Pardubice, Czech Republic: Happy again

September 12, 2015

BAD rehearsal, great gig... that's what musicians say. And after a glum day yesterday, I had just a short hop today that I'd have loved to go on for ever. And what a treat at the end!

Well, after odd events yesterday, there was unseen drama last night. I saw no more of my mysterious visitor. He may have got lost in the maize, like the happy band in Three Men in a Boat. He may have spent the night out there. But there was drama closer to home.

Around one in the morning I woke to a scrabbling outside the tent. The kind of noise that sends you running indoors as a kid. Not right outside but perhaps a few paces away, maybe in the neighbouring field. And from more than one direction. Several animals, or perhaps one running up and down.

I live deep in the country. I often camp wild. I can tell the delicate crunching of deer from the stealthy progress of a fox, its paw prints always in line. Rabbits are more cautious. They run in short bursts, to be sure the night holds no dangers, before putting on a sprint. Badgers are slow and ponderous and shuffle.

I unzipped the tent and saw just darkness. There was a light mist, opal in the moonlight. I closed the tent again and went back to sleep.

Nothing had touched my food in the night. It was wrapped in my panniers but a fox would have torn at the plastic bag of empty cans and scrap. But nothing.

It was only as I was dismantling the tent that I noticed a dead hare. Just a few paces away. The distance I'd guessed in the night. Well, it takes a big predator to take a hare. Hares aren't huge but they're bigger than rabbits and they run faster. A challenge for an owl or a buzzard. And there are no eagles here. And take is the appropriate word, because this hare hadn't been taken anywhere.

So what had happened in the night? What savage story of nature had been told in the darkness? The hare hadn't been savaged. It just lay there as though it had fallen asleep. And animals have to die somewhere, of course, but only rarely in the open. They die in bed, like humans.

When did you last see a dead animal that hadn't been hit by a car?

Well, there's only so much time in this world to ponder such things. I wished him peace from his troubles and pushed my reloaded bike round the mountain of straw bales and back down the track to the road. It wasn't yet seven. The morning was quiet and sweet, the moon and the sun still debating dominance.

I stopped in the first village, dropped my bag of refuse in a bin and puzzled residents still asleep by leaving an unwanted bottle of ketchup on a garden wall.

The ride to Pardubice was rolling without being challenging, easy on the eyes without making them water from the beauty, the weather cool without being cold. The sun rose lazily and a breeze cleared the clouds with a yawn. I passed a shop in an otherwise undistinguished village that sold nothing but leathers for motorbikers. I got a rare wave from a man delivering free newspapers. I stopped at a garage for coffee from a machine and one of those entertaining conversations in which neither understands the other but both get the impression of a passing friend.

But the best was still to come. All I knew of Pardubice was that it had a train station that looked a better bet than Kutna Hora a few hours further. I expected nothing of it and, when I rode in, nothing was what I got. Just bland, nondescript buildings, and traffic, and advertising, the everyday menu of unknown cities everywhere.

And then, having stopped for directions ("chuff, chuff, whoo-whoo" all over again), I glanced through a stone archway to the right. And walked through it. And a world of magic appeared in front of me. For a start, a sparkling white town hall and court house that in any other existence would be on a wedding cake. Long red and white flags hung down its front, scarlet and bright in the clear sun.

To each side and around the oblong cobbled square were buildings - cafés, shops, houses - to put new heart in the soul of Kodak shareholders. The cafés had elegant grace of their own but demured to the wedding-cake glory across the road.

An artist made the most of the solitude and morning light

Waiters were putting out the first tables of the morning. An artist had set up an easel on the cobbles and stood gazing at the surroundings, holding out her brush now and then to judge proportions, then dickering with paper pinned before her. For a while we had the place to ourselves.

And then horns sounded and a convoy of cars came into the square with slightly more than everyday enthusiasm. It's the custom here, as in many places of continental Europe, to marry in a town hall and to press a hand hard on the klaxon as you drive there.

The door was shut and the wedding party had to wait. But what a place to wait, what a place to marry

Men stepped out in over-sharp suits, and tottering women in heels and clothes they'd never wear anywhere else. They looked for others they knew, each family still unfamiliar with the other, and then stood awkwardly. Having caused so much commotion, there was nothing then but anti-climax. They were early. The town hall was still closed. The mayor hadn't arrived. And nor had the bridal pair.

I left them to wait and wandered off through narrow streets and courtyards. I found a castle dappled like nougat. I found a delicate coffee shop with dainty cakes. I'd spent much of my time in eastern Europe wandering lonely as a cloud, when all at once I'd seen a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.

The fairytale had had a happy ending.

Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 6,043 km (3,753 miles)

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