The Road

So on the first day we had the car we did a skid and broke down as well as somehow managed to drive on train tracks. Yep.

We met Michael at around eleven in the morning and made the final exchanges, finally physically getting the car into our hands. We drove to a supermarket to buy a little food before crossing Prague to buy a bouldering mat from the gym we visited a few days before. Its not exactly obvious or easy to stop and we drove past it the first time, swinging a u-turn on cobble stones to go back, losing traction quite considerably. We pulled into a small alleyway temporarily to look for parking spots, then Dan, who was driving at the time stalled. And the car wouldn't restart.

Luckily the alley was the entrance to an auto shop. We popped the bonnet and brought someone out from inside who began to have a bit of a look around. Fortunately it turned out the connection cable to the battery had simply popped off, the result of frequent driving on Prague's rough cobble-stone, tram track laden road ways.

Not long after we were in the gym and the attendant told us we couldn't purchase anything today because the shop was closed for a competition that was taking place that afternoon. We didn't think this was an overly big deal at the time but it would turn out later that pads are substantially more expensive and less common in Slovenia, our next destination with a thriving outdoor culture.

At some point in Prague I drove my first leg on the right hand side of the road. I found it completely confusing and overwhelming, not just the disorientation of everything being on the opposite side, having to check to opposite way, etc. but having to watch for not just cars but trams on suburban streets! A near miss or two later and I managed to deliver us at the slalom course to watch a little of Czech national selection. It seemed it would take longer than I thought to adjust.

After enjoying the sunny weather in Prague for an hour or two more we were on the open road, heading east, at the full mercy of the best of Czech driving. Most people drive at reasonable speeds of 120- 140 but its not at all uncommon to be passed by people that are easily pushing 200.

Most of the drive traversed boreal forests and farm land with few towns, the land occasionally dropping off dramatically as the highway crossed deep, river-gouged valleys. We turned off the highway about 60km from Prague, one of the only exits we had seen in the whole distance, and went 3-4km to find a dirt road between farms just past the town of Humpolec. We were here on the advice of the man I had asked for information in the climbing gym two days before.

Rural Czech felt entirely different to Prague; most people still seem to farm and the way of life seemed farm more laid back. We saw a disproportionate amount of runners and cyclists on the roads for such a small town. As we headed further into the forest we saw several towers, maybe used for hunting, rudimentarily constructed from local timber.

Suddenly, in an area almost devoid of rock, several huge rock outcrops loomed up in the mottled forest light on the right hand side of the road. We'd come to the right place. The forest was a magical place, the ground littered with pine needles and housing many large moss beds. That combined with the inticrate rock outcrops with small passages between them and the dull light made it somewhere I'd simply be content wandering around for hours.

I felt privileged to be here, there'd be few outsiders that would have access to the information to visit a place like this. The climbing was quality, with a great range of styles and grades but unfortunately the granite was quite sharp which made technical climbing painful. After an hour or two or checking out the various problems and doing a few moves we moved on, inspired by the location but struggling to get into the harsh rock type.

Back in the car we headed towards the historic Moravian capital of Brno, in the east of the country. As we hit the outskirts the first thing I noticed was how run down the modern parts of the city seemed to be in comparison to some of the well-off the tourist track neighbourhoods we had visited in in Prague. The location of the historic centre was obvious, a prominent hill right in the centre of town, so we headed towards that and found a park to explore the city on foot.

It was a Saturday night and only about half an hour of sunset but the city was deserted. It was so quite, only broken by the intrusive sound of trams. I could only hear Slavic languages being spoken, perhaps because it's way too early in the year for an out of the way, lesser know city like this to be getting many tourists. The city could probably be best described as quaint. It lacks the grandeur of say Prague, but its architecture probably trumps some of our most iconic historical buildings in Australia. For some reason I didn't take any photos at all in this city.

It was a nice change to be able to feel like you were strolling around like a local, unhindered by the restrictions, information and numbers of a big tourist city. We walked up a curving cobble-stoned alleyway towards the top of the hill, exploring the various small squares and terraces overlooking the city for around an hour before moving on. Dan wanted to catch at least some of the last day of racing in Slovakia and see a Latvian that he had arranged to buy a kayak off.

We got a little lost on the way out and found ourselves driving down an unusually slabby, broken concrete street. There were still houses either side but mysteriously no driveways. After a little while Dan asked, “Are we still on a street?!” before, as if on queue, we dropped 10cm onto gravel and could now see the very defined edges of the train tracks, preventing us from escaping. We tailgated a tram for about 50m before luckily finding a crossing where the cement came up to the level of the tracks allowing us to get back onto the roads.

It was now properly dark and after a little playing around we were back on the road and making progress towards the Slovakian border. The borders aren't overly clear, marked by smallish signs that aren't always placed in prominent places. Sometimes we wouldn't have even know we'd crossed a border, like on the train between Germany and Czech, if it wasn't for a text from both my Czech and Australian phone companies.

That night we camped about 70km past the Slovakian border in an out of the way field with panoramic views. Club music was randomly stopping and starting all night from a nearby house but I still slept reasonable well and that only left a short drive for the morning to reach the Slovakian Tatra town of Liptovsky Mikulas.