Monday, June 29, 2009

Cesky Krumlov to Sobeslav - June 29

June 29

Our host at the Pension Gardena was a keen cyclist and had given us some advice on how to head north towards Prague. He suggested we skip Ceske Budejovice and follow a route further west through Holasovice and Hluboka.
On yet another grey day with rain forecast we set off. We have a good detailed road map of this part of the Czech Republic, so between that and TomTom navigation was pretty straightforward.
We rode along quiet country roads through beautiful rolling countryside (ie no flat bits!). There was rain around, and we rode on wet roads but luckily escaped being rained on.

Another grey day - but beautiful countryside.

We stopped for a coffee at Kremze. Rod had been having trouble with his rear brakes and decided to head for Ceske Budejovice to find a bike shop, then meet us at Hluboka.

Leaving Kremze.

Holasovice.

We stopped briefly at Holasovice and continued on our way. The beuatiful gently rolling countryside continued for some time, with one section of the road lined on both sides with silver birch trees.

Towards Hluboka we entered flatter terrain dotted with lakes, all of them full to overflowing. At one point we had to ride through a section of road covered with water. We made it through with dry shoes.

Flooded road.

Arriving at Hluboka, a very pretty town, we stopped for a picnic lunch. Rod arrived not much later. Since it was only about 2pm and we decided to press on a bit further, hoping to find accommodation near Zalsi.

The church at Hluboka.

From Hluboka we were back on the Greenways cycle route, which also coincides with the Eurovelo Route 7 at this point.
The afternoon's ride took us through quite a bit of forest, very beautiful areas but variable road conditions, in places quite rough, muddy and wet.


We arrived at Zalsi and discovered that there is no accommodation there at all. After a quick check of the map we decided to head for Sobeslav, a much larger town only 12km away and not far off our route.
We had gone about one kilometre when disaster struck. When I am riding I have a small bag that sits on the top bar of my bike in which I keep my camera and my phone/gps. I had opened the cover to have a look at the GPS to make sure we were on the right track. We crossed a bridge over a small creek. The bike hit a small bump in the road, the camera launched out of the bag, bounced off the road and fell over the side of the bridge.
This was a very smelly, muddy, weed-infested creek and my camera, with about 1800 photos in it, was nowhere to be seen. Rod and Tracey helped me search the area until we were fairly sure it had to be in the water. I put my thongs on and waded in to the stinky mud. After only about a minute searching I spotted a square silver thing just under the water and pulled out my very wet camera.
This was a really freak accident. The only time in more than 2000km of riding that the camera jumped out of the bag I happened to be doing a gentle left hand curve over a bridge, and the camera landed in the water which was only about three metres wide.
I expected the camera to be well and truly dead, but had hopes that the photos on the card would be ok.
We rode on to Sobeslav with steady rain falling by the time we found accomodation, quite good spacious rooms at Pension Rosa, with a restaurant downstairs. One of the waitresses spoke some English and we had a very good meal. I tried my memory card in Rod's camera and it looked like the photos were ok. I have been very happy with the Fuji F200EXR, and planned to find the same model as soon as we got to Prague.

2 comments:

  1. Did you shake your fist at the gods dad? I would have looked at the sky, shaken my fist and yelled "I don't believe in you, so HAH!".

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, no fist shaking, just a bit of swearing initially, followed by some head shaking, and finally resignation and some relief at the expectation that the photos were ol, as they are.

    ReplyDelete