“What was that?!” Pete hissed as he slapped me on the arm to
wake me.
‘How the hell would I know, I was fast asleep’ was what I
was thinking, but I could hear something rummaging noisily through the rubbish
bin about ten metres behind our tent. It
was intent on getting something out of there and didn’t care who heard it. I hoped it wasn’t Urac feeling left out and
underfed when I only offered him coffee and not dinner.
Curiosity was killing us so Pete quickly unzipped the tent
and popped his head out but could not make out what it was before it slipped
away. Safe to say it wasn’t Urac though
as his tent was tightly zipped up and he got to sleep through the whole thing.
Pete woke up at 5.50am so went across to the toilets and put
the computer on charge before starting into the chores around the tent, such as
removing the bike lock and the plastic bags we put over our seats each
night. He investigated the rubbish bin
and the plastic bag had been ripped to pieces by whatever it was last
night. He also moved a handy bench into
the sun and arranged some washing in the already warm sunshine. Yes the day looked promising and we were keen
to get started on today’s ride, with a nearly fully charged computer and a good
route mapped out. But first it was into
the historic town of Hradec Krakove for a look around. It was another beautiful old town and we are
feeling quite spoiled at getting to see one lovely town square after another.
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| Hradec Krakove Town Square |
Then we were on the hunt for a supermarket on our way out of
town and found one not far from the town centre. It wasn’t great but we got what we needed and
set about trying to find our way out west.
This was a bit tricky with a few false turns, but we got there in the
end. As we left the confines of the
city, it was a huge relief to be on the country roads with very little traffic
again. However, the weather was
definitely deteriorating and the temperature dropped markedly – it must have
gone down to 12C and started raining. A
handy bus stop appeared and we commandeered this to eat our breakfast. Luckily nobody came along and we enjoyed the
shelter it offered us as the weather really closed in. We broke out the warm leggings and woolly
socks along with polarfleeces and jackets.
The rain was in no hurry to leave, so we turned the computer on and
finished writing yesterday’s blog, loaded and edited yesterday’s photos and
started today’s blog. We got all the
plastic bags out and wrapped up our panniers and our feet, ready to start as
soon as there was a break in the weather.
Eventually we were joined in the bus stop by three women but
they realised we couldn’t speak Czech when we said “Hello” so there was no
conversation. I wondered briefly if we
would still be here when they returned from wherever it was they were going. But shortly after they caught their bus, we
decided to make a break for it and headed into the light, but persistent rain
on our planned route. Only thing was,
our planned route was taking us right into the deepest darkest clouds. We pulled into another bus shelter briefly to
see if we could take another route that might skirt us round the clouds. But there was no choice if we didn’t want
busy roads – and we didn’t, especially in this weather. The drivers over here are maniacs and corner
much too fast, especially in heavy trucks.
We had one guy come at us today who took the corner so fast that his
front bumper nearly touched the ground.
Anyway, the route we had picked out today would have been
lovely if it hadn’t been raining. As it
was, we just had to plod along and get some kms done.
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| Novy Bydzov - wierd people but they had some nice buildings |
The eleven kms we did to get into Novy Bydzov
were the worst as it was very busy. And
then when we got there, it seemed to be 'wierdo's day out', unless they’re all
like that there all the time. The
supermarket we went to seemed to have all the alki’s and arguers in it and
outside and we were glad to leave. About
5 kms out of town we found a suitable bus stop for a late lunch at 3.15pm. But by the time we took off again, it had
stopped raining. We stuck to small roads
all afternoon and we got no more rain and we thoroughly enjoyed our ride to
Jicin, (pronounced Eason).
It was mostly
flat and we had wonderfully smooth roads for about 50% of the time.
We have seen a number of deer on this trip but have not had
the luck to photograph one until today.
Usually they take off as soon as you stop your bike. But this one was a bit distracted by her cute
baby jumping through the long wheat.
Unfortunately the wheat was too long for us to photograph the baby, but
it was a wonderful thing to see.
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| Mama deer looking out for her baby |
We are also seeing fields and fields of mustard, white poppies
and clover. The clover we think has been
planted especially for the bees and they seem very grateful for it as there are
thousands upon thousands buzzing round these purple flowers. The clover smells fantastic as does the
clematis which has accompanied us since Salzburg.
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| Mustard field with clover beyond |
We arrived in Jicin just after 6pm and took a few photos of
the town square and got great directions to the camp site from a girl who spent
six months as an exchange student in the UK about ten years ago.
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| Love the decorative cobblestone work! |
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| Jicin town square |
Again we are the only tent here and there is
only one other car by one of the cabins.
After showering we adjourned to the kitchen to cook a light dinner
(seeing as we had lunch so late) and to plug in the computer while we blogged. Couldn’t upload the blog though as the wifi
connection was too slow. Uploaded photos
and bed at 10.30pm.
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