Bird Lake

As the Student Agency bus crosses Ceske Budejovice's city boundary, you probably aren't paying much attention to the glimpse of water beyond a curtain of trees. Within seconds the coach has passed by and the view changes to large out-of-town shopping centres and brightly painted blocks of flats. But the complex of five small lakes is worth a visit. The 25 minute tram ride from Ceske Budejovice's main train station takes you to a very special place.

The lakes may be within a stone's throw of human activity, but they are an amazing reserve for nature, especially but not exclusively for birds. Indeed the noise of the throngs of gulls and terns that inhabit the lakes' small islands can even drown out the sound of traffic on the main road to Pisek and Prague. Although they are the loudest inhabitants of the lake, the gulls and terns are not the rarest (gulls are common even in this country in Central Europe). In among them my husband and I spotted common pochards, the rarer red-crested pochard, little grebes, great crested grebes and black-necked grebes. A pied flycatcher flitted between the branches of the oaks that line the lake's banks. On the opposite bank of the lake farthest away from the road there was a large herony with not only grey herons but also night herons. In total 191 bird species have been seen on the lakes and I can well believe it.

It is an easy walk through the lakes – level and not too long but packed with animals and plants of interest. There are even plenty of information boards to tell us what to look for. The nature reserve is quite simply an amazing place and one for which I am seriously thinking of buying some binoculars. It is enough to make anyone a keen birdwatcher.

A Walk on the Palava - a photographic record

I spoke a few weeks about how lovely walking on the Palava Hills can be, especially when the Spring flowers were out. And now here is a post to prove it. I spent Saturday morning walking around the Devin Nature Trail. First I had to climb up from the plain below through woods which, as you can see above, were carpeted with wildflowers.

It's quite a steep climb. But the views from the top are spectacular.

But not as spectacular as the banks of wild dwarf irises set against yellow potentillas.

The path climbs and descends as it circuits the summit of Devin. At either end of the summit are fortifications - a medieval castle and a bronze age fort with this commanding view (below).

On the slope below the Bronze age fort I came upon a mound-shaped plant of Pheasant's Eye with its bright gold flowers. A few weeks earlier I would have seen pasque flowers in the meadows, but I felt well rewarded for the effort of climbing up Devin's slopes. 

 I am thinking of creating a walking holiday in the area. What do you think?

The Palava Hills

I first saw the Palava Hills from the road that runs from Brno to Vienna. The sun was shining and it caught the white cliffs that run along the ten-kilometre spine of the hills. The hills appeared to flash against the clear blue Moravian sky.

This is an ancient landscape. Human beings have been walking and hunting on these hills since approximately 27,000 BC. We know this because the camps, belongings and graves of these mammoth hunters have been and continue to be discovered on the Palava's slopes. A visit to the museum of the mammoth hunters at Dolni Vestonice is highly recommended and gives you a real understanding of life here millennia ago. Looking up at the hills it is not hard to imagine our forebears driving wild horses over the cliffs or trapping them in the hills' limestone folds. Later humans also left their mark on the hills in the form of three castles, now picturesque ruins . 

Several footpaths wend along and across the hills, giving excellent views and taking you through a series of nature reserves. The hills are famous for the wildflowers (if you are coming to see these, it is best to visit in Spring), the rarest of these being the Palava Lumnitzer carnation and the Spring Adonis flower. Eagle owls nest in the old quarries, while the Palava's caves are home to rare bats. To aid the visitor there are a number of trails with interpretation boards explaining the history, nature and geology of the hills. 

Given my love of walking, history and nature, you will not be surprised that the Palava is a place I love.

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.

Yet More Czech Flowers

Back in May I visited a local nature reserve and blogged about the wildflowers there. I promised at the time to return later in the summer and to report on what new flowers I saw. This time I went with my Czech friend and we spent a couple of very pleasant hours wandering the reserves paths, stopping frequently to admire our finds.



I was mostly in raptures about the wildflowers, whilst she was also taken by the berries and other wild (free) food that the reserve had in abundance. She managed to restrain herself and abided by the reserve's rules of not collecting any of them.

This summer seems to be running several weeks early so sadly we missed some of the reserves more spectacular flowers – the gentians and martagon lilies. Nevertheless there were some wonderful flowers out even in late August, whilst the berries, especially those of the wild berberis, made impressive displays.

Some of the plants I recognised like this wild monkshood (aconite) above.

This sedum.

And this mullein, more slender than the usual robust mullein you find in England.

There were plenty of wild herbs, oregano, mint and thyme in various forms, the scent from which on the late afternoon air was heady and glorious.

And then there were those flowers like this one, which I just didn't recognise nor could I find it in my book.

The Nature Reserve is in the Vysny area, just above Cesky Krumlov town and not far from the station. Although it was a glorious summer's day, we were the only visitors there – amazing seeing as we were so close to a major tourist attraction, but then tourists to Cesky Krumlov seldom allow themselves time to enjoy the natural beauty of the area.

May Flowers on Vysenske Kopce

I had been meaning to visit the Vysenske (Vyšenské) Kopce Nature Reserve, to be found just to the north of Cesky Krumlov below the Klet Mountain for several years. I had even bought a book about it in the Information Centre. But it wasn't until yesterday that I actually made it. And how I kicked myself about missing out on this lovely oasis for all those months.


I took the little train to Cesky Krumlov, then I walked up the road that leads to Vysny, and at the crossroads I followed the signs to the Headquarters of the Blansky Les Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, outside of which was a large board about the reserve and the signposted walk that takes you through it. The couple of hours that followed were ones of sheer delight. The sun shone, the views were fantastic and the may flowers were out in profusion.


The Nature Reserve encloses a number of very different habitats - conditioned partly by the fact that it sits on a change in the geology and so has plants suited to limestone, granite, and loam in a relatively small area. The walk takes you through all these areas and has information boards at key points to help you identify what you are seeing. For the wildflower lover, such as yours truly, there is even an area at the beginning with the flowers in a bed labelled to show you what to look for.


So what flowers did I find? Well too many to detail here - the anemone at the top of this post is rare in the Czech Republic and is not seen in the UK and yet in the reserve you can see crowds of them waving their white heads on tall stems in the grassland and at the wood's edge. The spring pea also is not to be found in England and has as you can see the most vibrant colours. There were bushes covered with blossom - bird cherry, wild privet, hawthorn and the wild berberis (shown above) - and which so hummed and vibrated with bees collecting nectar that they sounded like small electric substations. There was so much more to see and hear.

I shall return to Vysenske Kopce in the summer and blog again about the summer flowers. Suffice it to say that if you visit Cesky Krumlov, do make the trip here and enjoy this area's natural treasures as well as its historical ones.

For more Czech flowers in May visit my next post

And for August flowers