The day began with a visit after breakfast to the Rathaus in Eslarn and I obtained good maps. The walk to the Rathaus was past an active indoor cattle barn common in Europe to winter the cattle and keep fresh dairy supplies all year - this barn was in the middle of town with no external grazing land nearby. It had cattle indoors today and the season is far from cold so perhaps they have a permanent life indoors?
I suspect of more interest is their fire brigade.
The original idea of going 107 or 97 or some other no of kms to Plzen was adjusted to a shorter ride to Stribro. This choice in part because of the great photos in the guide book that had the maps, and partly Plzen was estimated to be a stretch too far if I was too keep stopping and taking photos. (I am working on a new idea about sharing some more of them).
By the Pan Europa R37 path Stribro would have been perhaps about 80 km but I will never know nor anyone else. The Pan Europa (I was not going to go on about this again but I am today) in the Czech Republic is Route 37 till Plzen, with so far comprehensive signs. However from just after entering this country R37 was another goat track for a while so for the most part I was not on R37 but on rural roads. Quiet, near deserted, perfect pavement condition and clean, 4 to 6 metres wide and much more direct than R37. The last section to Stribro was a classic - 12 kms of rough track with bone jarring surface occasionally for what I saw of the first few hundred metres (and I do not have a mountain bike) averaging perhaps 10 kms/hr and seeing the occasional wild deer or lost cow, or, 6 kms in under 20 minutes at 20 km/hr ++ on perfect pavement with hardly a car to see. For christ's sake!
For the GORM-ABC (Grumpy Old Railway Men's - Anarchic Bicycle Collective) the Czech Republic should fit well after the warm up to Bendigo. More active railway lines here than the Victorian Government Railway in its heyday. A wonderful day's ride, easy pedalling except the quite occasional short steep bits, scenic and lots of places to stop on the way. Great quiet bicycle paths (including their great rural roads without cars if I navigate) and about the most atheist nation in Europe. And apparently big on chimney climbing. For this most picturesque of countries with the remnants of near total christianity everwhere like the rest of Europe, at some stage they too like GORM-ABC embraced anarchy and let their Emperors of old know that their christianity has no clothes - they saw the light and decided for themselves that christianity was a charade. This place might grow on me, but it is only 1 day so far.
For the other reader who might be curious, the ABC has a small number of members - one who is selective on the use of his money and still owns a perfectly functional low-cost car slightly more recent than the FJ Holden and borrows his son's bike, another asked my advice on buying a bike and ingnored it, and another who possibly accepted my advice but has not bought a bike. Another member in training curious about how a request for advice fits in with anarchy. Each day new adventures if they can at least purport to agree on a ride and complete it before they disagree.
The destination for the day had been changed to Stribro and I stuck to that choice. I am riding alone remember. So about 14:30 I arrived there after perhaps one of my slowest days rides, occasionally stopping to update my route, but for the most part just pootling along and sucking it all in. Lunch in a cafe in probably a former monastry now being spruced up as a hoped-for tourist attraction. I was the only eater except for friends of the waitress and a workman.
On arrival at Stribro it appeared that in the guide book I had been following the remnants of the Late Moravian Empire's Cultural Preservation and Promotion Unit had photoshoped a few of the images from their archive. The place looked tired and I seemed the only tourist in town. (see next post on breakfast). But I have a photo - the dates in the second enlarge - about 1111 to 1427.
For those that were not paying attention during their middle ages classics classes: The Czech region was inhabited by the Celtic tribe Boii for the first 4 centuries of the first millennium. The Celts gave way to post-Roman Germanic tribes. Later, Slavs arrived and, in the 9th century they founded the Great Moravian Empire, stretching from Germany to the Ukraine. After the fall of Great Moravia the Bohemian Kingdom was formed, creating a territorial unit almost identical to the modern Czechia. The rise of the Habsburgs led to Czechia becoming a part of the Austrian Empire, and later Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a massive influx of German immigrants. It too has the remnants of good technology but the mass eviction of Germans after WW2 didn't help.
Note: The 40 Germanic nations did not get together to form anything till 1871 when the German Empire was formed after a lot of war.
For the most part my sources might be a bit dodgy, so readers should make their own enquiries - comments welcome if someone is a bit niggled about something.
The day's odd spot: At the border are the decaying remains of the former 2 border controls (a German and a Czech !) about 100 metres apart and for the last few decades completely free unmonitored border crossing. In between is a near new large tax free shop and some older small tax free souvenir places. What gives? But then the scenery unfolded.
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