. They have found more bodies.

It is quite confronting, despite the fact that we went there knowing what we would see. 60,000 people!

Walking back to accomodation we walked past the Cathedral. To the left is a cream coloured building. It is an unusual museum, but given the number of people smoking in Europe maybe it’s popular. It is owned and run by Philip Morris, of course!

We walked around this church..no doors open today.

Tony found himself a new friend. Personally he was a bit too plastic for me.

The clouds are gathering. The forecast is not great. Tomorrow we finally return to our starting point in Cekalovice, some 20 km north of Prague. Nice weather would be great….

Tomorrow also marks 5 weeks since we left Cekalovice. Wow!

Another day, another journey, another story.

Todays map and chart.

Thanks for reading

Ooroo

Today was an awesome day to ride in the Czech Republic, as we approach our final days. The weather behaved, the route was great and we had a really chillaxed ride.

We chose to walk out of the old Cesky Krumlov town, as the cobbles are so uneven with tyre width gaps.

Our final views of a wonderful town. We walked through this arch and whilst crossing a bridge, took a look back towards the castle.

This was our route today.

Sunday morning is a great time to ride. We have found each Sunday to be much quieter and today was no exception. As the day went on, the main traffic were other cyclists of all shapes, sizes, ages and capability.

It was an up and down rolling day.

Predominantly great roads. The smile says it all.

A cute horse and cart…taken on the fly, the man was cut out, but the horse is nice!

There were numerous lakes today intertwined with forests.

We stopped for a coffee break half way, in the town of Trebon. It seems to be a centre for all things bikes. Every place has bike racks. The lakes around the town have heaps of different riding routes.

Leaving Trebon we felt some rain spots. Dark clouds had rolled over whilst we had our coffee. Fortunately our direction was different to the rain clouds and we were delighted!

The theme of lakes, rivers and forest continued.

Reaching the outskirts of Tabor, we finished our ride with a nasty little climb to the old town, passing other cyclists who pushed their bikes up the hill.

We did not have any accomodation booked, so I whipped my iPad out and sourced a Penzion some 500 metres away.

We took an immediate like to the old town. It was humming. The market square had a large screen up with cycling! We thought awesome!

We showered and walked back into the square, noting ice hockey was now on, so we wandered around to check the old town out.

The rest of the town was pretty quiet really. I think they must have all been watching the ice hockey.

The Old Castle was interesting, but closed. It is the oldest building in Tabor and dates back to the second half of the 13th century. The importance of the castle for fortification purposes was lessened by time and fires to such an extent that it was turned into a brewery around 1612.

Only one tower of the four remains.

Returning to market square, there were big celebrations. We checked out the screen and noticed that the Czech Republic were playing Russia. The Czechs had just scored a goal to take a 2-1 lead in the match.

We remembered then that the ice hockey world championships are currently on in Bratislava, Slovenia. We had noticed the signs when we were there nearly 4 weeks ago.

The match was for the bronze medal.

We decided to have dinner at a restaurant in the square seated so we too could watch.

This was our view.

Russia levelled the scores….it was a very tense, scoreless, third and fourth quarter and the match went to a penalty shoot out in Russia’s favour. Not what the crowd wanted.

As the Russian national anthem was about to be played, the screen was switched off. All over red rover!

Someone enjoyed his dinner in the warm sun. We realised that after 35 days on the road touring this was our first evening meal where the conditions were warm enough to be outside.

Tomorrow the weather is looking ok again!!! Two days left on the road. 😢

Thanks for reading

Ooroo