A Walk in the Woods with Helena

On Saturday I met my friend Helena in Cesky Krumlov and walked with her over Dubik hill along the old pilgrim's way through the forest to Kajov. It was a slow affair, as we stopped to admire nature and the scenery, and of course to look for mushrooms. I had thought that there would be lots of people with mushroom baskets, but no the woods were empty apart from a child with her mother and they had no basket.

Helena explained that September had been a fabulous month for mushrooms. The summer here has been very dry, indeed there had been a drought, so it wasn't until the rains came in September that the woods exploded with mushrooms. You apparently couldn't move for fungi. Last week there had been frosts – earlier than usual – and they had put paid to many mushrooms. We found the blackened remains throughout the forest.

“I know my Zoe will find mushrooms,” said Helena with an optimism I did not share.

The first edible mushrooms I came across were amethyst deceivers. Not great mushrooms but better than nothing, they went into the basket. I remember my friend Hannah showing me them, when first I learned to identify edible mushrooms. Without her guidance I would never had got up the courage to forage. My son and his girlfriend are going on a day's workshop about hunting mushrooms. I am delighted they have taken an interest, but a side of me wonders how much one can learn in a day. The only way to learn is to go repeatedly into the woods at different times of year with someone who knows what they are doing.

Up a path that branched off the main track through a plantation of fir trees we came across yellow-legged autumn chanterelles, hedgehog mushrooms and the normal chanterelles. All favourites of mine. Now as we walked along the track nearing Kajov we picked more chanterelles, and even some boletus which had been sheltered from the frosts by mosses. The basket wasn't full when we got to Kajov, but there certainly were enough mushrooms for at least two meals, plus some put down in the freezer.

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.

Dawn in the Woods

I mentioned that I have been wandering round our local woods at dawn. Well mushrooms aren't the only reason for going. I love the misty Czech dawns – the view across wooded hills towards the Klet mountain, the light coming through the trees picking out countless dew bejewelled webs, deer crossing my path and the song of birds.

Vyssi Brod Walk

Before I got distracted by Czech mushroom figures I was blogging about Vyssi Brod and promised to talk about a historic trail which starts and ends in the town. It starts next to the major tourist carpark and follows along the edge of the Monastery complex. It took about two hrs to do the walk, the guidebooks say one and half; well thanks to a summer storm there was a tree down on the path so I had to retrace my steps at one point which added time.

The trail takes you past a number of historic industrial features such as a quarry, water hammer, iron mill, and the water channel for the abbey. In addition there are a number of natural features such as a spring and the beautiful St Wolfgang waterfalls - a complex of small waterfalls in the woods above the town.

The Devil's Wall

As I am in the UK at the moment I have decided to write a few posts about some of my favourite walks and other sights around Cesky Krumlov.

At a place on the road from Lipno to Vyssi Brod, a little way after you pass Loucovice, you can pull into a carparking area called The Devil's Wall. This remarkable piece of geology sits at the top of an oxbow in the young River Vltava as it makes its way down from Lake Lipno. It is a large cliff of granite slabs left there during the Ice Age by a glacier and nothing is going to move it, not even modern engineering.

Having an afternoon free I decided to make a walk around the area. I parked at the car park but resisted the temptation to stand on the top of the cliffs, that could come as a climax to the walk, instead I followed a path indicated by red lines on the trees down through the forest to where Lake Lipno II (the smaller sister of the larger Lipno to the west) sat in the valley. I followed the path (now a small road) into Vyssi Brod and then took the circle route which runs back first along the northern edge of the lake and then along the northern bank of the River Vltava. The route enters a steep canyon where the giant slabs of granite lie in the riverbed and line the sides of the path.

I crossed the single-track railway line and left the cycle route to enter a nature reserve. The walk had been lovely up then but here it was stunning. Here the path runs right alongside the river which rushes and gushes its way, forcing its path through large granite boulders. This part of the river is called Certovy Proudy, the Devil's Torrents, and with some cause. The river is utterly impassable by canoe here and a sad tribute can be seen to one canoeist who presumably tried and failed. The woodland floor was covered with lily of the valley and other woodland flowers.

Having walked back along the road from Loucovice (a rather sad dull place dominated by its paper mill) towards my car, I took the short track to the top of the Devil's Wall. It was already dusk, but the views along the valley and of the trees clinging to rock were still impressive. I walked back to the car park, delighted to have another lovely walk to add to my collection.

Boletice Church

Yesterday I did a circular walk from Kajov (a town with a church that merits its own post) over the hills and through the forests of the Boletice Military area. The walk which I had calculated would take me 3 hrs actually took me 4.5; I stopped so much, admiring and photographing the view. As I have said before the Boletice area is special, its military status means that it is not accessible to cars. Only determined tourists will make it there, for they must come by bike or on foot. Nature is therefore particularly rich there and the history, of which there is too little accessible or even visible, very special.

And nowhere is more special than Boletice church. The church is set apart from the modern village of Boletice (which was depopulated during Commie times and used as target practice) and sits on top of a small hill. I approached it from the forests above along a road empty of cars. The church made an impression long before I got to it. By the time I took the little lane to Boletice kostel, I already felt I was going somewhere special. The Church sits among trees, apples, cherries and plums. At its foot a trackway dotted with tank barriers reminds us of the area's current use. The church is Romanesque, the oldest in South Bohemia. I was unable to enter the building: signs warned that, despite the restoration work done so far, one should still take care. So I just walked around and then sat at a bench and contemplated this lovely building. Inside they have found wallpaintings under the graffiti left by Russian soldiers and lovely Romanesque and Gothic features. What is it, I thought to myself, that makes some people react in so brutish a way to such beauty, to such holiness. For make no mistake Boletice Church is a holy place.

This morning on my way to Cesky Krumlov I passed military vehicles going in the opposite direction, soon the peace of Boletice would be broken by the sound of guns.

Meetings with Foxes

On Saturday I took a taxi home, as driving having drunk alcohol of any quantity is forbidden in the Czech Republic. On the road we came across a fox – the taxi slowed to a crawl and the fox disappeared from the headlights' fierce glare into the verge. “Liska,” said the taxi driver smiling. Strangely this was my first encounter with a wild fox (liska) in the Czech Republic, although I see them regularly in England on the hills around my home. The only previous meeting had been with a sad fox at a nearby zoo, which paced up and down in its concrete cell.

My Czech home is built into the slope of a small hill, the downstairs rooms at the back being literally scraped out of the rock and earth. The hill is called Lisci Dira - Fox Hole in Czech. The following day I set off for the woods to walk and collect mushrooms. After the intense heat of the day before, the sky was cloudy and threatened rain. We had not had rain for several weeks and even then it had not been enough - the wood's floor was tinder-dry. I was just about to turn for home, when I spotted a clump of chanterelle mushrooms. I had looked in all my usual spots for chanterelles without success and had come to the conclusion that the drought had put paid to them. But there they were hiding in the moss. The Czech name for the chanterelle is Liska Obecna – common fox.

I had just picked the last of them, when a drop of rain fell on my arm. By the time I was out of the woods, across the field and into the narrow track that runs down to the village, I was soaked. As I came to the end of the trees that lined the track, I was stopped short by an extraordinary sight. There in broad daylight – it was 3pm and so mid afternoon – was a fox standing in the middle of the lane. It contemplated the scene for a while and then trotted off into the fields. Now I have seen foxes in daylight in London, indeed we had a whole family of them living in our back garden, but they were urban foxes used to people and had no cause to fear us, so unlike their country cousins. I walked on musing on this strange meeting. It is apparent to me that the fox allowed me to get that close. In my haste to get home and out of the rain I had made no attempt to walk softly and a fox's big red ears can hear a mouse squeak at 100 metres, I had stood watching him for a good minute or two before he chose to move off. Now he had chosen to stand in my path.

I am told that to the Czechs this was a lucky occurrence, that the fox is an animal spirit associated with witches and his appearance to me (not once but twice) was a sign of good fortune. I certainly felt lucky to have met with "bold Renardine".

A Walk Along the Schwarzenberg Canal

The Schwarzenberg Timber Canal is a source of some pride to the Czechs. They talk about the engineering prowess of its creator Josef Rosenauer in designing the canal to descend from the Sumava to the River Vlatava in the Czech Republic and the Muhl River (a tributary of the Danube) in Austria. This he achieved using the contours of the land, gravity and water from Plesny Lake and local streams to bring the timber gradually to their destinations, so gradually that at times when you are walking along it you hardly notice you are going downhill.. However Manchester Ship Canal it ain't, in fact it is not a canal for boats at all. Rather it is only about 4 metres wide and about 1 metre deep. I walked over it the first time I visited, before realising that this was the "great" Schwarzenberg Canal. And yet it certainly is quite a feat, with its granite lined walls, its shutes and the functionality of its design – it did its job very efficiently for over 100 years. As the Czechs would point out big isn't always best.

The Canal makes a popular walk for Czech families (the gradual slope makes pushchair handling easy) and cyclists. Yesterday I took advantage of the last day of the summer bus timetable to take a bus from Nova Pec (which I had gone to on the little train) to Jeleny Vrchy. The little village of Jeleny is the starting point for a number of excellent waymarked trails, of which the Canal one is the easiest. Grabbing a bottle of the superior Czech version of Coke – Kofola – I proceeded to walk down the blue-waymarked path back to Nova Pec via the canal bank. I recommend this walk as an easy-on-the-legs introduction to the Sumava forests. The slopes are covered primarily with fir, interspersed with silver birch, under which are mossy banks on many colours and the occasional large granite slab. Throughout the seasons you will see a range of flowers – the rare (and protected) Alpine snowbell, the more common violet, lupin (sometimes in huge swathes), bellflower, ragged robin and fireweed.

The canal whispered beside me as I walked, dyed brown by peat, whilst from time to time came the sound and glint of forest streams. Sometimes a vista would open up to show the wooded slopes of the Sumava or a lonely farmhouse. To enlighten the walk there were information boards every mile or two, in Czech with a German translation. These fortunately also had graphics which helped my rusty German and even worse Czech. They showed how the logs were transported, the canal built, about the animals of the forest, Plesny Lake, etc. Having had my fill of the canal and its environs I took another track, waymarked yellow, and descended through the forest a little more quickly. Now instead of the canal I had a stream to accompany me, that gushed among the moss-covered rocks, forming little pools and torrents, catching the light or descending into gloom.

I was reminded that I had read that it was here in the Sumava that the Czech otter population had survived in streams like this one. And in the forest the linx once more prowled after a successful reintroduction, though no such effort had yet been made for the lost animals of the Sumava - the wolf and the brown bear, both of which were hunted to extinction in the 19^th century. After a while the track flattened out and I found myself in the peaty stream valley that I had passed on the bus coming up . The trees opened up to reveal tall grasses and flowers, reeds and the occasional fir or birch.

The track crossed over the brook, which was brown and freckled in the sunshine. And I rejoined the road to Nova Pec. Even here I found much to delight me. Little lizards left their basking places on the tarmac and scuttled into the grass at the approaching thunder of my footfall. Dragonflies darted and the air was full of the sweet scent of pine resin. At last the huts and houses of Nova Pec lined the road, and I walked to the station and home.

Walking in The Czech Republic

I love walking - not serious yomping, but leisurely strolls with frequent stops to admire the view and diversions from the path to look at flowers and pick mushrooms. The Czech Republic is a brilliant country for walkers and the area around Cesky Krumlov and in the Sumava National Park is particularly good.

The main footpaths are well waymarked - with signposts in the towns and colour-coded signs painted on trees and gates along the paths themselves. These signs consist of a coloured bar against a white background. These colours for the walks are reflected on the walking maps you can buy in the tourist information shops and bookshops for about £3. It is therefore very easy to find your way.

I have already talked about one of my favourite spring time walks in this blog. But I have many others. And over the next few months I propose to blog occasionally about others. I will start with my nearest walk. Running through our village is a red route which runs up through the woods, where I pick my mushrooms, and then down to the lake at Olsina. In so doing the walker enters the restricted military zone of Boletice, which is only accessible at weekends. One of the joys of Boletice is that, like army reserves in the UK, its status has allowed nature to flourish. The villages one walks through tend to be pretty dire, the old houses run-down and the newer the usual army issue, but the forests and lakes are unspoilt by the incursions of tourists and new cabins.

I will talk about Olsina in my next blog, as it easily deserves a post all of its own. So let us pass by without comment and follow the walk as it rises again over the hills to Hodnov - another of those villages where there is a need for investment to restore the old buildings. Then it passes across forested hills and, if you are lucky, past masses of blue lupins and down in to Horni Plana. At various points along the way you will get views across Lake Lipno and over the Sumava and in the opposite direction back to the Klet Mountain. Once in Horni Plana you can have a well-earned pint or two and then take the little train back home.

Klet - The Magic Mountain

I am convinced the Klet moves, that it floats silently over the landscape of the South Bohemia while no one is looking. It doesn't seem to matter where you go round here, whether you walk into the woods above our house, or drive home from Ceske Budejovice suddenly it is there, usually in a direction you didn't expect. The Klet sits watching over us all. Is it surprising therefore that the Czechs have long regarded it as a magical place?

And there is something else about – it is never the same. No matter how often you look at it, it shows another face. Today its peak was completely hidden in fine cloud with only the mast at appearing above the white. On summer days after a storm the trees breathe wisps of mist from its slopes, it is as if the ghosts of the forest are floating just above the trees. The autumn sun catches the different colours of its many trees, picking out a group and then moving on.

One winter before we bought the house, I came to visit with my friend here. It was my first Czech winter and a hard one. On our last day before we returned to Prague, we took a taxi up to the observatory at the top of the mountain. From there we walked down in the snow. I did not have proper boots and so we improvised with a couple of plastic bags - I must have looked an idiot to the man on his walking skis who passed us. The air was clear and bright, and caught in your throat. It was beginning to thaw and occasionally a pine tree would deposit a load of snow down the back of your neck. We laughed and shook it off. At the edge of the forest we ate a sandwich and drank tea from a flask, and made our way past the ex-army base into town. From there we took a taxi to the station and from thence we rode off to the city. At the beginning of our journey the little train crawled around the mountain's dark green flanks, past pine trees bent double with snow. And thus ended my first meeting with the magic mountain.

Stifter's Trail

On Sunday I decided to walk the Aldebert Stifter trail around the hills that circle Horni Plana. I had been meaning to do it for years, and never got round to it. The walk is only about 4.5 kilometres long and although there is a bit of a climb to get out of the town it is relatively easy going after that. It is a lovely walk and has some spectacular views.

Stifter is known as the poet of the Sumava and was born in the town. The path first takes you through the Stifter Park to a monument to the poet, from where the copper and bronze figure can look across Lake Lipno to the Sumava, crowned by Plechy the highest mountain in Czech Sumava. The trail then takes you around a natural amphitheatre with spectacular views including, if weather conditions allow, views of the Alps that form a blue shadow rising behind the darker green of the Sumava (as is in this photo). You pass Stifter's spruce and then further on Stifter's beech or rather you don't as in both cases all that remains are the stumps! And then descend in to the town again.

The Walk From The Station

I have already written about the walk up from the bus stop, so here I thought I might tell you about the walk from the small rail station that serves Horice Na Sumave. Again as with the walk from the bus stop the walk should be taken slowly and in a leisurely manner, to allow frequent stops to admire the views that unfold, the details of nature that reveal themselves, always the walk changes. I say this and all of it is true, but it is also true that the stop gives me time to catch my breath on the hill up to the village.

The road from the station goes along a level section at first - across a field of gunnera and thistles you can see a beautifully restored mill or farmhouse. At this time of year the the field is full of small birds, finches clearing the thistle heads of their downy seeds and as you pass they suddenly take flight to hide among the silver birch trees. The next major landmark is the town swimming pond. These wonderful creations are all over the Czech countryside - man-made ponds designed for swimming in in the summer and skating on in the winter. Ours is fed by the little river that starts in the hill above the house and is the home of ducks and frequented by housemartins skimming small insects off the surface. I remember as a teenager cycling to a similar swimming pond in a village near my Cotswold home. I remember too how wonderful the water was, unclourinated, warm with only the rays of the sun. Of course the health and safety bods have long since closed it down, but here in the Czech Republic the swimming ponds survive.

I then pass a small copse of elder and birch, where in the winter I was greeted by a huge chattering of hundreds of invisible birds. In the grass verge the other day I found two young snakes curled up and perfectly still. In the winter there was a dead deer in the snow. The road bends under a rail bridge and the walk up the hill starts. There are two groups of wayside trees - they are how I know where I am in the dark. The first at this time of year is host to mushrooms (though mostly inedible) and the second to a treecreeper, a little mouse-like bird that does indeed creep up the tree. In between I have wonderful views and of course the company of the ubiquitous cows.

At the top of the hill one arrives in the village. At the T-junction there is the village pond and the crucifix, with Christ's lolling head now blotted with bird droppings. There is a footpath sign - we are 700 metres above sea-level it tells us and so many miles from Horni Plana. Some time I will tell you about the walk to Horni Plana.