Telc to Vranov nad Dyjí

 46 miles, 2588ft climbing

Lodging:  Resort Mlýn Karolínka

Breakfast at the hotel in Telc started at 7:30am so we set our alarms to eat at that time.  When we woke up it was raining outside so we were expecting a morning of rain on the bike.  

Most of the hotels seem to offer a breakfast in the morning which is a buffet that normally includes eggs, bacon, bread, sausages, beans, coffee and maybe cold cuts, pastries and fruit.  Usually it is pretty good.

After breakfast we loaded the bikes and put on our rain gear to head out.  By the time we actually got rolling the rain had pretty much stopped so after a short bit we got rid of the rain gear.  We rolled out of town and past the seemingly endless roadside apple trees that have about dropped all of their fruit on the ground by now.  Past rural farms, small towns and seriously large snails in the road from the earlier showers.

Our stop in the town of Telc has taken us a little off the more well traveled bike routes so we needed to take some less traveled gravel routes to take us back on course to our next stop.  It was nice to change up the terrain going through more farm lands for a few miles.  Corn is the predominant planting but we saw what looked like squash and even a field of sunflowers.  We saw some deer cross in front of us and eventually the gravel turned a bit muddy which added some difficulty, but it didn’t last long and we were back on pavement.

Around 11am we rolled in the small town of Slavanice where we stopped for lunch at a kebab restaurant.  The kebab meat served on a pita type bread was similar to a gyro and was enormous, but it was good and we did our best to polish it off.  Most towns with restaurants seem to include a kebab restaurant option.

It was a nice somewhat hilly ride to our end town of Vranov nad Dyji which is a small town with an impressive castle near a river.  We found our hotel, showered and went to check out the castle grounds and climb the tower.  After that we wandered around town and eventually found a restaurant that served hamburgers “burgery” with fries.  The burgers were quite large and tasty.

Rest day Telc

  Given all the sights a rest day can involve a lot of walking. We figure we logged at least 10 miles, much on cobblestones. Learning about the local history was a nice change from cycling.

After a good breakfast in our hotel, we walked around one of the ponds and through a church cemetery. There were some old gravestones against the church wall, but most additions were more recent and decorated with flowers. We headed to the main square of Telc and to the castle where we took the underground tour. It showed a few rooms and passages beneath the gothic portion of the castle with some emphasis on movies that had been filmed there, a little silly in some respects. After lunch we took the tour of the renaissance rooms which had baroque features, very beautiful and impressive. It’s hard to tell what’s original and what has been restored, but in any case it was magnificent. There were carved ceilings, tapestries, statues, armor, taxidermied African animals, depictions of Greek myths, paintings of former inhabitants, intricate details everywhere. It was one of the largest castles in Bohemia/Moravia. 

After the castle tour, we took a walking tour of Telc using a phone app and shared ear buds. We say the old town walls, the dry moat, heard descriptions of the “Painted Ladies” (houses) of the main square, and walked part of the castle gardens. We saw the plague column in the center of the square and learned that the hard-to-decipher carvings up the column depict boils or pustules people experienced during the plague. Ew.

We’ve seen a lot of ice cream shops and stands everywhere in Czechia. The Czech word for ice cream is “zmrzlina”, delicious to eat, difficult for a united statesian to pronounce. There are a lot of Zs and not many vowels. The Czech word for beer, “pivo”, is a lot easier.

For dinner, we walked a long way to a brew pub which wasn’t serving food that evening. It was a charming place, but perhaps they only serve food in high season. Around the corner was a grocery store, so we bought sandwich ingredients to have back in our room.

Sarah was stung by a persistent wasp on the way into town. 24 hours later, it was still uncomfortable, but it seemed like it would heal okay.

Nové Hrady to Telč

Ride day 6: 67 miles, 3169’ Elevation

Lodging:  U Hrabēnky Hotel

We knew a weather system was coming in, so we rose early and used the kitchen in our ramshackle penzion to make instant coffee. We headed out of town, down a hill, at around 7am. It seemed that the mountains were behind us. There was fog, the air was cool, and we headed into the forest on a paved road that was barely wider than the small cars that are driven here (though we see very few cars on the smallest roads). Sometimes it’s not clear if we are on a road or a bike path, but it’s pleasant riding either way. Forests, lakes, small roads, and the threat of rain were the theme of the day. The forests and fish ponds are part of a protected reserve.

After a couple of hours, our route took us right into the historic center of the town of Jilovice. We stopped at a cafe for an apple pastry and coffee before heading back out through fields and forests. A while later, our route took us across an earthen dam, past some fisheries, and into the central square of Trebon. All these historic centers have historic buildings with beautiful facades, old churches, fountains, and cobble stones. We didn’t linger since rain looked imminent. We nearly made it into Telc before the rain arrived, and it was only coming down gently as we passed the colorful historic square and continued to our hotel. They had a spacious bike locker outside the door, and reception let us use their floor pump which they have for rental bikes. We’ve found everyone to be welcoming to bike travelers.

We will spend two nights here. We booked our next several nights of hotels, adapting our plan slightly based on availability. We think there are a lot of penzions not listed on booking.com or Google maps, but we don’t want to arrive at a destination and find all the hotels full, so we are reserving a few days in advance. Although families are back in school, the smaller towns seem to book up, especially on weekends.

After dinner the rain poured down, and we felt lucky not to have had to ride in rain gear today.

Český Krumlov to Nové Hrady

 Ride day 5: 47.5 miles, 4449’ elevation

Lodging:  Penzion 1670

Today was the first day where our ride seemed at all strenuous. We are on the Rosenberg Family Greenway, a side route off the Prague Vienna Greenway.

After breakfast in our hotel, we packed our bikes and headed out the cobbled roads. Immediately we were on a climb that was more than a mile long and up to 18% grade. This woke us up and was a preview for the day’s ride through the Gratzen Mountains. We wound our way up and around hills. Most towns looked very small, only a handful of houses. For each town there is a welcome sign and a leaving sign, sometimes the distance between signs is only 100 meters or so.  The fields where hay had been harvested looked like open meadows between patches of forest. We’ve seen a lot more hay bales than livestock, but there were some cattle and a few horses. Every tiny village seems to have a historic church.

We rode alongside a river where there were two large, mostly empty campsites. One had teepees, which seemed absurd, and both had stacks of boats. With school back in session, we didn’t see any boaters. We passed a man hiking who told us that there’s a great brewery and cuisine under the castle at what we think was Rozmberk. We don’t know for certain where he meant, but we laughed and thanked him for his recommendation. He was a regular long distance hiker.

We stopped at a historic site on the Austrian border where there were some signs about the local history in Czech and German. We read a few with the help of google translate. The area was known for smuggling between Bohemia and Austria after WWII. A few other cyclists stopped too, including a pair of Czechs who said we were far from home and adventurous for Americans. They told us that the sparse population in the area is because it was a no man’s land after WWII when it fell under the iron curtain. The mountains were under the control of different countries. This part of our route crosses the Iron Curtain bike route, and we later saw some signs about it. 

After riding some narrow paved and gravel roads, we had to navigate a section where our road was being replaced. We had cheese sandwiches on a bench outside a church across from a market. After more forest climbs, we came to a small town where we went slightly off route to find food and had ice cream bars. From there we took some minor detours to our destination, Nove Hrady, another historic town. It was a steep climb up the hill, so today both started and ended with good climbs.

Our penzion is another historic building, but less upscale than the one in Cesky Krumlov. The tilt to the floors indicates some settling over the years (centuries?). We bought ingredients for breakfast and lunch and snacks for tomorrow at the local coop, then had a really good dinner at the restaurant on the main square recommended by our host. While historic, this town doesn’t seem too touristy. After a walk, we headed back to our penzion. We expect a weather system to arrive tomorrow. 

České Budějovice to Český Krumlov

 Ride day 4: 19.7 miles, 1378’ elevation

Lodging:  Hotel Grand

We rose early and took our time, knowing that today’s ride would be short. We walked to a nearby coffee shop where we had a good breakfast on the edge of Old Town — poached eggs, avocado toast, espresso coffees. Our route out of town followed a bike path along a river where the water was still and reflected the trees and houses. Periodic pathside signs described local history in English and Czech. The morning air was cool, and there were few cars.

Eventually the route veered away from the river, and we climbed to a town with another historic church. After passing through a beautiful forest on a rough gravel track, we found ourselves descending into Cesky Krumlov. From a park we had our first view of the famous castle. We passed under its arches, and rode a cobbled, riverside path across from the historic center that the river curves around. We crossed a bridge and found our hotel right on the main square, the Hotel Grand. It was a bit touristy even though it’s the shoulder season with locals back in school. Our hotel staff opened a storage room where we could safely leave our bikes. It was too early to check in, so we changed clothes and walked around the historic center.

The historic castle was huge. For some reason there was a pen with two bears just outside the entrance with no explanation, just a sign saying not to feed the bears. No castle tours were available on a Monday, so we walked through the courtyards, across the narrow arched buildings we had ridden under earlier, and up around the gardens. Finally we ascended the tower and went thru the tower museum. We then headed down to the riverside where we sat outdoors, watching boaters (mostly kids) and tourists, and had a beer. Cesky Krumlov is the 2nd most visited city in the Czech Republic, and it’s easy to see why.

After checking in to our hotel room, we headed out again, this time walking past the local synagogue and some terraced gardens. We had dinner outdoors as it got late, returning to our hotel before dark.

Our hotel’s building was over 800 years old, (though the chrome and glass furnishings appear more recent). There were thick walls, some low doorways, and arched ceilings — very nice!

Tábor to České Budějovice

 Ride day 3: 58.3 miles, 2100’ Elevation

Lodging:  Marianska Residence

It was a long, hot night in our hotel. We left the window open, but there were shouting people in the street well into the morning hours. We packed up feeling fuzzy headed and tired. At 7am, we had breakfast in our hotel (nothing else was open), and the good food and coffee perked us up.

Out of Tabor, we rode down hill and crossed the river. There was no traffic to speak of on a Sunday morning, and the ride was scenic along the river, then rolling past farms and through small villages. Some towns are no more than a couple of buildings. A lot of town names end with “ice” which found out means “children of” whatever the prefix is.

We finally stopped to sample an apple after passing so many trees, and it was sweet and tart. We came to a section of forest that lead to a gravel road past a lake where we saw an egret. The forest appeared to be selectively logged. There were oaks and pines and firs, and other trees we didn’t recognize. Lots of cyclists seemed to be out for day rides.

In a small town, everything was closed except a small shop where we had an ice cream. After crossing more fields and forest, we crossed a highway and came to a gravel track through the woods. It looked like there were small vacation homes on a lake shore, then after traversing more woods we came upon a river path with an open restaurant.

We stopped for lunch (bratwurst and fries and coke), sharing a table with a man named Jan who was originally from the Netherlands but grew up on the Isle of Man. He moved to the Czech Republic around 30 years ago. We chatted pleasantly about differences in life styles between the US, UK, and Czechia, past and present, a little about politics.

Finally we got back on our bikes with about 10 miles of paved bike paths to go along side a very flat river. The path was full of cyclists, inline skaters, runners. We passed an adventure course, a whitewater park with surfers and kayakers, volleyball courts, and even a couple pickleball courts. The good paths led right to our large, modern apartment which was just across the street from old town Ceske Budejovice and included a washing machine and full kitchen. There was a full supermarket on the ground floor of our building, and vending machines including meat vending machines, a first for us.

We showered and walked to the old town square which was large and beautiful. It seemed to be surrounded by a moat. After walking the cobbled streets, we had dinner and returned to our hotel.

Sedlec-Prčice to Tábor

 Ride day 2: 21 miles, 1575 ‘ elevation

Lodging:  Hotel Palcat,Tabor

It rained overnight, a steady drizzle that we could hear from the dormer window in our room. We knew we had a short day of riding, and breakfast wasn’t until 8am, so we had a lazy morning. The rain stopped before we left at 9am, and roads dried off quickly.

We pedaled out of town on small roads, spotting some deer out in a harvested field. While gardens in towns are fenced, most fields where crops are grown are not. They look similar to meadows and are interspersed with patches of forest, giving the countryside a very open look. There are few fences compared to the western US. Our route rolled through hills and small towns, all of the towns appearing well kept, unlike the poverty in smaller US towns. The countryside has been very beautiful so far.

Just as we crossed a railroad track, the lights started blinking and a warning sounded. Within a minute or two, a modern looking train rolled up and dropped passengers off. We wondered if people commute to the city from these tiny towns.

We arrived in Tabor early and walked our bikes through the historic old town where a book fair was being held. The cobblestone streets were full of people perusing the books among the cafes and shops. The old town square is bordered by buildings with distinctive architecture and a church with a tower, very charming. In the center is a fountain. A maze of small streets leads to views of a river on one side, a valley and reservoir on another.

Our hotel was a plain concrete building with glass, chrome, and faux wood decor, distinctly different from the adjacent historic architecture. There was a freestanding bathtub adjacent to the bed, complete with a hand held shower (no curtain or tile, a flood hazard!) all on a platform with LED lighting. It cost around $10 extra to request air conditioning on this warm day, but then management turned it off anyways because they decided it was cool enough outside to not need it. There was a four lane bowling alley in the basement, and we spent a fun hour down there before walking down to the river Luznice and then back up to old town for dinner.