Dutch hospitality in Czech Paradise

Sometimes you meet people with whom you just click. Of course that is an experience that I have had in the UK, but somehow I find it happens more frequently here. I don't know why it is like that. It is in part I suspect because being the outsider makes me less likely to give in to British reserve. Maybe I just find it easier to get on with the Czechs.

Two people I clicked with were my hosts at the pension I stayed at over last weekend in Czech Paradise. Jan and Jeanette are, like me, non-Czechs who fell in love with this country and who bought a home here. Obviously we have a lot in common to talk about: horror stories about buying and restoring ruined Czech farmhouses, the trail of serendipity that brought us here in the first place. Also staying were Harold and Will, who came first as paying visitors and have been coming back as friends ever since.

Pension Kidafo sits in a hectare of land studded with fruit trees. I commiserated with them about the endless mowing required. After I arrived we sat drinking a beer, chatting and watching butterflies sipping the juices leaking from fallen plums. I was introduced to the cats that my hosts had adopted and which were watching the butterflies with hunters' eyes.

When I went upstairs to change before we went to a local restaurant, and I found a bottle of Czech bubbly by my door! Jan and Jeanette give a bottle to the first visitor from a nationality and I was the first Brit. Of course I shared the bottle with my hosts. The warmth of their welcome reminded me of my friend Hannah, who always made visitors staying in her pension feel like old friends. It is a rare gift to be able to put people at ease like that.

Jan and Jeanette's pension is in a small town called Libun. The town isn't that impressive, but its location is brilliant. Libun sits on the plain below the Prachovske Rocks, one of the area's most spectacular rock towns. It also stands on the junction of two railway lines. One runs east/west from Turnov, via Jicin and on to Hradec Kralove. The other runs from the Skoda city of Mlada Boleslav, via Sobotka to Stary Paka. What this means that you can explore a large part of Czech Paradise without having to change trains and indeed having to hire a car. Perfect for walkers and those of us who support environmentally sound tourism.

You can book your room at Pension Kidafo on Booking.com and AirBnB.

Walking in Cesky Raj

I apologize for not posting for a few weeks. My elderly father has been in hospital. He came out today, just three days before I fly back to the Czech Republic from England. 

I have have had several trips to the beautiful and spectacular landscape of Czech Paradise or Cesky Raj. I am usually based in my favourite town in the region - Jicin. Close to the town are two major rock towns. These "towns" are complexes of huge pillars of sandstone carved by the weather over thousands of years.

The nearest rock town to Jicin is the Prachovske Skaly (above), indeed it is so close that you can walk through the rock town and back to Jicin. In addition to the trail that goes through the rocks, there are also two circular routes which climb up and down through the pillars. 

But walking in Czech Paradise isn't all about rock towns. There are less dramatic walks through verdant countryside past traditional wooden cottages like this one above. 

One day maybe I will write a book about the area - another excuse to walk in paradise!

Trosky Castle - Walking in Czech Paradise

I took two Australian friends for a short walking tour of Czech Paradise in May and I have been meaning to blog about it ever since

Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj in Czech) is a brilliant place for walking. It's actually a brilliant place full stop – one of my favourites in the Czech Republic. I arrived a few days earlier than my friends because I had some walks to check and research. The weather wasn't great until my friends brought sunshine from Australia.

We really only had two days for our walks. The first took us via Trosky castle – a stunning ruin perched on the cores of two extinct volcanoes. Castles with two towers, at either end, are a familiar form in the Czech Republic, but few if any dominate the landscape the way Trosky does. Indeed the two towers are symbols of the area. Visible from all directions, they create a landmark for the traveller, be they arriving on foot, in a car or by train. The castle's position results in commanding views - it's claimed that these views extend as far as Prague and you can certainle see as far as the Giant Mountains as well as large parts of Czech Paradise and the surrounding area.

The two towers are called Baba - the crone - and Panna - the maiden. But don't be deceived by the names: both are equally old (14^th century). Between the two towers is the palace area. The downside of the incredible location was the climb we had to make from the train station on the first hot day of the year. But there is a pub next to the entrance of the castle, which was a welcome sight and where I introduced my friends to the Czech soft drink Kofola.

Salamander, salamander

Okay, I know it's a rubbish photo, but given how secretive the fire salamander is I was delighted to see it and manage to fire off a photo before it disappeared.

Just under four weeks ago (it feels much longer, given all the things I have been up to in the meantime) I was in Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj) researching a geological tour. I woke early and, although it had been raining heavily in the night and was still mizzling, I decided to walk the Riegerova trail. The trail is a nature trail with an emphasis on geology, but the most exciting sight was not the very impressive and varied rocks but a small golden and black amphibian.

I had nearly finished the trail and was walking down a track in the direction of a restaurant by the road, when I saw something gold and black some yards in front of me. I have never seen a salamander in the wild before, although they are to be found in Czech forests, and at first I didn't realise what it was. It seemed too brightly coloured to be an animal so at first sight I thought it a bit of rubbish left by some careless walker. When I drew closer and as the salamander made a dash for the verdant verge I scrambled to get my camera out of my rucksack.

It is amazing that such a brightly coloured animal can still be so secretive. Apparently it rarely comes out of its hiding places during the daytime and only then when it is raining. It likes to hide in rotten tree trunks, which may account for the legends about it living in fire as it would appear in people's fires when the log it was hiding in started to burn. The salamander has therefore a special place in alchemy and myth.

It very soon disappeared and I had to be content with this blurry picture. But I went on my way rejoicing at my luck at seeing it at all. I thought as I walked about how I would have shared this experience with my Czech friend, had she been alive. But then I thought that maybe she had been there all along, after all hadn't her online name been Salamander?

The Rock Towns of Czech Paradise

 Czech Paradise (Český ráj) is one of my favourite areas in the Czech Republic. Because I offer walking holidays there, I have the perfect excuse to visit every year - well, I have to check the walks don't I? And quite a few of those walks take me through some of the area's famous rock towns.

The rock towns are the reason Czech Paradise was included in the UNESCO list of European Geoparks. But what are they? They are collections of huge sandstone towers created by erosion by rain and ice over millenia. When I say huge, I mean the height of several storey buildings. Nothing can quite prepare you for the scale of them and no photo can really do them justice (although I have tried). In the photo below - the dark dot on the path is a man.

The most famous rock towns are the Prachovské Rocks (shown here) and the Hruba Skala Rocks, but there are several others. My husband and I first visited the Prachovské Rocks one early evening in September. The sun was low in the sky, turning the rocks a pinkish yellow and casting long shadows. Virtually alone, we followed the paths that wove through the area, climbing steep staircases, squeezing through cracks in the rocks, and standing on their summits to watch the setting sun.

It was a magical experience. No wonder that the rock towns are used by film production companies - for example for Disney's Narnia films and more recently for the BBC's Three Musketeers series. Nor is it a surprise that these natural labyrinths were once home to robbers.

Czech Signs

Here's another in my occasional series of Czech signs. The sign warns that there are breeding rams in the flock! 

The photo was taken near Trosky Castle in Czech Paradise. 

Autumn Crocus in Czech Paradise

On our September visit to Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj) my husband and I visited Frýdštejn rock castle near Malá Skála. The road to the castle was being dug up, so parked our car and started to walk. Suddenly in front of us was a field covered with hundreds of purple flowers. I climbed over the gate and took some photographs. Here's the best of them.