Map

Welcome to the last—and at 95.6 km, the longest—day of the tour and maybe a longest entry too. I didn’t mind the length because it would be mostly flat.I woke up before 7:00, as I needed to buy some food for breakfast. The evening before, I had found four bakeries nearby, so I went to one to buy some whole wheat bread rolls. Then I went to a grocery store to buy some cheese and vegetables. After breakfast, I checked the weather once more, and it was looking very good. Today’s max temperature would be around 25 °C, but with a strong S–SW wind.The wind forecast felt like one of those “I’ve got good news and bad news” jokes. The good news was that I’d have a tailwind for at least a third of the trip. The bad news: I’d be heading south at the end of the trip. Since my room was on the second floor, it took me a while to get my bike and all the other stuff down—and the narrow staircase didn’t help one bit.

This time, I was on the bike a bit earlier—at 8:27—because I didn’t know how strong the wind would be or how many stops I’d have. The temperature was around 18 °C, but I knew it would rise above 20 °C within an hour. Navigating out of Kolín was easy, and the cycleway began right in the city. At 8:35 (1.3 km), I passed the city limits. I felt the strong tailwind, which was really great—as at one point, I was cruising above 30 km/h on the flat road. You can imagine how strong the wind was.

I made a quick stop to check the dynamo, as it wasn’t charging my power bank. (I found out a week later that the cable was loose and needed re-soldering. I suspect it was my fault during the initial soldering—so no one to blame but me.) The nice cycleway ended in Veltruby, but I knew another one would start in a few minutes. I’d spend around 50 km on cycleways today. My first wrong turn of the day came around 8:59 (11 km). I think this would be the day with the most of them. At 9:03 (12.5 km), another cycleway started, which I initially missed due to a wrong turn—but I corrected it immediately. This one was supposed to last for quite a while.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that my front disc brake had started to squeak occasionally. I suspect the disc or pads were contaminated by dirt from the roadworks I passed. I cleaned the disc at the hotel, which helped a lot. This reminded me of the old brakes I used to have on this bike. If I braked a lot—during a long descent, for instance—they would start squeaking. Originally, this bike had drop bars with mechanical Avid BB7 Road S brakes. At first, they felt weak, but after some tuning and trying different pads and discs and what not, the braking power improved significantly. Still, it was never quite what I wanted.  After consulting with a friend, I decided to replace them with hydraulic brakes (Shimano Deore XT BR-M8120), and the difference was like night and day. This upgrade also led to a switch from drop bars to Jones H-bars, which added a lot of comfort. Due to the bar change, I also had to replace the suspension stem, since the Redshift one no longer worked (see the previous entry for details).

During this cycleway ride, I encountered (for the first time during this tour) a drop in surface quality. The trees near the cycleway were most likely the problem. Their roots were disrupting the pavement, and so small—sometimes big—waves of asphalt appeared before me. This part wasn't particularly enjoyable, because I had to slow down a lot and/or try to avoid the roughness. I've seen this many times before, but not in such quantity as here. I was thinking about what could be done to fix it, but I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't require cutting down the trees. Shame.

At one point, I fixated on the cyclist (I mean her) in front of me so I could maintain a steady pace. It was because of this that I made another wrong turn at 9:18 (17.3 km). At 9:33 (22.6 km), I took a left turn and left the cycleway. I don't know why I planned it like that, because looking at Komoot now, it says the cycleway is paved almost to the end—so I don't know what I was thinking. After a couple of turns, I was on the road. The traffic was a bit heavy; I didn’t like it. But at 9:42 (26 km) and after another wrong turn, I was back on the cycleway (the same one I had left). But this was only temporary, because the cycleway ended not long after, and I made another left turn to navigate back to the road.

At Sadská, I took a right turn onto side road 2722, and the traffic decreased significantly. The road surface was very good (if not excellent) for most of this part. It started to get warm—around 21 °C. I had already changed to the short-sleeve merino. The wind was blowing and still helped me a lot. I was almost halfway through today's trip and didn’t feel any exhaustion. My plan was to stop at an Italian restaurant in the city of Čelákovice, which was about 10 km away. At Přerov nad Labem, I encountered a particularly bad roadside. It looked to me like, when they were asphalting the road, they didn’t have enough material for the roadside, so they left it as it was. Why bother? There was probably another reason, but I didn’t feel the urge to find out. I just swore a little—nothing fancy. But afterwards, the road quality returned to excellent. All was forgiven (but not forgotten—thanks to the GoPro).

At 9:53 (49.3 km), the GoPro battery died. The problem was that one of my original (blue) batteries had bulged, and it was getting harder and harder to pull it out of the camera. The enduro one (white) "broke" yesterday, because the small tab used to pull the battery out snapped off. Fortunately, I could still remove the battery, but I stopped using it. So I had only two usable batteries in total. One (blue) was already empty, and I replaced it with the enduro. This was unfortunate, as I was certain the whole trip wouldn’t be captured on camera.

It was slowly but steadily becoming overcast. At 11:06 (52.2 km), I panicked a little because I couldn’t find the restaurant I've planned eating at. Maybe I took another wrong turn? Or did I forget to update the route in Komoot? So I turned around and tried to find the place. That was a mistake. After some wandering and checking the map, I realized I was actually in the right place from the beginning—just about 10 meters away from the restaurant when I made that "turn around." So I went back, and at 11:20 (53.3 km), I ordered zuppa di pomodoro and gnocchi con funghi at Pizza Antonia restaurant. Both of them were great. I was thinking about getting fish but I had it already yesterday. I do really like fish and and all seafood stuff. I could eat all day long. The wind at that time was so strong that it was tossing stuff off the table. Forty minutes later, I was back on the bike with almost full stomach.

At 12:11 (54.1 km), another cycleway began. Five minutes later, I made a quick stop to apply sunscreen and put on the sun sleeves. At that time, I didn’t know it would become fully overcast in an hour or so. While on the cycleway, I noticed a lot of tree branches on the ground. They must have fallen because of the strong wind I mentioned while I was at the restaurant. At 12:53 (57.6 km), the one and only climb started. It was an easy one, but due to the strong wind, it was slow going. I was less than 10 km away from the Prague city limit. But from there, it would take another hour and a half to get to my "real" destination.

At 13:08 (60.7 km), the surface changed to fine gravel, but it was OK. The ride was pleasant. As I neared Prague, more cyclists started to appear. It was starting to get really warm—about 24 °C—which was good. I do like hot weather. I don’t mind sweating at all. I just enjoy being outside in the heat on the bike. I don’t mind the sun—much better than cold weather. Another bike path started in Zeleneč, with a good surface. There were a couple of sharp turns here and there, so one should be cautious of other pedestrians and cyclists. The ascent was minimal, but the wind was still strong. I must also note that during the whole tour, I didn’t check the weather radar even once. The weather was really predictable, with no sudden changes as one might expect in April.

Prague

I don’t know precisely when I entered the Prague city limits, but at 13:40 (66.6 km), I was definitely inside. From this point on, it was a slow pace due to lots of crossroads, crossings, and traffic lights. I was paying close attention to cars and other road users. In this part of town, the surface was paving stones—good quality and pleasant to ride on. The only annoying part was having to slow down at every intersection (since there was no designated main road, you had to yield to the right).

At 13:56 (70.5 km), I reached Černý Most, the final station of subway line B. I had planned two scenarios from here.

1. If I had enough energy, I would bike to Radlice on my own (no subway).
2. If I was exhausted, had a sore butt (or other health issue), or if a storm appeared, I would take the subway to Anděl and then ride from there.

I chose the first option, but if I had to choose again, I would go with the second. Mainly because it was a wasted hour and a half riding through the city. Biking in a big city isn’t as fun as riding back roads (There is one exception though and that is riding through Prague in early morning like 4:30 - 5:00. Then the streets are empty, almost no cars. THAT is a pleasure.). But the decision was made. I took the elevator up and navigated to the cycleway on top of the subway tube, then onto one of Prague’s many cycleways. The bike infrastructure here is really good, and the same goes for surface quality.

The GoPro battery died near Florenc. The rest of the ride was uneventful. The only unpleasant moments were near Karlův most, where there were a LOT of tourists, making it hard to navigate through them. Then, as usual, there was Náplavka with its BIG cobblestones and lots of pedestrians. It’s true there are two lanes of paved stones for bikes, but pedestrians often use them, so it’s not a pleasant place to ride.

There was also one last climb near the end of my route, but I handled it with ease. Around 14:35 (95.5 km), I reached my destination—happy and, most importantly, healthy and without any issues!

Money Spent: 18.05 EUR (food)

Heart

1

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

Heart

2

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply