Friday, June 28th, 2024

Distance ridden 0 kilometres

Distance walked 23.6 kilometres

When I woke up, it was already full light, but still before 06:00. Again, I was struck by the total absence of any noise, except birdsong. Prague does go quieter, in the small hours, usually, but never, ever, quite that silent.

It was the final day of the Czech school year and, as I stood on the balcony just before breakfast, the children of the house set off for their final school day before the two-month holiday. The daughter had a bunch of roses for her teacher, another local tradition that has largely fallen by the wayside in the cities.

We had breakfast and set off on another hike. This one started outside the front door, so we walked straight past the Harley and away down the drive.

Hiking is something that we often do when time permits, but we both wanted to be in good shape for our upcoming trip to the Antarctic in January 2025. For this reason Lucie had chosen another quite long loop, but promised that it would not be quite so physically taxing as the previous day. As always we started uphill and it was a long, progressive climb indeed. Not killing, but seemingly never ending.

We found ourselves walking through a section of broad-leaved woodland which is, sadly, reasonably unusual. This was also broadly spaced and the sunlight filtering through gave the place an almost magical air.

There was also a quite a proliferation of butterflies, Red Admirals, Peacocks, some sort of Fritillary and a far more elusive one that appeared to be a very light blue, but which I could not identify. There was also, as there had been the previous day, a lot of small birds flitting here and there. Far more, I fancy, than in the Bohemian woods further south.

As I remarked yesterday, a hike is a hike. It was hot, but not so humid and our surroundings were very green. We were rewarded for our long, unbroken climb, by a descent with all the same characteristics and it was easy going.

At the bottom, however, when we emerged from the forest to follow the road back into town, we came into the full, noon-time sunshine and it was very hot indeed. Mála Morávka has a skiing area and that was centred around the road we were then on. There was a lot of activity on what are the wintertime ski slopes to prepare them for more Summer oriented activities such as hiking and mountain biking.

A lot of possible lunch locations were still closed but, as we neared the town proper, some were open in preparation for the early holiday arrivals, some of whom were already there. We were able to get a light meal (salad, for Lucie and fried Hermelín cheese for me) and, more importantly, some liquid refreshments too.

Then it was the comparatively short walk back to the pension, which seemed longer because I was a bit sleepy after lunch.

We rested up for a couple of hours before making what would be our final trek up to Na Rychte. There is a special kind of Moravian “smelly” cheese called Tvarůžky that was on the menu there – and which I wanted to try. Lucie had rabbit, she has obviously never read anything by Beatrix Potter ! My cheese was OK, but not as special as I had hoped for. Peter Rabbit was, apparently, quite delicious. Chokingly, we decided that we did not have room even for a shared plate of blueberry livance, so we walked back to the pension in the twilight.

In the vines and bushes that flanked the path up the slope, we saw tiny flashes of light. At first we thought they might be glow worms, like we had seen in New Zealand, but these were moving, not stationary. They were, in fact fireflies (which are actually beetles, not flies), no doubt brought out by the humidity and they were flitting here and there in the growing darkness. It was one of those magical moments that reminds you of just how wonderful nature is.

Our short holiday was at an end, in the morning we would return to Prague.