This is the second part of my account of my 2023 ride from Ljubljana to Prague as part of a longer, multi-year trip from the southernmost town in Europe to the northernmost point. It was overshadowed by the ill health of my father and was not helped by the very rainy weather. For the first part, please click here.
Sunday 14th May: Hallstatt
A day off, just as well given the weather. But it looked bearable over breakfast so I set off along the lake to Obertraun, 4km away and got there just as the rain started. And continued. And never stopped. I nursed a cup of tea on a cafe overlooking the lake for as long as I could before admitting defeat and trudging back in the rain to Hallstatt and its overpriced touristy tat.
And my mood not improved by the news from home: my father still alive but barely. Very close to the end.
Monday 15th May: Hallstatt – Altmünster: 57km
The weather had not changed a jot when I woke up: a steady patter of rain. And I was under strict instructions to be out of my AirBnB by 10, so out I went.
I had opted to take the long way round Lake Hallstatt, figuring that I would be away from the cars and gifted with stunning views across the lake back to Hallstatt. Indeed the best views of the town seemed to be over the lake to it, rather than actually in it.
But the second part of that was taken away by that miserable rain: everything clouded over. And to make matters worse, the bike track descended onto a bit of plasticky walkway hovering above the lake and treacherous to ride in those slicky conditions, so I had to walk my bike. And when the proper track did resume, I had to wait for 10 minutes while a logger finished chopping some trees down, having to lift my bike over the branches. None of this improved my foul mood.
I rejoined the main road just south of Bad Goisern and from then on, it was a flattish ride all the way to the Traunsee, even downhill, but not that one felt it in that miserable cold and beating rain Sometimes the route tracked the road. Sometimes it edged away. None of it mattered any more.
As I pushed along, the odd sign to the Wolfgangsee and St Gilgen. In 2015, I had spent a happy few nights staying with my then-former boss and her husband. They had built a place for their retirement, intending to swim, sail and be with their future grandchildren. I remember her swimming out to their boat and across the lake, while I struggled to keep afloat.
Two years later, she received horrible news: a return of breast cancer and now in an advanced stage. She and her husband retired early and retreated to that delightful place on the lake, living out what was left of her life before the cancer took her in early 2021.
It was a sobering reminder that we make the best plans, but that you never know what is coming next and how long you have. It was a spur to live, to make the best with the time you do have, to live your true life. However unpleasant that weather, I was at least out there, living my life.
As I arrived in Altmünster, the sun came out and the mountains were revealed in their glory. People walked, people played, and everyone acted as though the rain had never happened.
Tuesday 16th May: Altmünster – Linz: 82 km
I woke to more sunny skies, but with the forecast of rain in Linz around 2, so with 80km to cover, I had an early breakfast and was out quickly, initially along the lake to pretty Gmunden and then following the Traun all the way to Linz, initially riding over a steep set of hills before joining the river properly after 30km near Stadl-Paura.
It soon clouded over, and my only diversions were fields full of rapeseed with chemical factories in the distance. Even the villages were plain.
I spent over 70 km following that river and only saw it a few times, mostly hidden by flood banks. It was flat, it was boring, it was cold, and having made two thirds of the distance, it was raining harder and harder. So I put my foot on it. I have never ridden 80km so fast…
Linz is a beautiful town, but that day all I could see was the immediate road ahead of me and my GPS instructions, trusting blindly that they would deliver me. By the time I reached the centre, it was bucketing it down. At a red light, a car snowploughed through, soaking me and the person next to me. But I no longer cared.
Over the bloated Danube and to the safety of my hotel, the Goldener Adler. I stepped into the reception, my clothes covered in the accumulated mud and grit of 80 kilometres, and my body oozing rain water onto the pristine floor. And the receptionist did not even blink an eyelid. “Yes, your room’s ready and I will give you the key for the bike storage”.
The rain belted down all afternoon and evening, so I cut my losses, treating myself to a ‘Bosner’ sausage in a pitta-like shell from a hot dog stand, followed by a hearty meal in a happy bierkeller. And faith in humanity was restored.
Wednesday 17th May: Linz – Inzell: 53 km
It was still raining the next morning so again, I delayed my departure as long as I could before heading to the banks of the Danube – these at least visible – and the famous Danube bike path. After 10km, the rain stopped and I could take my time.
Initially the Danube was bloated brown and unimpressive watery chocolate custard, but the Danube of legend slowly revealed itself after passing through the outskirts of Aschach, some 30 kilometres in.
The trees crowded in, the road narrowed, and I was in a swirl of green like an oil painting, a crowd of trees on either bank, jostling on invisible hillsides, and in the middle of it all, that brown Danube. Tree trunks and rocks here and there. Once or twice a great rock outcrop and in the middle of all this a great schloss looming over the river.
I stopped to take it all in, drinking in the loneliness and majesty, only briefly disrupted by a bunch of drunken revellers dancing in a motorised boat dressed as a Viking longboat, music pumping out and but not caring for the wonders around them.
There was a small clearing where the trees were peeled back from the banks and about five or six houses. I gratefully pulled up at the Gasthof zum Heiligen Nikolaus. My accommodation was basic but fine, geared towards campers and bike tourers and combinations of the two. Happily, it served food: a simple but fine early supper of tomato soup followed by beef ragout with spätzle and a good side salad, and two whopping glasses of red wine. Everything closed at 8 so after admiring the stars, I took an early night.
Thursday 18th May: Inzell – Passau 43 km
There was nothing to do in that spot, so after an early breakfast, I was off. I had high hopes of more splendid scenery but after Schlögen, my reverie ended and I was back to cycling along busy main roads, albeit on a dedicated bike path, up and down to Wesenufer where I crossed the Danube to the northern bank: initially along a quiet road but then shortly after the German border – unannounced – along a busy road, with impatient cars storming past the hordes of cyclists coming the other way. Few towns, few views: just a busy main road.
And then, after a hearty late Bavarian lunch nourished by lager, the beauty of Passau, my AirBnB tucked away in an alleyway at the corner of the island.
Friday 19th May: Passau
I took my time in Passau, following side streets here and there, heading over the Inn and up the hill to the church of Wallfahrtskirche Mariahilf, and most of all, eating. I was in Bavaria and you could not miss it in the menus. Juicy pork with crisp crackling in a mushroom sauce, with a large breaded dumpling and a generous side salad on my arrival, surbraten: juicy smoked ham in a beer sauce again with two solid dumplings and another whopping salad. And of course, plenty of beer.
In truth, the old town and river’s edge were rather touristy and the buildings impressive but austere. I never had the true sense of the town, for all the masses of tourists.
Still, it was a good chance to rest up in my lovely rented apartment tucked in the corner of the town and to restore my spirits.
Saturday 20 May: Passau – Volary: 65km
On a sunny calm morning, I woke up to the saddest news. My dear sweet father had passed away in the night at the age of ninety-five. It was not a shock after the last weeks, but now there was a finality. A knowledge that you will never talk with them again. You will never share your good and bad news with them again. And you will never again be able to benefit from their wise advice.
So I set off – what else could I do? – through the still empty streets, and retraced my steps along the Danube for a few kilometres before saying goodbye to that mighty but swollen river, and up, up, up into Bavarian pastureland, a day of steady and increasingly gruelling climbs toward the Czech border, all the while churning over the loss.
The views were not stunning, but at least for the first hours, they were pretty enough: green and yellow rolling hills interspersed with red and white villages and blue mountains behind, a gentle wind sweeping through the long grass. They reminded me of the playsets of my Anglo-German second cousins from my youth. Towns that had hardly changed bar the upgrading of farm equipment. It was so calm and distant from all the sadness.
After 30km, at Waldkirchen, the most direct route was a converted old railway line, now a gravel and gritted mud track, up and down, but mostly up at a steady incline. Rideable but not enjoyable: a slow slog with occasional views but mostly just woods.
My stomach now started to echo my mind and legs, cramping and bloating.
After nearly 30 mindless, soul-aching kilometres, I emerged at the town of Haidmühle and a final ascent through austere farmland before turning down farm tracks and then along a muddy track through woods, getting narrower and narrower.
And there, at the bottom of an empty valley, in a nature reserve of gentle marsh, was the former crossing of the Iron Curtain, a place that until 35 years ago, had signalled death for anyone wanting to cross. A rusted old border fence, but otherwise nothing.
On the other side, a broken, branch-strewn mud track heading steep uphill, so I walked the bike up, until the gradient and track became more rideable. My stomach was feeling worse and worse and my spirits were low. It was a shame because it was so quietly beautiful.
Finally, back onto roads and a final painful stretch along to Volary and a communist-style hotel – mercifully with the rooms redone – plonked on an empty concrete square in an almost empty country town. Time to shower and recover.
I resolved to have dinner despite the tenderness of my stomach and the sadness of my mood, and ended up in the dreary restaurant of the hotel, with a plastic menu on which new prices had been scribbled over in biro. But my pork medallions in mushroom sauce with chips were rather wonderful and a nice way to end a sad, sad day.
Sunday 21 May: Volary – Český Krumlov: 61km
Waking up to a crisp, spring morning, I felt that my father would have wanted me to stick my chin out and get on with it. Mercifully, my stomach was feeling a lot better, and I had had a decent sleep.
The dreariness of the hotel belied a good breakfast including a powdered fruit juice dispenser with one of the labels marked ‘Detox’ and pouring a luminous green liquid of indeterminate provenance but for all that, rather good. I figured out that my stomach cramps had been due to dehydration, so sluiced a solid five or six glasses through me.
In the midst of the sadness, I had passed into my fifth country: the Czech Republic, and I was determined to enjoy it. Out of Volary, initially along a main road busy with cars even on a Sunday morning. Then off to my right along a rutted but passable track, over short two rusted metal bridges that incredibly enough were taking me over the start of the mighty Vltava river and then through a delightful pine forest, dotted with cyclists and hikers and with the odd trickling brook and farmhouse.
Then back across the Vltava but on a well-paved bike path close to the river. Once or twice a pretty woman passed me at speed on a road bike, distinctive in a blood orange top. She went this way and that way and we crossed several times during my journey, quietly becoming aware of each other without expressing anything more than a cheery “Gruss dich”.
After Horní Planá, I followed a succession of gentle bike routes – the 1055, 1054 and 1047 – into Český Krumlov, passing the pretty lady a final time, with the lady giving me a cheery wave as she swept past me in the other direction. Gently climbing up light hills and away from the main drag before a quiet, glorious and softly curving descent into Boletice, watching the grimaces of riders in the other direction.
The weather had been sunny and slightly windy all day. As I rode from Boletice to Kájov, it started spotting with rain. I shrugged and got on with it. And then it got heavier, but there were no shelters around, so I plugged on. And then suddenly, it was freezing and hailing hard. I passed another rider still in his sunglasses, similarly blindsided, before tucking into a petrol station forecourt where I found another rider also sheltering, greeting me with what I assume was the Czech for “Now what the hell is this all about?”
Then it was over and back to the sun… And back to Vltava and magnificent entrance to Český Krumlov, riding through the castle walls, two layers of arched walkway above me, and then a curving river, with the old town across, like some Gaulish village surrounded by towering Roman settlements. In Bohemia…
Monday 22 May: Český Krumlov
I was back in tourist town. Český Krumlov was full of coachloads of tourists from Asia, America, Europe… The centre of town had been colonised by tourist gift shops and overpriced hotels and restaurants.
Small but packed with churches and towers of all colours and shapes. Wedding cake doesn’t quite do it justice: wedding cakes tend to be rather simple and formal, whereas these towers were like raspberry and mint ripple ice cream cakes, decorated by a six-year-old with a penchant for pink icing and sprinkles. It was lunatic but fun.
In the evening, the coaches left and I had a delightful walk up through those arched walkways, through the castle complex and then as I crossed the remains of a moat, I saw a sign “Do not feed the bears” and down there, tucked in a tiny walled enclave, were two miserable souls, the life sucked out of them. I would have willingly liberated them and let them loose on the tourist shops…
Tuesday 23 May: Český Krumlov – České Budějovice – Hluboká: 42 km
The heat was rising, and so was the threat of storms. So I was out relatively early, already burning hot and humid through some stiff climbs out of CK through an industrial landscape before a plateau and a series of pretty villages: Srnín, Zlatá Koruna, Štěkře, Záluží and Čertyně, only marred by the gathering grey clouds and an absolute brute of a climb up from the Vltava after Zlatá Koruna. When the gradient hit 17-18% and on a very narrow path, I did what any self-respecting bike tourist should do and thought “Bugger that” and dismounted and walked up…
There was a beauty in the combination of the fierce grey storm building to my left and the intensity of the rapeseed fields, but the threat of the storm kept me pushing on, surveying the landscape for possible shelters. Now the clouds were picking up on both sides and sure enough as I paralleled the main road on the outskirts of Kamenný Újezd, it started spitting.
I ducked into an underpass, fortuitously lined with a pavement on both sides. And waited for the storm to pass.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Waves of thunder, lightning and torrential rain. Counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Now five seconds. Now ten seconds. Now five seconds again.
All the time colder and colder, gradually layering up, but mercifully protected from all but the occasional splash from a passing car.
Looking at my weather apps with their radar maps of ominous streaks of red and orange lightning interspersed with the forest green of heavy cold rain.
Peering out occasionally when the rain relented to see whether the skies were clearing. Which they were not.
After over three hours, I saw a clearing to the west and figured that despite the weather apps, it was worth pushing on, and there had not been any thunder for a while.
And initially regretted it, the rain blatting my face and everything dissolved in a smear. But it did not last long and as I entered the outskirts of České Budějovice, the rain stopped and the air was clear,. I paused in the beautiful town square for a quarter of an hour, wishing that I had longer to spend in that pretty town.
But the rain was not far off so I did not linger long.
Off to Hluboká along the Vltava: not particularly scenic until I reached the town itself, a castle looming over the town. I timed it well: as I emerged from showering, a tremendous storm ripped across the valley.
Luckily my hotel had a fine restaurant and after a day like that, I deserved some special treatment. I helped myself to pheasant soup with meatballs followed by boiled beef in a sienna-brown vegetable cream and of course more dumplings. All very Czech and suitably accompanied by a dark local beer. For purely medicinal purposes.
Wednesday 24th May: Hluboká – Tabor: 59 km
I woke to grey skies and cooler air. To stretch my legs, I headed up to the castle. On closer inspection, it turned out to be quite hideously tasteless, a bloody collision of different styles and inspirations in which everyone ended up the loser.
So off I went, initially along the Vltava but hardly seeing it through the trees, up, up and up: forested road then lonely plateaus and farmland including the always glorious sight of rapeseed. There was nothing spectacular but it was pleasant enough and mostly along decently paved roads. A day for quietly doing the distance.
A final descent followed by a climb up to the town of Tabor, historically important as the centre of the Hussite rebellion during the religious wars. My hotel looked ominously bad from the outside, and I was disquieted by the two Polish men clad only in towels smoking in the courtyard, but it was fine enough. The old town had some memorably gabled houses, including one with a resemblance to penises, but the overall effect was rather disjointed and ugly. So I had my dinner and off to bed.
Thursday 25th May: Tabor – Konopiště: 59km
A similar day but with more sun and slightly more entertaining scenery and more spectacular rapeseed. There was a lot of climbing but nothing too fierce and the views made up for it. I had more time to admire the Czech network of bike routes, well organised and taking me away from main roads and through tranquil villages and hills. It was a day to take it slowly and enjoy. Fields of yellow and fields of red: mustard seed and crimson clover alternating in the landscape. There was even the rather pleasant town of Votice just over halfway.
I arrived in Konopiště in early afternoon: not so much a hamlet as a small tourist complex outside a castle.
But an extremely significant castle. This was where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek had spent their happiest days.
Yes, that Franz Ferdinand. The heir to the Habsburg throne, shot down in Sarajevo in July 1914, triggering a series of events that led to the First World War.
The historian Simon Winder describes him in his book Danubia as “one of the modern era’s terrible ghosts, doomed to re-enact year after year his floundering final hours, ostrich feathers everywhere, his body bulging in an absurd uniform. He is always en route to that wrong turn which will bring him face to face with the depressed young man, sitting in a Sarajevo café […] Betrayed by his useless security arrangements and daft, pop-eyed moustachioed appearance, Franz Ferdinand seems to cry out to be killed and usher in a new and awful world.”
Yet dig beneath the surface and a more complex picture emerges. A cold, impatient, angry man with a hate for democracy, but also a reformist and a devoted family man whose wife and kids adored him. Above all, a tragic figure stuck in a role he had never asked for. He had married the love of his life, but the disapproval of Habsburg royal circles for his wife’s origins in the lower Bohemian aristocracy, saw them – and her in particular – treated abysmally and forced to give up their children’s rights to succession.
Konopiště was the place to which they retreated whenever they could, where the children were brought up and where they were happiest.
I got to the castle too late to see around it. I later regretted this as apparently it is fascinating, so settled for an early evening walk in the grounds.
It was an eery atmosphere, almost autumnal despite being the second half of May. Most of the complex was closed. There were more animals than humans: deer in an enclosure, peacocks strutting around, and another moat with a bear inside it, happily a much bigger space than in Český Krumlov, and with more to entertain him: pools, jungle jims, even an old tire on a wire that allowed the bear to swing from one side of the moat to the other.
Mercifully the nearby hunting lodge was open for dinner, so I sat in a nearly empty room, eating a reasonable but soulless meal, surrounded by hundreds of stuffed heads and antlers.
My hotel was another oddity: the staircase and upstairs hallway decorated with a surrealist portrait of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, swirling away in some Dali-esque fantasy with a clock dripping over a panel. And my room was themed around Audrey Hepburn for reasons never explained, with photos of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, with my bathroom themed around a chess set. Randy spent the night downstairs in a museum for old motor bikes. But it was all nice enough and the receptionists were kind and friendly.
Friday 26th May: Konopiště – Prague: 59 km
A decent night’s sleep and on the road by 9.30, up, up and up as always, but my heart was no longer in it and the landscape was rather tedious, including a busy road to Bukovany. When I finally managed to ‘escape’ it, a forested climb up to Zbořený Kostelec and a road with almost as much traffic but much bumpier and no centre markings.
Clouds and sun alternating, the threat of storms, which luckily never materialised. Finally a view over the Vltava floodplain: to factories and tower blocks and then down into it, the usual slow build-up of towns ever bigger and ever closer together, entering Prague by a bike path along the side of a motorway.
Along the Vltava, but hardly a sight, with the views blocked by bars and houses, traffic heavier and heavier, but at least a bike path for most of it until I reached the heart of the city: regular junctions, lights and tramlines splaying in all directions. Then a turn through the thick of the pedestrian area, weaving through the tourists.
And over.
And then the practicalities of preparing to get back.
When doing a trip like this, about a month out, I contact a local bike shop to ask if they can reserve a used cardboard bike box. Tirana, Ljubljana, Copenhagen, this has worked easily, with an immediate positive answer and no charge beyond ‘coffee money’.
With Prague, I wrote – in Czech – to three bike shops without ever getting a reply before finally getting a positive answer from the fourth, charging. So I turned up there after a half hour walk through the thick of the city only to be met with blank looks and unhelpful shrugs. Eventually they found one, grumpily charged me 10 Euros for one and I had to work my way back through the city with a large cardboard box, including right through the concourse under the central railway station. And as I did so, so the wind picked up, buffeting me in all directions, like an out of control windsurfing board…
With bike packed and stored, I was able to relax and see the city. This was far from my first visit to Prague: I had first been in 1991, not long after the revolution and had been enchanted.
The buildings were beautiful and distinct: a wonder of Art Nouveau. Habsburg with a rebellious streak. The river was a wonder to walk beside, especially the Charles Bridge. It had a wonderful atmosphere: a sense of quiet release, its people quirky and funny and the women stunning. All that with low prices for food and drink: it was a student’s dream.
I had taken my parents there two years later on a road trip and remembered their delight and the kindness of locals to these senior citizens, helping them on and off trams.
I had been back on and off over the years both on business and leisure, and it had seemed to retain its magic.
But now it was teeming with tourists: the Charles Bridge stuffed. The usual accompaniments: foreign workers selling cheap trinkets and pictures, cannabis and vaping bars, kebab shops, and rip-off restaurants everywhere in the centre.
And worse: stag and hen weekends. My nights in a hot and airless room were disturbed by drunken shouts and laughter.
So it was time to go home.
Final Thoughts: riding through rain and tears
For obvious reasons, this was not the happiest bike tour I ever took. It was coloured throughout by my father’s final days and the aftermath.
I often felt his presence in my daily routines, in towns that I knew that he had visited, in my dreams. And there was the presence of other shadows of the past as well: my former boss as I passed close to St Gilgen. And of course the shadows of the political past: of a Europe divided, of Franz Ferdinand, and even further back, of the religious wars.
And the rain of the first two weeks seemed to pervade everything, even the dry days, literally dampening my mood. A year and a half later, when I think of that trip, the three composite images that come to mind are that wet and cold ride up to Obervellach, arriving in central Linz soaked to the skin, and three hours pacing around under a road bridge in the Czech Republic, waiting for the thunderstorm to pass.
But there were plenty of good moments as well: times when the clouds cleared and I was out there in the mountains, wanting to be nowhere else. That glorious evening ride to Werfen and then the sunny ride to Hallstatt the next day. Pretty towns like Skofja Loka, Passau, Cesky Krumlov and Ceske Budejovice.
And more often than not, a difficult day was at least partially redeemed by a warm welcome, a hot shower and a quietly wonderful meal from simple ingredients. Happy plates of steaming food and large glasses of satisfying beer.
In the end though, for all the trials and tears, I was glad to have done it: to have seen a little more of Europe up close, to have explored a little bit more of its complex history and to have met a few more of its wonderful people, perhaps understanding that little bit more of our diverse continent and how it all stitches together.