Saturday, June 13th, 2026

Distance ridden – 392 kilometres

When we woke up it was raining, which was slightly worrying as our holiday was over and we needed to ride home. Luckily, the weather App claimed it was a short shower – and it was. It stopped before breakfast.

Lucie had become very proficient at affixing our wheelie luggage and, before nine o’clock, we were heading back down the hill towards Velehrad. The church there is massive and there were already quite a number of pilgrims/tourists milling about when we passed through.

The SatNav selected Road 50 for the first part of the journey and it was an exhilarating ride on a sinuous and well surfaced road towards the Czech Republic’s second city, Brno. It was also quite busy and there were rather too many speed cameras for my liking, but that was not likely to be a serious threat to us as I settled back to enjoy the journey.

In yesterday’s account, I mentioned the town of Slavkov and how I erroneously thought it was the one where there was a battle. Strangely, as we neared Brno, we rode right through the town of Slavkov u Brna. This WAS the site of the battle of Slavkov/Austerlitz/the Three Emperors in December 1805.

I have been there a couple of times in the past because it was a very significant battle. Napoleon won, but the defeated Austrians sued for peace and withdrew from the conflict. On hearing the news, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt (the younger) declared that his map of the then Europe would not be needed for ten years. Although he died only a few weeks later, his prophecy was strangely accurate as Napoleon was only finally brought to book by the British and Prussian armies in 1815.

The hill at Slavkov looks so peaceful that it is hard to imagine over 150,000 troops fighting and dying on its snowy slopes.

We came to the Czech highway D1 (E50), neatly circumnavigated Brno, which is always a wise choice and began to head towards Prague. However, we had one last hurrah we wanted to make before we got there.

We had discovered that the smallest Menhir in the Czech Republic was located “not far” to the West of the D1 highway in a village called Polesí which lays in the countryside between Jihlava and Pelhřimov.

“Not far” is one of those gloriously vague terms !
The menhir was actually quite a distance from junction 112 of the D1 highway, about 52 kilometres. Still, it was a warm day and the countryside in those parts is very lovely.

Fishponds abound and the “cover crop” of choice for fields left fallow, seems to be Tansy not clover. It has a lingering scent and is a gorgeous purple colour. My head filled with thoughts of Timothy, Aragon and, of course, weasels (it is a poem by Eleanor Farjeon, look it up !)

Guided by Mapy, we found Polesí and navigated its tiny lanes until we were close. I parked the Harley beside a hut, near a large artificial pool.

If we had known exactly where to look, we could have seen it from where we parked.

We found the stone about 150 metres away in the flower filled meadow.

It is a Menhir, it fulfils all of the criteria – but it is tiny, about half the size of a bag of sugar. A child could have carried it there – and a weasel could knock it over. It was placed there on August 6, 2016, as part of the Cultural Summer celebrations in Polesí and a huge number of people played a tiny part.

Perhaps to discourage speeding weasels, a tripod of wood is placed above it as protection.

I do like people with a sense of humour, well done to the people of Polesí !

If you cannot help yourself, the GPS location is 49.2891400N, 15.2524075E

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I sometimes wonder if Lucie ever sleeps. I expected to head back to the motorway, but I was, instead, directed to the small town of Rynárec which was home to the somewhat unimaginatively named Hostinec Rynárec (Rynárec 11, Rynárec). Here she had located a pub that was not only open on a Saturday lunchtime (a surprising amount are not these days), but which also sold one of her favourite “traditional Czech” dishes, Smažený květák (deep fried cauliflower). We went there and we got it, It was freshly cooked and beautifully done. I forgot to photograph it, of course – but here is the oddly coloured, grapefruit flavoured, non-alcoholic beer we drank.

Then, all we had to do was ride home. We went to nearby Pelhřimov and then across country on Road 34 and rejoined the D1 highway at junction 90, near Humpolec. We broke the last stage neatly in half with one rest stop and arrived home in late afternoon.

Only a week away, but we had done a lot