Oromouc, Czech Republic: Into the lowlands

September 9, 2015

A smooth and blissful path ran all the way to Lipnik

I'M PROBABLY speaking too soon but I think the hills are over. Not hills in their entirety, of course. But I think I'm done with rollercoasters that are so aggravating because they return you time and again to the altitude you'd been at in the first place.

Of course, nobody should miss a chance to complain. And so the less rational side of my brain insists this is bad news because I am ahead of time and flat terrain will make it worse.

Anyway, this morning couldn't be faulted. I stopped in Hranice, you remember, because the sight of a hotel convinced me at the end of a hilly day. I persuaded myself I was too worn to ride the extra dozen kilometres I'd set myself, and I rationalised the decision by reminding myself was I going too fast too soon.

The idea had been to go to Lipnik, which I expected to be over as many hills as any of the other dozen kilometres of the day. But that last spell would have been blissful. And this morning they were more blissful still, because I could enjoy them without tiredness.

Pretty Lipnik, a good place for an unneeded coffee

Knowing none of this, I left the hotel with the singing heart of a gladiator spotting lions. But within ten minutes I found the signposted route to Lipnik, the way for cyclists. It was a wide, smooth path beside a giggling river called the Bečva. Things like that change a man's mood in a turn of his pedals.

The path ran through parkland, behind small wooden houses, through a wood and then across grassland. It emerged within a kilometre of the pastel-coloured houses of Lipnik. A banner in Czech and then in English told me I had arrived in time for Iron in the Street, an exhibition of metal sculptures.

Iron in the Street: it didn't do much for me but it was better than parked cars

I salute this sort of thing because town squares without the medieval horses and carts for which they evolved turn into unsightly car parks.

Now, because I am heading towards Prague, and because Prugga is the capital, I am playing hide-and-seek with traffic. Having a direct highway is a blessing if you don't have to cycle on it. Happily, the Czechs have been obliging in building a new road and leaving the old beside it. It's been bounding up and down like an over-excited lamb but it's not a rollercoaster like yesterday. More a gentle amble with the occasional grimpette.

Signs of the old are everywhere. I'm on the outskirts of Olomouc, a city which never developed a distaste for cobbles. They're everywhere, through the centre, in housing streets and stretched out before shops. They lie rounded and glistening, anxious to shake the bones of a cyclist. Better than that, they have tramlines through them, so anything more than an everyday wobble will bring a fall. I walked.

Olomouc does compensate for its cobbles, though...

Tomorrow, I'll pass north of Brno, one of those eastern European towns with too few vowels. I once watched the world cycling championships there. That was before the end of communism and after the Prague Spring had been crushed by Soviet tanks. Tanks from all over, in fact, from all the Russian empire except Romania and Albania, which refused to take part.

The championships fell on an anniversary. Feelings were bitter. It wasn't the done thing to boo a Russian but there were better ways. It was particularly noticeable in the pursuit, in which two riders start on opposite sides of the track and try to catch each other.

World championships are open to every country, great and small. Russia was among the great. But a Russian had only to ride against a no-hope Turk for the crowd to rise to its feet and stamp and cheer as the Turk struggled by, only to sit silent for the Russian.

No protest could have been more eloquently made.

Unexplained but agreeable graffiti at Olomouc

Today's ride: 63 km (39 miles)
Total: 5,870 km (3,645 miles)

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