I’ve heard a lot about Česky Raj from my students, it’s a national park about 40km from Mlada Boleslav. I had pictured a national park like in the US, with only trees, roads and camping areas. But actually it’s a huge space with open land, forests, fields, and small villages. I wanted to go cycling there, because that’s just what you do. So, Petr and I went around for 40km. It was much harder than I though it was going to be. I had no idea there were so many hills/mountain like things. Several times I had to push my bike up the hill. Petr kept promising me it was “the last hill”, but I soon learned that his promises were very empty! For the first 20km we stopped every 5km for beer (that’s part of what you do). We also stopped at a medieval castle, which had a beautiful view of Česky Raj. In the nature part there were so many beautiful rock formations and we were riding on dirt paths. At one point we took a wrong turn and went around 2km in a circle. But that actually turned out to be great because we missed the thunderstorm. There were lots of wild cherry trees, tiny wild strawberries and blueberries. The cherries were better than anything I’ve ever had from a store in Hawaii. It took us 8 hours to do the whole route, which isn’t bad considering we were stopping for beer about half that time. It was really fun, and I’m glad I did it, but I definitely prefer the Czech hobby of drinking in the pub to cycling 40km! However, 40km is nothing, on average Petr will cycle 100km! Crazy Czech people!
Starting point in Kost. We basically did a 40km circle around, going to the left and up and around and back down
Beer #1
Beer #2
Some ruins way back in the background. We were supposed to go there, but I was much too much of a weenie to make it that far.
Medieval castle and beer #3, with a great view
Beautiful rock formations
Last beer!
Almost back!
Very yummy cherries that Petr picked from the wild cherry trees
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