Hiking through the Czech countryside

On Sunday, I went for a really long walk.

I woke up early and headed to the train station, after packing my bag and making sure I had loads of water with me.  I grabbed an espresso and some breakfast at the station, and then caught the train to Karlstejn.  The train ride was a short 40 minutes away, and populated mostly by commuters on the way to work, by the looks of things.  I read a book.

Karlstejn

Karlstejn town

The view of the castle above the town. I can't help but think how intimidating this must have been in the 13th century.  Would it have inspired fear, or protection in the common people?

At Karlstejn, I got off the train and walked the three kilometres into town and up to the castle.  I was there pretty early before the rest of the tourists, and the town was actually quite quaint and peaceful.  Once I crossed the bridge and turned off for the castle though, the residential area fell away and it became shop upon shop of tourist souvenirs.  I bought myself a trdelnik because they smelled fresh, and a big group of what I think were Greek cyclists stopped me and asked me to take some photos of them.  I couldn't understand them, and they didn't understand me, but we hand-waved our way through it and they seemed satisfied. 

Part of the castle wall and the countryside

Overlooking town through the woods

It was already warm outside, despite only being a little before 10am, and I actually had to take a break walking up the steep hill to the castle.  I have no mountain legs.  When I got up there, the castle was just opening up to the public for the day, and I walked around the castle grounds briefly.  Took a few photos of the views, bought a couple of postcards, but didn't pay to see the inside of the castle.  Then I hopped on my way and started the hike.

The start of the hike. Note the little red marker. 

My temporary dogbro

I downloaded an app before I left called mapy.cz and it shows all of the hiking trails in Czechia.  So armed with that, and some knowledge gleaned from the internet, I prepared to head off into the middle of the woods. 

Finding the start of the trail was relatively easy.  They use a colour system here in Czechia, so I just needed to look for the red marker, and that was the start of the trails from the castle.  The red trail is the trans-Czechia trail, and then there's a bunch of other ones that branch off from it.  I saw markers for white trails, yellow, blue, and green while I hiked. 

The trail often looked like this

Or this

Or this

The trail was relatively easy for the first little while, and I even had a random dog accompany me for maybe the first kilometre or so.  The only time I got turned around was at the beginning, when I missed a trail marker, and headed up a hill instead of down the road.  I figured it out pretty quickly though.  The trails were well marked, and sometimes they followed roads through towns as I passed them instead of on unpaved trails. 

Someone put a fresh beer out next to the shrine. 

A few kilometres into the hike, I took a seven kilometre detour up the yellow trail to go see some old quarries.  I managed to get up and go back down again in a bit over an hour, but I was really pushing.  The view from the top was really nice - I passed by many picnicking Czech families out on a Sunday stroll, and I passed three abandoned quarries, Lom Mexico, Lom Amerika, and Velka America (Little Mexico, Little America, and Big America).  Lom Amerika had some candles and a shrine laying on it.  I can only assume someone fell off the cliff into the quarry and died at some point.  I met someone who was telling me that people used to swim in the water in Velka Amerika, but too many people were dying or getting injured, so now it's off limits. 

Velka Amerika

the view

Randomly, the police.

Once I got up to the top of the hill where Velka Amerika was, I needed to take a break, so I sat in the shade and munch on some wild strawberries I found, and drank some water.  It was probably close to 30C out, and the sun when it was shining was brutally hot.  I was covered in sunscreen, but I tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible.  As it was, I was drenched with sweat.

I found a little box with a notebook in it.  

Another Canadian came through this way at some point!

I loved coming across these.  They let me know how far I've come.

Eventually the path got more rugged, and I almost immediately twisted an ankle.  So now that's two twisted ankles I'm traveling on.  They only bother me at the very end of the day though, so I've been completely ignoring them.  After about 15km, I stopped passing people as frequently.  Almost nobody I passed could speak English, so I just spent the day lost in thought.  I stopped periodically for a snack or for water, but otherwise I just trudged on.  At around 20-25km, I climbed a steep hill and then descended into a tiny village called Svaty Jan pod Skalu (I cannot say this) - it translates to St. Stephen under the rock.  It was this perfectly picturesque town with a river flowing through it and a beautiful church.  I walked across it in ten minutes, and I thought it was just so quaint. 

The trail got really rugged.  I twisted my ankle.

Walked through a waterless gorge

the land of a thousand tiny mushrooms.  These things were everywhere. 

Went off the trail...found a cave.

I was really tired by this point, but I only had another 5 kilometres to my end town, Beroun, where I would take the train back to Prague.  So, I soldiered on.  At some point, I had brushed against some stinging nettle, and my ankles were really itchy.  I climbed what was the last steep hill of the day, and when I finally reached the top, the forest opened up into this tall grassy meadow overlooking the town of Beroun.  I passed by a woman who waved at me, so I waved back, and then she awkwardly stopped for a moment and stared at me.  I kinda just cocked my head as if to ask "Yes?", and she then switched to English and asked me if I wanted to join her for a cider and a game of frisbee with some of her friends.  I was so tired at this point that I just wanted to get home to Prague, but I decided that sure, I'll come play frisbee.  So we hiked back up to the top of the hill where we were going to meet her friends, Petrik and Martin, and we played a bit of frisbee in the long grass (that I later learned has ticks in it), drank a cold pear cider, and they smoked some weed that Petrik pulled out of his pack in a mason jar.  He said he has a friend that grows it a few kilometres from where we were sitting. 

Svaty Jan pod Skalou

Svaty Jan pod Skalou

The rock above the church.  There were lots of rock climbing routes on it.

this random little church

They all spoke some English, so we chatted and sat around for a bit in the shade, and they told me stories about their hometown of Beroun, and how they still have bears that roam around on some of the hills, and about their local brewery, and where they grew up.  Eventually, they had to go, and the woman (who's name I actually never learned), offered to hike out the last few kilometres to town with me since she had nothing else to do that day. 

She showed me around Beroun. "... and here is the church, we went here as children, here is the town square, we saw a concert there last night, here is our grocer, how beautiful is our little town, here is the river, it is named the Berounka, this is my house, I live with my father, etc".

The view of Beroun with the impending rain clouds in the distance

The only photo I snagged of them.

She was very animated and clearly in love with where she lives, which was admittedly, very beautiful, and she was just so excited that a foreigner would come to see it, because nobody comes to see it, and I barely got a word in most of the time.  She asked me lots of questions about Canada, and wanted to know what our buildings looked like, and what our town squares looked like, and I struggled to explain to her that we didn't design our cities the same as in Europe.  Most of our towns don't have a town square (she was baffled - where does the town meet, then?), and not all our buildings are colourful because it was more efficient to build giant glass rectangles (which she thought looked 'sick' and 'sad' and 'communist' - not a good thing to Czechs).

A mural in Beroun

The town square of Beroun

Eventually, it was getting dark, so she walked me to the train station and waited with me for the train.  And we said our goodbyes.  I regret not getting her name.  It rained while I was on the train on the way home, but had mercifully stopped by the time I got off the train.  I walked back to the hostel, totally beat, and very hungry, and made myself a huge plate of food, and then just collapsed and went to bed. 

It was a good day.