Saturday 21 July. Hostinne to Dvur Kralove

We were on the road by 9:00 am and initially set off in the wrong direction. We eventually picked up the correct route after a few minutes. It crosses to the right bank of the Labe, over a railway line at the Hostinne rail stop. It follows a well maintained track behind the town but crosses the Labe and then the main road as it leaves Hostinne's southern boundary. There follows a short stretch of cycle path but then the rest of the way, for us at least, was all along the roadside. Initially things were quite busy but they quietened down considerably after we crossed back to the right bank of the Labe.

We were stopped twice along the way by Czechs asking directions. On both occaisons we were able to help without being able to speak each others language.

It was a pleasant country walk through farmland and forest and much to our surprise we had a reasonable amount of height to gain. We stopped fo a liquid lunch at Nemojov and Suitably refreshed reached the northern boundary of Dvur Kralove about 14:00.  In the space of a few minutes the skies darkened and it started to pour with rain. We even had some hail. As a result we were pretty bedraggled by the time we reached The Hotel Central in Dvur Kravole. The town square in Dvur Kravole is very similar to the square in Hostinne. Even the location of the hotels was similar, just a mirror image. However whereas in Hostinne we had a view

of the town square from our room in Dvur Kravole we just looked down on a side street.

 We saw a snail moving house shortly after Hostinne railway station, a European relative of the snail I saw on the Land's End to John o'Groats walk. I also today noticed our first two industrial gloves on the road, one in Hostinne and one in Dvur Kralove. Actually one of the depressing features of today's walk was the amount of rubbish in the gutters beside the road, predominantly plastic bottles.