Rocks.
People often ask Meredith how we decided to go to Czechia this summer. When Mer turned forty, she told me she wanted to go to all the countries of Europe, but I could pick the country each year. So, when people ask her about why Czechia, she defers to me. It’s because of the rocks.
When I was poking around the Internet looking at the offerings of different countries, I stumbled across pictures of Czechia’s national parks, and one in particular was appealing – the Cesky Raj, or “Bohemian Paradise” in English. It is close to Prague, and not too huge (so everything is close together), and it has the Prachovske Skaly – Prachov Rocks: stunning, huge columns of rock thrust into the air. If it were not enough just to see them, you can climb them (if adventurous), or climb up and through them on rock stairs jammed between gigantic monoliths of stone. I clearly needed to see these, and that is why we are in Czechia.
The Bohemian Paradise did not disappoint. We started with the Prachov Rocks this morning, which are only about five miles from Jicin. We started our hike a little after ten, and it would be after two o’clock before I decided we should move on, and there were still a few trails we left unexplored.
After paying the modest admission fee (about four dollars each), we walked up a slight incline in wooded terrain. We turned the corner and saw our first stone tower, and I was in awe. And it turns out that it was an isolated one and not especially large. As we walked on, more and more columns came into view, and it felt like something out of Lord of the Rings. We walked into a horseshoe-shaped collection of stone, and it was unlike anything I have ever seen.
And then I saw stairs. Leading into the rocks. And thus began the theme of the day – climbing. The Prachov Rocks are pretty amazing at any angle, so getting to see them from the ground, from more or less inside them, and from the top of them is a pretty great day. We found five viewpoints, with my linguistically astute wife figuring out the word for “viewpoint” partway through the day. Some views were mostly of the rocks, and some were of the rocks and of the surrounding countryside. Spectacular.
The only downside to the tromping around was my slight neglect in not having tried to obtain a trail map. There are multiple trails, all well marked with color-coded blazes, but I did not know where each trail led. Oddly, the park did not bother to align with my mental map and guesses, so there was a long hike around the top that resulted in some serious backtracking, keeping in mind that up-and-down progress was usually involved. My wife stayed in good humor anyway; she is a gem. She even was okay with my finding a rock staircase near the parking lot on our way to take a break, and it turned out to be a long and very steep staircase. It let us out at a beautiful vista (yay!), and then the trail dumped us back to where we had been thirty minutes before (boo!). I may have gone down to go up to go down again. Ooops.
Finally, around two o’clock, I decided that my legs were tired and that I wanted to go to another site, so we left the rocks behind, at least for now. We headed the few miles over to the ruins of Trosky Castle, which is the symbol of the park – two towers sitting on columns of rock, all by themselves and visible for miles around.
While we were able to drive to a parking lot below the castle, there was still a fair amount of “up” involved. Once we got to the gate and paid our entry fee (again, who is going to quibble after climbing for a third of a mile?), we went up to the gates, where we could climb…up… into either of the towers. We picked the higher climb to the bigger lower tower (the higher tower is not accessible; you can only get to an observation tower/platform a little ways below it) for no other reason other than there were no people walking that way at the time. It was a long way up.
Mer said late in the day that she can give little better praise to a place where she had to climb than, “It was worth it!” The big tower gave magnificent views of the surrounding area, even to some distant mountains on the edge of haze. The biggest “window,” which was almost certainly a collapsed section of wall or maybe a door, gave direct views of the smaller and higher tower on the other pillar of rock. The two towers used to be connected by the living quarters of the owner, but now only some walls remain between the two. The drawings of the full castle we saw were very pretty.
We lingered in the big tower, and then went down and then up into the observation tower at the foot of the little tower. Similar results – great views of the land and of the bigger tower. Also, more stairs.
We finally made our way back to the car, and I drove us off to the last stop of the day – a series of three lakes our host had said were very romantic. It would be an easy walk in a pretty place, and Mer would love it and me. A great win. And then we pulled up to the RV campsite. Odd. And the man who took our parking fee said there was no trail around the lake, but we could walk over to the other campsite on the very small lake. Hmmmm. This was not the romantic late afternoon I was imagining. But! He did say the other campsite connected to the trail that would take us back to the rocks. I could still salvage this!
By going up, of course. And up. And up. And as we crested the hill, where I had hoped to see the Prachov Rocks…was a parking lot. We had come to the far side of the rocks area, a site we had passed in the car that morning, and the rocks were still a one-mile walk (probably up) away. I turned us around and walked back to the car. The slightly good parts were that the trail was pretty, through tall and straight evergreen trees, and also that Mer found the whole thing funny. Funnier going down, but still funny.
We got back into Jicin around six o’clock, and we grabbed some take-out pizza to eat in the beautiful courtyard of our hotel. We finished the day by walking the remainder of the pedestrian part of the town (that we hadn’t seen yesterday), and we took time to eat some ice cream in a small square near the clock tower. And it was all on level ground.