9 June 2007

The day that 80 turned into 35 which became 50
Prague to Zadni Treban
After carrying all of our gear down the 3 flights of stairs in Monika's building, we hit the road by 7:45 with the hope of beating some of the weekend traffic. John had been studying his many maps of the area for days trying to find the best route out of the city which is not an easy task. We did well going through the heart of the tourist district since we were familiar with it. There was a man, however, on the St. Charles bridge that was having a good time yelling at us. There were hardly any people on the bridge compared to yesterday's crowd, but he yelled in Czech that we must walk our bikes across. Then he yelled again when Marie leaned her bike on the bridge to stop for a photo. We guess they are just doing their best to preserve this 600 year old bridge that is seeing a lot of foot traffic.
We were going along well until we were suddenly on the freeway, a place we were sure we shouldn't have been riding but we were passed by a police car and they didn't stop us. We pulled over at a bus stop and developed plan B involving crossing the freeway in order to get off of it. Plan B then took us through the western suburbs of Prague which was not really the direction we wanted to be going. The map John was doing his best to navigate by only showed the main streets in these suburbs and the going was very slow because of a lot of uncertainty.
After many hours and even more route plan changes, we finally got to the road we were originally aiming for. As we ate lunch at a grocery store in Radotin, we decided that there was no way we were going to make it to our original destination which was 80 kms from Prague. Afterall, it had taken us 3 hours to go the first 25 kms! So we chose a town with camping that was only 11 kms down the road.
Shortly after that came the detour. What we thought would just be a short jog around some road construction began instead with a 2.5 mile climb up a hill in the burning sun followed by a route that we couldn't believe was the shortest and most efficient for a detour. We were doing a big circle and felt like we couldn't get out of the gravitational pull of Prague. It's only redeeming factor was a section of the road that was lined by cherry trees. Cars and cyclists alike were pulling over for a quick pick.
After going about 8 kms out of the way, John came up with a better way than following the ridiculous detour to get to our destination for the day. We ended up on a quiet, forested road lined with weekend cottages that was a gradual downhill for about 7 kms. It was the best part of the day! We made it to the town of Revnice which showed a campground but there were no signs anywhere. Some cyclists came by. We asked them and they asked some locals and then led us to the campground in the next town about 2 km's away. We didn't have much food and the stores are closed tomorrow, so John rode back to find a store to stock up. Miraculously he came back without having taken a spill. The campground sits on the Berounka river and is packed with weekenders. A cabin would have been $10 but there were none left, so we settled for the $5 camping. As we were waiting for 5:00 to roll around for the hot water to be turned on, a couple from Holland showed up who are crossing Europe from wes!
t to east by bike ending in the Ukraine. We ate dinner with them at the campground bar which was featuring country music night. A heavy but short rain shower came through as we were waiting for our food.

Kms 47.55
Time 3:31:06
Avg 13.5
Max 38.7
Total 1460.7