Walking around the World

I walked around the World on Thursday and it only took me three-and-a-half hours (it would have taken three but I stopped in a pub for a drink and an ice cream). The secret to this feat is the fact that a pond near to Trebon is called Svet, which translates as "world".

I was researching a possible walk for a short walking tour for a client and this was one on my list of possibles. It is now a definite. It is a wonderful walk, which with the exception on mountain scenery (it is in fact a very level walk) encompasses nearly every type of Czech landscape you can find. In just over 12 kilometres you walk alongside a lake/fishpond, past reedbeds filled with birds and brilliant jewel-like dragonflies, enter a protected woodland with its peatbogs and rare flowers, go through traditional farmland and flowermeadows and a forest with bilberry and cranberry plants, and finally through parkland. Along the walk are information boards about the animals (eg otters, edible and tree frogs), birds (eg ospreys and kingfishers) and plants (eg venus flytrap, mosses, and grass of parnasus) that thrive in the different habitats, as well as information about fishponds, traditional vernacular architecture and the formation of peatbogs.

It was a blissful walk: not too demanding, educational, and varied. Even the weather was perfect - sun, but not too hot with a slight breeze. I recommend it to you.

More on Birdwatching

The area around Trebon is packed with man-made ponds dating back to at least the Renaissance and even the late middle ages. I say ponds, but they are actually often as large as any lake. They were built as carp lakes to supply the tables of the Catholic Czechs on Fridays and holy days (and frankly any other day given the Czechs' love of carp). The lakes may be large therefore but they are also shallow enough to farm carp in and therefore they make the perfect home for waterbirds - those that stay all year long, part of the year and those that are passing through. As a result of the richness of the birdlife the Trebonsko area is designated a UNESCO biosphere.

Two lakes of particular interest to the birdwatcher are the Velky and Maly Tisy. The Velky (Large) is easily accessible - take the 148 road from Horni Slovenice to Lomnice nad Luznice and turn right down a small road which takes you  past the fishery at Saloun. Just before the fishery the road bends, park here and you can walk along the raised tree-lined embankment of the pond.


I had a wonderful time, but I wished I had brought binoculars. In order to take a zoom photo of this grebe with a steady hand I rested on a concrete pillar on the edge of the pond. I am as my family will tell you capable of great concentration, ignoring everything else if I need to. It has been a boon when working in a busy office, but it can be a disadvantage. When I had got the shot I was after, I rose to discover I had been leaning in a pile of birdshit. My shirt was sodden and stinking and I had not noticed!

Silver Anniversary

The reason why my blogging has been so intermittent recently is that for the last three weeks my husband and I have been celebrating our silver wedding anniversary by making a long-planned trip across Northern Europe and back. We've had a lovely time in various German and Belgian cities, but chose to spend the big  day itself in the Czech Republic - well, I can't think of anywhere more romantic.

After a lazy morning we drove to the lake district around Trebon via the lovely countryside around Novy Hrady. At Trebon we sat at a table in front of a fish restaurant on the town square and enjoyed a meal of fried carp. Carp has such a bad reputation with the Brits, who consider it at best tasteless and at worst muddy, but the Czechs love it. And cooked well, by a restaurant which knows what it is doing, it is delicious. We then walked away from the square and around the corner to a cafe, which serves some of the best Czech cakes I have ever tasted.

After lunch we decided to walk off some of the calories with a visit to the nature reserve at Cerveny Blato. A wooden boardwalk takes you for four kilometres through a forested peat bog. The place is just incredible - it's like stepping back in time to an age before Man cleared the forests and drained the swamps. You half expect to see giant dragonflies and dinosaurs appear out of the bog pine forest. You certainly get to see some rare plants, fungi, butterflies and birds. A black woodpecker twice shot up from bushes as we passed, its red head standing out against the rest of its dark plummage. We were stopping so much to ooh and ahh and take photos, that the four kilometres took two hours to complete.

After our work we returned home, where we finished our special day eating chanterelle mushrooms and Czech chocolates, washed down by Czech bubbly. Just the two of us, plus our lovely old house, and the crickets serenading us in the garden.

An Encounter with Eagles

My husband and I were playing the tourists last week. We decided that we would make the one and a half hour drive to Jindrichuv Hradec to see the town and its castle. I will blog about the visit shortly, but this post is about an incredible experience we had on our way home. We had come out of Jindrichuv Hradec on a minor road and were making our way through the countryside towards Trebon.

We were approaching a medium-sized lake – a fishpond for which the area is famous – when I suddenly noticed three large birds circling above it. At first I thought them storks given the size of them. But then as we came nearer, it was apparent that this was not the case. Two were far larger than storks (which are large birds by British standards), they had a wingspan the length of a bedstead.

My husband had to draw my attention to a bend in the road, I was so preoccupied in watching them. Some trees shielded them from the view from the road and then we saw them again. Now ready I pulled over to observe them more closely. There appeared to be two adults and one juvenile silhouetted against the sky, which made it hard to discern colouring. At the ends of their wings the feathers were spread out like the fingers on a hand, this and their bodyshape and size confirmed that these were large (very large) birds of prey – larger than the buzzards we see near our home. This and the fact that they were patrolling a lake with wildfowl on at approximately the level of the tree crowns gave away their identity. We were watching white-tailed eagles, the largest raptor in northern Europe and one which I had read could be found patrolling the extensive system of ponds around Trebon.

I had been planning a birdwatching foray to Trebon, but had had little expectation of seeing anything so spectacular. Now here, unlooked for, were these princes of the air. We sat a little and watched with open mouths.

Carping

In town squares all over the Czech Republic there are large tanks full of carp. Carp or capr as they are called in the Czech Republic are the centre of the Christmas meal - the Czech equivalent of turkey. Shoppers buy the live fish and take them home, even keeping them in the bath until the time comes to kill and eat them.

To feed this love of carp over the years the Czechs have built man-made fishponds across the plains of the Republic. The largest complex of such ponds - or rather lakes (they are that big) - is to be found around the South Bohemian town of Trebon. The area is well worth a visit - it has UNESCO-protected area status and makes a good area to explore by bicycle. The ponds were created by Jakub Krcin, the master pond-maker to the Rosenbergs, who had a home in Cesky Krumlov. He may have been a genius when it came to building ponds, but like so many landscape transformers on behalf of the nobility he was a complete bastard when it came to dealing with the peasants whose homes he destroyed and whose labour he abused. So vilified was he in life and after his death that there are a host of ghost stories about him, including one where he is cursed every night to ride in a carriage drawn by two giant cats.

When our Czech house was a the home of a German-speaking farming family before the 1945, the yard featured a carp pond. The pond was fed by a stream, which flowed from a well behind the house through a channel in the barn. From the pond the stream flowed on under the gate and down the hill. Under the ownership of the Czech family that succeeded them the well fell into disrepair and the pond was replaced by a septic tank. As for the stream its way blocked it made its own way through the granite bedrock and into our cellar.