Tell me why I don't like Mondays

August 19, 2019

Ejpovice - Žlutice

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I had trouble sleeping through the inundation, and so was awake as a pallid dawn came up, but at 7 in the morning it was still hammering down. I had to wait until 8am before it stopped and I could get out and inspect the damage. The campsite was now completely deserted: the weekday and, most importantly, the terrible rain had driven everyone away. It bares posting again quite what a state my poor tent was in:

Yes, the rain did manage to unhook the flysheet

After rather distastefully packing the wet tent away, and making sure my miraculously draw sleeping bag was safely stowed, I made coffee and contemplated the day.

I was glad I'd worked out a sensible plan yesterday to proceed. From Plzen, I would be turning back to the North again, as the most direct route towards the German border. In this way I would avoid the serious mountains of the CHKO (national park) Skavkovsky les, where there were peaks of 800m+ and only trunk through roads. But there was still many hills - and few towns of any size. Approaching the border the Bohemian land becomes distinctly depopulated - a consequence of the clearance of German-populated regions after the war, and the isolation of the border during the Communist years.

So the route I'd picked attempted to follow the course of rivers, using the same technique I'd adopted when the Black Forest started to defeat me - without having any particular towns in mind. Most prominent was the Střela, which fortuitously seemed to cut over 50km to the north and west through the hills north of Plzen, and to disgorge into the Klabava, part of which formed the lake in from of my tent. There were many places where the roads diverged some distance from the river, but I figured this would still be an effective way to keep the climbing down. I had ringed the villages of Chrast, Kacerov, Plasy, Mladotice - and at a stretch Zlutice, all of which were along the meandering river.

By the second day I could reach the one large town, the resort of Karlovy Vary, and from here there seemed to be viable passes up and over the mountains into Germany.

I was soggy and not particularly motivated - but there was nothing else for it - the only way to dry off was to get cycling!

There did seem to be one new arrival in the site - a large Winnebago with Italian plates had materalised during the night, and I could see some activity inside as I packed up. As I went back to reception and the bar to hand back the pesky bathroom keys - both inaccessible - I ran into one of its occupants, also trying to find someone in charge. Me and this lady searched through the closed up buildings together, with lots of accompanying Italianate gestures of exasperation. In the end I decided I needed to get going and left the keys on the windowsill.

It felt like these spectacular mushrooms had come up overnight. I harvested a couple and fried them up with some olive oil (not really).

One advantage of the direct route was that I didn't have to go back through Plzen again, so retracing my steps from yesterday. Instead, I could peel off to the North almost immediately; the downside being that I lost the good EV3 route, and found myself on surprisingly busy and hilly roads alongside trucks sloshing through the rain. It was wet, dirty, and while the trucks were pretty good at passing me carefully there wasn't really any shoulder and I can't say I enjoyed it much.

This was the way for the first 5km to Dysina, which had a huge industrial estate with large factories that seemed to draw the trucks. From there, I was glad to cut onto a minor road to Chrast. I passed a guy walking out by the tracks who was at least as wet as me, went the wrong way in town, and then found the road out to cross the Berounka, into which the Strela would flow further upstream.

Church in Dysina. The rain had started coming down again at this point, and everything was still very soggy

I passed another campsite after crossing the Berounka. The tents didn't seem to have fared any better than I had.

After crossing the river I turned to the north-east, aiming to follow it up towards Kostelec. There was a steep 50m climb from the river, and then the going became easier as the road started contouring around. Coming up to Nadryby there was another very steep patch of climbing, apparently 16%, but it was short-lived and felt myself drying off as I built up some heat.

All those soggy haybales soaking up the rain in the fields alongside the river

This would have been a lovely ride if it wasn't so wet

I passed through Kostelec and continued to the north, running parallel a few kilometers away from the river. The way was reasonably flat now, and I made good time through the villages while the drizzle continued. In Plana I spotted a large shelter - full of benches, a fireplace and wood fuel. That this was completely open to passers is charmingly Czech, I thought, and figured it would be a good place for a warm-up coffee and a snack.

A cosy public shelter in Plana, where I stopped for coffee. Excellent place!

The older buildings were more run down as I got further from the big city

After 20 minutes I forced myself to get back out into the rain and go on. By following a rather winding way through the villages I could roughly follow the river, and while it might not have been the most direct route it wasn't like I was moving particularly fast anyway.

Initially my careful contouring seemed to pay off, as there wasn't any significant climbing; but after the village of Břízsko I found myself descending down a disturbingly steep slope back down to the river. It was here that the Střela flowed into the Berounka - I needed to cross the river to continue to follow it west. I lost 100m in 1.5km down the twisting road, and then had to regain the same in a sharp climb of solid 10% gradients. It certainly warmed me up.

The mists and rains were still persisting in the wooded valleys

It was starting to brighten up, and visibility was slowly returning. On the plus side, the roads were really extremely quiet.

Steep, steep climb up from the Sřela to the village of Borek

A lot of the villages had strange little statues in, like this one. Slightly eerie on such a soggy, deserted day

After Borek I knew I had to loop up away from the river, and potentially over high ground, to reach my next way-point at Plasy. It's hard to get across now how much I had agonised over the route, and how much I should avoid the red dots that marked peaks on my, frankly, inadequate map - I think I dithered quite seriously about whether this short stretch might finish me off.

In the event, it did take it out of me. It took me an hour and a bit to cover the 15km and to climb (and then descend) the 250m of rolling hills, and I had to stop for over 10 minutes for an emergency refuel in the already rather empty and depopulated landscape. By the time I spun down into Plasy, I was reeling a bit, and must have made a strange sight when I stopped to spend an inordinate amount of time in the small grocery shop, swaying slightly and unable to choose what flavour crisps I wanted. When attempting to buy an apple I had quite the headrush and genuinely thought I was going to faint right over the merchandise - fortunately I recovered before I burdened the good people of Plasy any further, but decided it was immediately time for lunch.

A very rolling, hilly, and frankly empty landscape. Some town's towerblocks are just visible marooned in amongst the green.

Fortunately, as I wheeled down to the middle of town and the junction with the main road, I met with the sight of an amazing, vast, if slightly dilapidated manor house. It seemed to ramble all around the centre of the town, and while most of it was shut up had some nice, sheltered benches. I installed myself on one of them, stuffed my face with crisps, and hoped I wasn't spoiling the view too much for the Czech family taking their kids to the small playpark. It was a dim, rather plangent scene: the corroded old stone, the soggy benches, and the family making the best of the wet Monday.

I peered in the windows but it was clear the place was closed up (though there was a sign showing it opened at weekends). I now know this is the Klášter Plasy, a monastery with a long and storied history. Originally set up in the 12th century, the original buildings were burnt during the Hussite wars. The Hussites were a sort of pre-reformation sect who - while openly fighting the established church - gained remarkable influence in the Czech republic. Their doctrine of poverty for the clergy and expropriation of church property didn't sit too well with controllers of gigantic monasteries such as Plasy's. Happily, the monastery was rebuilt in the 18th century, and Plasy is now full of baroque buildings. The amazing thing is that the ground is so soft and close to the water table the entire Klášter had to be built upon over 5,000 oak piles, with a complicated system of ducts and pumps to maintain the water level.

The slightly crumbling facade of the Klášter Plasy

The eye/pyramid is still looking pretty bright, through. A good reminder to those outside the walls that they're being watched...

Amazingly, and bizarrely, this is apparently a "baroque grannery"

View over the monastery complex. Sadly I only saw those very well-situated benches after I'd had my lunch.

Feeling much better, I got back onto my soggy steed and set off for the next village along the Střela, Mladotice. It was only a few kilometres of a hop, but I immediately was thrown back into the thick of it, having to climb back up the 150m away from the river with more gradients topping 10%. I took the climbs steadily, though, and slowly winched the bike up. The weather had improved now, and at the top I was rewarded with an absolutely hair-raising descent back down towards the river down long, tree-lined straights, where I topped 56kph.

From Mladotice I could turn north, and keep a course parallel but a few kilometres away from the river. As before, this meant climbing, but fortunately the grades were sensible and there was nothing like the climbs I'd seen earlier in the day. What it was, however, was remote. There were no villages, and with the relentless slow climbing, and increasingly unbroken swathes of heath and forest, it started to feel moor like the moorland I'd expected the CHKO Brdy to be.

After 5km I pulled my way up to Černá Hat, a rather foresaken place with one gigantic farm filled full of cattle sheds. There wasn't much of a village and I kept on, over roads that were becoming increasingly rough and crumbling into dirt at the margins. The sense of leaving the populated places of the country was remarkable. Before I reached the village of Hluboka the road finally did degenerate into a dirt track, and I passed through that village - which looked like it hadn't changed much since the 60s or 70s - quickly. The road improved after that but it was still another rather empty stretch until I found my way to the "main" road at Nový Důr.

The sun was out and the fields were rather glowing as I made the steep climb back out of Plasy

A really, really, unenticing looking swimming pool

Twin onion-domed church before entering the lonely road to Černá Hat

There wasn't much in Černá Hat other than this, a huge intensive farm

Even this statue of a saint had lost his cross, making his gestures rather more ambiguous

Distance-wise, considering the wet conditions and my despondent mood I had done pretty well, but it was now after 4pm and I didn't think I had too much left in me. I set my sights on Žlutice, the next town along the river, which was marked with a camping symbol (which my GPS map seemed to corroborate) as the place to stop. I was very keen on finding somewhere I could have a relaxed camp, dry the tent, and a drink and a good meal.

My last dilemma was how to get there. If I wanted to avoid the main road that crossed the high ground over the river bend, the alternative seemed to be a network of minor roads that crept worryingly close to a peak on my map marked 621m. But a combination of squinting at the map and the GPS had identified that there should be a track that would take me down the course of the river, following its meanders through the valley all the way to Chyše (from which it was a minor hop to Žlutice). I decided to try it out.

Another ecclesiastical building glimpsed in the distance

The track was actually part of the EV4, and I was pleased to pick up a sign pointing me off the right turning. Almost immediately I could see the road was blocked, though, by an enormous digger and the equally enormous hole which had replaced the full width of the road. One of the workmen looked incongruously excited as he directed me to push the bike around, through the undergrowth: maybe he was wondering how I was going to do it so laden with baggage. If only he'd seen what I'd (pointlessly) put myself through in the Polish mountains!

Road-block aside, this meant the narrow track was completely empty of any traffic, and I found myself descending into a really rather glorious hidden valley. I even passed a jogger and waved hello. It was a slow descent, and I felt I earned my cruise alongside the river.

It was almost too quickly that I popped out in Chyše. I regained the main road and hammered towards Žlutice. It was past 5 and I was very determined to find somewhere to stay and some food. The small towns were already starting to get closed up, and I figured that turning up too later would mean I might struggle even to buy supplies.

An abandoned house, this actually in the village of Chyše.

As I arrive in Žlutice at around 5.30 I realise my fears about the time were justified - I pass the Jip supermarket, but it's closing in half an hour. I elect to check out the centre of town first - I'm not really sure why I did this, especially as it turned out that to get to the centre involved a very steep 60m climb, right when I was starting to wear out. I powered up this with some speed, and then had to descend back into the cobbly and steep old town.

It was rather attractive, actually, but it was clearly a provincial place that didn't have any obvious bars or restaurants. I did spot a small shop, which I popped into to buy some beer and supplies. It was run by a young Chinese chap, who asked me if I was American and had cycled from Prague. We chatted a while and he rather warmly wished me luck. In the square, the local young kids were playing and waved rather shyly at me, and a drunk guy shuffled harmlessly around. A rather charming and provincial place.

I descended back down the hill, rattling over the cobbles with my load of beer, back towards the river and the promised campsite. I found the turn, and slowly spun along the road winding next to the river and a small lake. By the lake, a small bar was set up, and some children were larking around on a small boat. This was what was marked as a campsite - but it was clearly just the local park.

The centre of Žlutice. It was really quite a nice little place

Descending the *very* steep cobbled street back to the river, for the first time

The town lake, which was inaccurately marked as a campsite on both my paper and GPS maps, sigh

I stood for a while, rather nonplussed by the side of the road, wondering what to do. I was mightily tempted to just go and sit in the park by the lake and have a little lie down. My GPS map seemed to suggest that perhaps there was another campsite in the town: the only catch being this one was back up the top of the hill.

Forgetting that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, what did I do? Yep, I headed back up the hill, heavy beer and all, and went casting about for a campsite in the obviously open farmland north of the town. Guess what? There wasn't one there.

Rather resigned to camping rough now, I went back to the town square and the little shop, intending to buy some water (and coffee) to cook with. The proprietor looked a little surprised to see me, but we said effusive goodbyes again, and back I headed (past one-way system, cobbled street and church) back to the road with the park. I'd originally intended to carry on and find somewhere to camp in the woods, but it looked so pleasant I headed on in, and brazenly sat down a little way from the bar.

I obviously looked rather odd and out-of-place - but, and here was where I could bless the Czechs - I fairly equally obviously looked harmless, and the couple of families near the bar and kids playing in the water just completely let me get on with it.

I sat and made coffee and had a read; as a remarkably golden dusk came down (after such a soggy day), one family called their children in from the lake, and the other shut up the bar. In the meantime I had spread out my sleeping matt to dry over a sort of wooden pavilion; they all crammed into a car and left, and I cooked up my remaining gnocchi.

Some good Czech beer and carbohydrate taken on board, I started to feel quite a lot of affection for this little place. It was tucked away with less than a couple of cars an hour slowly going down the dead-end road on the other side of the lake. It hit me that I really, really didn't want to get into the soggy tent - it wasn't a cold evening, and I'd be happy (and less conspicuous) just sleeping in the pavilion on my now thankfully dry thermarest.

And, after my second beer, I was well and truly ready to pass out. I hung up the tent as best I could in order to let it dry, and lay down in the corner on the wooden boards. I was far from invisible from the road, but it just didn't seem to be the sort of place where I'd be bothered. I set the alarm for 5 and was out like a light...

A surprisingly golden sunset for such a rainy day

The wooden structure (maybe "pavilion" is too grand") where I slept. It was dry and rather comfortable!

The boat which the kids were messing about with on the lake. Unfortunately it was kept locked up, otherwise I might've been tempted to have a go...

Today's ride: 96 km (60 miles)
Total: 863 km (536 miles)

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