Category: Elbe River trail

The much vaunted rainy day turned out to be bright & sunny as I went down to a hearty omelette breakfast in the Pivobar Hotel restaurant. Several cups of coffee later and a Facetime call to Sally (since once again 3 kept me locked out of the cellular network) and off I went past the beautiful modern bridge in Usti (How do they make such beautiful curved supports?)

The bikeway was very smooth and now extended against the river in several places, especially now missing out Techlovice. I made a coffee stop in Decin outside the highly decorated wartime bunker, then started through the sandstone gorge to the German border. I spent my last 50 kroner (£1.42) on a large beer & HUGE bag of crisps which even defeated the labrador that helped me out.

The border post is literally just that, a stick in the ground! Thank goodness for the Schengen agreement, I still wonder if a lot of our so called immigration problems are down to the UK’s refusal to sign up to it in 1985.

In Germany the track is as smooth as anticipated and really busy. The track is entwined with the railway & river through the narrow Elbe gorge. In fact with the train frequency it occurred to me that you could probably rent a bike in Prague and just spend a long weekend biking the Czech part of the Elbe and then getting the train back from any of the numerous stations.

My first German beer in a beer garden cost €2.50 (£2.15) a tripling in price over a few miles. (A waiter who I spoke to said they do all their beer & fag shopping in Czech). Since I was so lucky with the weather,I kept hearing thunder storms and when I glanced behind it was very dark & gloomy, I decided to pedal onto Dresden, also no shops were open in the small towns (well it was Saturday afternoon 🙂 )

Since I had no internet because of 3, lack of phone shops to purchase a SIM and the dreaded locked down  WiFi. Interesting all of which are first world problems! The so called second/ third world has plenty of open WiFi & the ability to buy internet SIM’s from just about everywhere, any time, and low cost. This meant I was clueless as where to stay 🙁  when I entered Dresden.

Bomber Harris had cleared the city of any cheap Gasthaus’s plus 20,000 inhabitants :-(. I spotted a hotel but it was way too expensive for such a crummy place. In the centre I spotted a Gasthaus but incredibly it was just a restaurant! The waiter pointed on my Gaia map (Thank goodness I had downloaded all the OSM for my route at home) to the Motel One which he said was reasonable.

I arrived at the uber modern Motel One with its fine view (Room 281) over the reconstructed & gilded Zwinger. Where the receptionist promptly chose to misconstrue as to what was included & whether I wanted to pay in Euro or Pounds needless to say all errors were in the hotels favour 🙁 so it ended up costing £74.95!

However, she did point out where the Vodafone shop was and that it was open, Vodafone wanted €45 for 250mb and made it plain they didn’t  really do PAYG any more (obviously to down market for them) but told me to go to Saturn Electronics. Amazingly I was told that it was now illegal to sell SIM’s to anyone without a valid German address (Surely anti EU competition laws?) One advantage, for me, of having an address book stuffed with names around the globe is I was able to get a SIM for €24.99 with 1GB of data on O2 for 28 days so I can use booking.com and make Facetime calls again 🙂

Whilst in Saturn I treated myself to a Ultimate Ears Boom battery bluetooth speaker grossly overpackaged but a good sound 🙂 Amazingly they don’t take credit cards from Germans but the tourist plastic is OK. What a strange country this is. Hopefully it will stand the vibration in my saddle bag 🙂

I pedalled 63 miles with 2322 feet of ascent. The morning Strava is here and afternoon here with the pictures here

I arrived in Prague at 9.30am on a gorgeous sunny morning. Fully refreshed after over 8 hours sleep on the train. Fitbit said I was restless for 32mins and awake for 4mins of that time 🙂 Biking is good for sleeping!

Prague was glorious although totally rammed with tourists, think Kings Parade. I really loved how the Central Station has been renovated with the old domed entrance fully restored with the huge modern concourse buried in the basement. Its a pity that it’s stranded behind a high speed dual carriageway 🙁 but eh ho I descended again and popped up further across in the square.

The route worked fine using the Gaia app on my iPhone and I soon left the city via the delightful Stromovka park, hitting my first diversion of the day outside the zoo. The path alongside the river is MAGNIFICENT filled with roller blading kids at summer camp & lots of cyclists of every description. Such a great use of EU infrastructure money

I stopped for lunch by a lock and treated myself to a beer and cheese sandwich, what a shock the total price was £1.63. I had to leave the riverside and do some climbing at Husinec finally hitting the river again just after  Maslovice after another diversion for sewer works. At Nelahozeves the railway bridge couldn’t be crossed 🙁 so with Open Street Map and some help from locals I worked out my own diversion to Veltrusy where in the woods I managed to get a thorn in the front tyre giving me a slow puncture.

At the ferry near Luzec I met up with two cyclist guys from Hamburg whilst chatting to Ren & Steve on Facetime. Great amusement ensued at the nearby pub with Ren chatting to the regulars in Czech 🙂  After another pint of Pivo  (A whole 60p) I continued onto the delightful hilltop, fully restored, city of Melnik where I parked myself in the Hotel Jaro for 840 Koruna (£24) a night including breakfast, fastish internet and a bedroom with a whole 3 piece suite in it 🙂 A delight to fix the puncture in such comfort 🙂

An excellent first day biking on The Elbe biketrail with 43 miles covered and 1,338 feet of ascent! The Strava is here and pictures here.

By the way more photographs can be found on geoffjones.net also you can sign up for these missives via email, see top right hand side at geoffjones.com