Awake at 6.30am before eyes closed to reopen at 7.35am – a
late start for us. We purposely had put
the tent between two cabins so it would not receive the early morning sunlight
as we needed a good sleep. The flysheet
was soaking wet so we took that off and hung it up on a handy line to dry. While I cycled to get breakfast from the
supermarket, Pete packed up the inside of the tent.
 |
| Pete has all his ducks in a row.....OCD or what? |
So we ate breakfast while the tent and
flysheet dried. Then I had another crack
at uploading the blog and the internet was much faster this morning. I had two days’ worth to upload (it’s the
photos that take the longest), so by the time I had finished that, the tent and
flysheet were dry. So we packed up and
hit the road, firstly into Jicin Tourist Info to find out a bit more about
these rocks.
The whole reason we had come to this area was that Pete had
googled Ten Things you Must Do in Czech, and this was one of them. We googled some images and thought that looks
pretty cool and arranged our route to come here. We cycled the 6km out to the rocks, which
naturally were mostly uphill. It was
also very hot and so we were pretty sweaty when we got there. We weren’t exactly sure how to get to these
rocks as we saw several tracks leading into the hills and different parking
areas, with signs we couldn’t read. The
uncertainty and the heat were putting Pete in a bit of a mood but eventually we
found the right carpark.
We parked the bikes against a stone wall and had a guy
approach us in a high vis vest. He said
something in Czech and we realised he was a parking attendant (it wasn’t that busy), but one of the words he said
was ‘gratis’ and we understood that – he was prepared to let us park there for
free. So we headed for the entry gate
which rang warning bells and sure enough, you had to pay. Old tightwad Pete was not keen, even though
it was only $5NZ each! I pointed out
that the Czechs generally don’t even charge you to walk round their castles so
it must be pretty impressive. He shot
back with “But it’s an extra $1.70 for the map!” When you’re on the road, you do tend to watch
every penny and try and get by as cheaply as you can, but when I said to him
that we had ridden an extra day just to get here, not to mention the 6km uphill
this morning from Jicin, he begrudgingly agreed to part with the cash. He was glad he did within two minutes of
walking through the gates.
 |
| Julia celebrates the fact that she got Pete to part with some cash! |
What a
spectacular sight and the aura of those mammoth rocks, well, it was like
walking through nature’s own cathedral.
We spent the best part of three hours walking round and through and up
into those rocks – it was fantastic.
The
Czechs have done it so well. No
namby-pamby stay behind the safe fence for these guys. It was up stone steps into crevices, under
massive rocks wedged between two other massive rocks, through rock caves,
around another corner for another incredible vista.
We can’t speak highly enough of this place
and if you are going to Prague, put it on your list as it’s not that far away. And it is certainly worth $5NZ each!
 |
| Prachov Rocks |
So we emerged from the rocks at 2pm, wishing we had lunch
with us. The restaurant fare didn’t look
too appetising (all fried stuff) so we made do with an ice-cream and shared a
coke before hitting the road. We had
quite a hilly ride to get out of the Jicin rocks area to the town of Sobotka
where we were finally able to buy some lunch and a little further down the road
we found a nice shady place to eat it.
By the time we’d finished it was 4pm and we jumped on our bikes heading
south. We had a camp picked out and
hopefully a nice quiet ride to it. Well
it was a fantastic ride from here to Mcely – nice flat, smooth surface,
traffic-free roads…..perfect.
 |
| The riding is great and life is good. |
 |
| A castle ruin we passed on our way |
However at
Mcely, the signage was a bit amiss and we asked an old guy the way to Milovice
where the campground was….and he put us wrong.
Well, kind of. He gave us the
motorist’s route which took us in a more roundabout way. However, the plus side to this was the road
he put us on was fantastic to start with and traffic free and fast. There was a thunderstorm building in the
actual direction we wanted to go in and this way skirted us around it….to a
point. That point was about 10km from
our planned campground when we found a bus stop with shelter and decided to
take cover before the deluge hit.
The wind hit and the lightning started and big fat raindrops
started to fall. The wind whistled
through the gap in the back of the shelter and the bottom, so we tucked
ourselves on the seat in the corner to wait it out. Checked our directions on the computer and
wrote up the blog while we waited. After
about half an hour when the wind had died down and the downpour that looked so
imminent hadn’t eventuated, we decided to make a run for it. So began a mad dash into the eye of the
storm, or so it appeared. This massive
black cloud with lightning flashes directly ahead of us and with what appeared
to be rays of light streaking out from the bottom of the cloud – we’ve never
seen anything like it.
 |
| Uh-oh. Trying to outrun this beast and Pete was not happy when I asked him to stop so I could take a photo. |
We came upon the next village about 3km down the road and
made a right turn to the next village of Cochovice. The rain was starting and we spied an
excellent bus stop under some trees so made a beeline for this. By this time it was 8.30pm so we thought we
may as well cook up some dinner, so we busted out the tuna, baked beans and
pasta so we were at least fed. The wind
really got going but we were tucked well away from it and considered our
options. This was a small village, no
pension (or b and b). We wondered about
setting up the tent behind the bus stop, but seeing as it was Perspex, there
was no privacy and the whole village would know we were there. We also considered just sleeping in the bus
stop but at 8.50pm, not one, but four people came to catch the bus! We had not seen another soul for the hour we
had been there and then these people come out of nowhere. Were they going home or would they be coming
back to this bus stop later on in the night?
So we put our plastic bags on our panniers and set off once more
directly into the path of the storm, or so it appeared. By now it was getting quite dark, so we were
very glad the roads were extremely quiet.
On our ride to the next village we didn’t see one other car, however a
deer darted out straight in front of us.
It made us aware of this danger and to keep the speed down. It was hard to keep an eye out for deer
though when we were continually distracted by the lightning show around
us. We were in fact in between three
thunderstorms and the lightning was nearly continuous. Sheet and fork lightning, but strangely enough
no rain and no thunder. We made good
time and encountered very little traffic and finally made it to Malevice at
9.30pm. The streets were deserted and
not a sign for the campground to be found.
Pete spied a sign for the sportstadion and so we ventured down a gravel
track in complete darkness. Usually all
their sports grounds are fenced off and locked but this one was a small local
club and unfenced luckily. We went to
the far side of the clubrooms where hallelujah!, they had an overhang on the
deck – the perfect place to pitch our leaky tent on a night that threatened to
bring with it a lot of rain and possibly wind.
We wasted no time in putting up the tent inner, careful to
keep low so as not to set off the sensor light and gratefully climbed into our
sleeping bags at 10.30pm, knowing we would have to be up early to beat the
dog-walkers in the morning. I sensed
that Pete was quietly congratulating himself having restored order to the
wallet in not having to shell out for a campground for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment