Hill towers and towering hills

Stage 7, day 2 (Sunday, 2 July 2017)
Hodonín to Žítková, 93 km

I have ground to a halt halfway up the exposed spiral staircase of Travničná telecommunication tower and I’m having to give myself a stern talking to. That toddler just managed it, so why can’t you? The steps - slippery after the rain - are made of a steel mesh, so I can see all the way down to the visitor centre below my feet and all the way up to the observation deck above. I don’t have a great head for heights, and this is well outside my comfort zone. I try to regain my composure as the whole structure sways in the wind. It’s decision time: do I turn around and go back down, or can I persuade myself to keep going upwards?

Views up and down Travničná observation tower

Great Moravia!

Stage 7, day 1 (Saturday, 1 July 2017)
Břeclav to Hodonín, 54 km

I’m standing on Czech soil at the southernmost vertex of the Dyje Triangle, also known as the Moravian Amazon, one of the last uninhabited expanses of Europe. Just below me, the clear, black River Dyje is merging restlessly into the murkier waters of the Morava. To my left, a group of cyclists has assembled on the Slovak side of the Morava. To my right, on the opposite bank of the Dyje, stand Austrian fishermen’s cottages with big hammock-like nets suspended on poles above the water. I wait a while as a pair of canoes glide nearer, then shout “Ahoj!”, the traditional greeting among Czech river-goers. “Hallo!” comes the German rejoinder. Behind me, my great friend Ryan is already making his way back towards the bikes. He’s grumbling about the nettles and mosquitoes, but you won’t hear any complaints from me. I’m back exploring the farthest-flung reaches of the Czech Republic for the first time in over six years, and it feels great. I take one last look at the river disappearing around the bend on its way down to the Danube, then I turn around to continue my own journey.

The Dyje (right) flowing into the Morava (left)

Circuit Rider returns!

Yes, after a hiatus of almost six years, I have at last carved out enough time to attempt to complete my perimeter ride of the Czech Republic.

In just over two weeks' time, barring disasters, I will embark on the long-planned Stage 7 of my Circuit Ride. I've booked time off work, I've bought my rail tickets and I've finalised my itinerary. On 1 July, I will catch the train to Břeclav in South Moravia, where I ended Stage 6 in September 2011. There, I will meet my great friend Ryan (who accompanied me on a highly entertaining section of Stage 3 back in September 2010) and together we will cycle to Hodonín. I'll then continue on my own for a few days through the White Carpathians and the Moravian-Silesian Beskids to the tripoint where the Czech Republic meets Slovakia meets Poland. From there, I'll turn north and head along the Czech-Polish border to Cieszyn, where my wife and her cousin and 10-year-old son will, I hope, be waiting for me. The next day – on 6 July – the four of us will cycle together to Bohumín, where my Circuit Ride adventure began (in the rain) in May 2010.

Circuit Ride Recycled – Part 2

In which our intrepid protagonist enters Poland, where he finds the trails - and the food - not entirely to his liking...

Testing spells and spelling tests

Stage 2, day 3 (Sunday, 25 July 2010)
Trutnov to Szklarska Poręba (84 km)

Funny things, borders. As I cross into Poland, where I’ll be spending the next day and a half, I feel like I’m somewhere new, somewhere alien and exotic. But the birds and the bees above my head don’t see it that way; they just see more of the same. And the beetle scuttling across the path in front of me just sees more colossal pebbles and towering blades of grass to negotiate - although maybe he should be paying more attention to the bicycle tyres bearing down on him at speed. Oops, sorry Ringo!

Circuit Ride Recycled – Part 1

Given the complete lack of posts here since last July, you might be thinking that I’ve hung up my cycling shoes for good. But you’d be wrong. Yes, my mission to circumcycle the Czech Republic has been on hold for far too long now, but I’m looking forward to completing the job this summer.

I haven’t been entirely idle on the Circuit Rider front. I’ve been answering plenty of cycling-related queries, and I’ve even met up with a few people in Prague through the blog. If you do have any questions about cycling in this part of the world, I’d be very pleased to hear them. You can e-mail me via my profile.

To get the blog rolling again, I've decided to re-publish six of my favourite posts, one from each of the six previous stages of my ride along the Czech border. It’s a re-hash, I know, but I’m hoping it will get me back in the circuit-riding mood as well as sending out a message that this project is still a going concern.

I’m calling this series Circuit Ride Recycled, and it starts with a post from the rain-sodden Stage 1 on of my trip, which I rode three years ago almost to the day. It’s only the second day of my journey, and things are already going awry...

Stage 7 ticked off (for now)

A (very small) number of you must be wondering what is happening with my Circuit Ride given the absence of news on this blog over the last few months.

First of all, let me apologise for the dearth of new posts here recently. Since the start of this year I have been extraordinarily busy in the non-cycling, non-blogging department of my life. I simply have not had the time to blog or bike as much as I would like.

But that does not mean I have given up on my attempt to circumcycle the Czech Republic. On the contrary, I had pencilled in the final (5-day) stage for this weekend, as tomorrow and Friday are both national holidays here in the Czech Republic (Saints Cyril and Methodius Day and Jan Hus Day respectively). In fact, if all had gone according to plan, I would now be on a train bound for Břeclav.

But my big plans have been thwarted by a tiny tick. A couple of weeks ago I went for a routine freckle check. The dermatologist spotted a circular rash on my back, immediately diagnosed me with Lyme disease and put me on a three-week course of antibiotics. When I mentioned I’d been planning to do a spot of cycling (actually 250 miles over some pretty mountainous terrain), she told me to forget it and take lots of rest.

To be honest I feel a bit of a fraud, as I’m not suffering from any discernible symptoms at all. But for the time being the closest I can get to cycling is watching the Tour de France on television.

As it turns out, the steamy, stormy weather currently sweeping across the country might have forced me to reconsider anyway, as might the twinging pain that I’ve been experiencing in my right hip recently.

All in all I’m feeling pretty ticked off.

Lednice-Valtice: chateaux, follies and fakes

Stage 6, day 5 (Wednesday, 28 September 2011)
Mikulov to Břeclav (46 km)

As I climb out of the village of Úvaly the crack of shotgun fire around me seems alarmingly close. It’s a sound I’ve been hearing throughout this stage of my trip, yet I've only laid eyes on one single hunter. I wonder just how much slivovice (a plum brandy very popular hereabouts) a hunter would have to consume before becoming incapable of distinguishing a bike rider from a roe deer. I also wonder whether it is true – as my old physics teacher used to claim – that you would be hit by the buckshot before hearing the gunshot (on account of the former travelling faster than the speed of sound). I decide it’s a theory I’d rather not test.