14 June 2016 (cloudy and warm with sunny patches) 68 km

Aah, the art of getting up.  Something so simple in everyday life, but slightly more complicated when you’re on the road.  Firstly for me, I have to climb over Pete, trying not to wake him – impossible.  Then I have to unzip the tent inner, then the tent outer, without putting any weight on one knee which still has a scab on it from about four weeks ago.  The tent outer is dripping wet and such is the design of the tent, if you don’t get yourself out of the door quick-smart, it starts dripping inside the tent.  The grass is soaking wet so you have to arrange your jandals on the grass, ready to receive your feet.  Things were complicated even further this morning with cramp shooting down the outside of my right calf, so it was a very ungainly exit from the tent this morning.  Thank goodness I wasn’t dying for a wee as well!

With cycling legends Jap and Adriana

Pete cycled down to the supermarket to get the necessaries for breakfast while I tidied up the tent and uploaded the blog.  When he returned we had our breakfast and Jap and Adriana came over to offer us coffee.  We were very keen to accept but knew we had about 80km to do today so thought we had better hit the road.  As it was we chatted anyway and we didn’t get going until after 10am.  Had a quick look round Litomysl which had more to offer than we had realised so we didn’t start cycling until 11am.

Litomysl Castle

Litomysl

We had a lovely quiet road to start our day, cycling through little villages.  Because Litomysl is on the direct route to Prague, you could sense the wealth here, as well as in the outlying areas.  Sloupnice was a particularly nice village with well-kept houses and gardens.  The signage nearly put us wrong and it was only our innate sense of direction that saw us stop at the top of one particular hill and go “This is wrong” and regretfully turn ourselves round and cycle back down again.  Sure enough, we were right – there had been no need to go up that particular hill at all – annoying!  All in all though this road was a cyclist’s dream.  Very little traffic, good surface, and mostly flat.  We also had pretty good weather which made things even better.

Shrines to Mary and Jesus are commonplace.
Not sure if this is meant to be Mary or Jesus, but they're
having a bad hair day!

At Chocen we stopped to pick up lunch supplies and then had an idyllic ride through crop fields and forest, still with very little traffic and a good surface.  At Borohradec we had a little more confusion over signage and found ourselves on a track through the forest.  I enjoyed it very much as it meant we had to slow the pace down, we had absolutely no traffic and it was a little more interesting steering your bike around the potholes!  That only lasted about 5km and then we were on back roads for a few kms before finally having to join the main road to Hradec Krakove.  We had a good wide hard shoulder for most of the way though so it wasn’t too bad and we ate up the remaining kms.  

one of the many fields of clover we saw and smelt today

cycle touring at it's best!

Then a remarkable thing happened……we saw a sign for camping!  So we turned in the direction it advised and we saw another one!  We came across a handy supermarket to stock up on dinner supplies and they sold cold beer, so we grabbed a couple of those!  Then it was on to the camp where they even had a lake to swim in – which was great seeing as the showers cost 20 kroner each – about $1.20.  I was happy to just have a swim and sit in the sun typing the blog and drinking my cold beer with the sun shining on my back and drying my hair.  Pete went off to try the showers and after he put his 20 kroner in, the bloody thing didn’t work!  He was not a happy chappy!  So then he walked all the way down to reception who then sent him all the way back up past the showers to the restaurant.  They gave him another 20 kroner and luckily that worked.

Something had not agreed with Pete’s stomach – we’re thinking it was the amount of food he’s been eating, particularly the cured meats!  Couldn’t think of anything else as we’ve been eating and drinking the same stuff.  Anyway he came right over the course of the evening and we got chatting to our neighbour, another bikepacker from Germany called Urac.  His English was limited but we got by and exchanged a bit of information.  He was from Dortmund and had caught the train to Dresden and was doing a week in Czechia before catching the train home again.  We made him a coffee and talked until dark, getting to bed at 10.30pm.