Sunday, 5 August 2012

Saturday 4 August. Stara Boleslav to Tisice


We left Stara Boreslav initially on quiet town roads. We stopped by the cathedral on the way out hoping the doors would be closed, as we wanted to take a photograph of the beautifully carved wooden doors. Alas it was not to be.

Our road merged with a main road and then it was pretty busy for about 2km, unpleasantly so in fact. We passed the local airport where small craft, the size of powered hang gliders were taking off and landing. We eventually found the side road, supposedly the cycle route 24 which took us down to the river. We were to follow it all day until we turned north to our pension near Tisice. In fact we never saw a single sign for the route 24 and most people were walking or cycling or roller blading on the other (south side) of the river. We think it likely the cycle path 24 has been re-routed.

The big news today is that we saw our first fish caught. We have passed hundreds of fishermen camped beside the river but have never seen any fish caught. The fish was caught by a young girl near the river. Her father was sitting the other side of the cycle track, near their tent, shouting instructions. He did however get up to help her land it. It was about the size of a plaice, but it wasn't a flat fish. It wasn't very lively and didn't seem to put up any fight. I don't think I'd fancy anything caught in the Labe south of Spinleruv Mlyn! (N.B. Shiel thought it was a son, not a daughter, with long hair".)

It got pretty hot as the day wore on and we were again looking for shade trees. We turned off to Chrast, about 1pm and reached the pension, Monika, about 1:30pm. A bit too early to book in. We walked past to a petrol station to get a couple of what looked like orange drinks and the main taste was orange but they had a peculiar, what can best be described as sewage works odour. It's four hours since we had them and we are both OK.

When we first walked past the pension everything was locked up but on returning from the petrol station we saw they were getting a delivery and so we could get in through one door. It turned out to be the young delivery man leaving who indicated we should be trying the other locked door. Luckily for us an older man came out of the "wrong door" and saw us trying to raise the pension by phone. It turned out he spoke a little german so communication could be established. It turns out the pension is run by his son-in-law next door. He took us through the "wrong door" and around the back through the garden to join up with the pension where he found his son-in-law who I had talked to on the phone, and who also speaks some German. We are now in our room which is of much the same standard as all the ones we have had so far. We have had 3 power cuts within the space of two hours though. Did I mention we've seen more lightning displays in the last 3 weeks than in our 35 years in NZ!

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