Bog on the Blog

I chose the title with care. The alternative of Blog on the Bog could have been misleading! We've been staying in the highest town in Germany, Oberwiesenthal, which is the first town we entered on leaving the Czech Republic. The town seems to have it's own micro-climate, and the clouds are low over the mountains, giving rise to heavy showers. It's also several degrees colder due to the village being so high up.

The Hotel Deutcher Kaiser, is right on the market square, has a secure garage, and the manager offered us a good discount for being bikers.

We've done the tourist type things of wandering round looking at the shops, and also taken a chair lift up to the top of the mountain. I've included a photograph taken as we came down.

We've also had a great ride on the bikes. Elvie had read of a volcanic bog in one of the guide books, so we set off to find it. The ride there was via main roads and unremarkable, but coming back we trusted in Mr Zumo to take us cross country using minor roads, and he came up trumps. We had an exhilarating 2 hours riding back to the hotel, some on bigger roads with long sweeping bends, and some on smaller roads, with picture book villages and long wooded sections. It was one of the rides of the trip!

As for the bog, well frankly it was a little disappointing. The water level had fallen, and there were only a few places where the gas bubbled to the surface, but it did give us some idea of what it would look like in it's full glory.

LB

Church of Bones, Kutna Hora

Fans of Long Way Round will remember this place. We made the short trip to Kutna Hora this morning. After visiting the chief of three cathedrals there, purely to find out where the ossuary was we arrived about lunchtime. It really is rather bizarre. The church was the cemetery chapel associated with one of the cathedrals. After a plague and thousands of burials ( 30,000 in one year!!!) the bones were dug up to make the cemetery smaller. After being stored in various places they were artistically arranged as now seen. Most are in four large pyramid stacks of femurs and skulls, but there are also candelabras, urns & chandeliers. Here's a coat of arms made out of most of the bones of the body.



Afterwards while having a soft drink a family of Danish bikers turned up. Dad Sven, with wife and daughter on two bikes, had a chat then bumped into two British lads Lance & Matthew on a real adventure.



They're part of a group, though travelling independently, to Mongolia! although a lot of their group are in 4x4's they're doing it in 2 Nissan Micras!!!!!! We wish them well. The organisation they're travelling with is charityrallies.org. Haven't looked at it yet myself but have put in the link for you all, hope it works.

Again, don't know where we'll be tomorrow or if we'll have internet access but will be back on line as soon as we can

Elvie

Hello Czech Republic

Didn't want to strain ourselves so only rode about 200 miles, half of which was on motorway. I like Poland, it's actually a very western country, clean and well kept, and the food we had there was exceptionally good. One thing we won't miss is the traffic which is horrendous. Fortunately today is Sunday, & like Sundays used to be at home. The roads were empty! So after a pleasant ride we arrived in the Czech Republic & found a hotel in the old town square of Hradec Kralove. Here's the view from the window.


We've had a walk around and a great meal with wine for about £25 in total. while there a procession of vintage cars went passed with horns blaring which was fun.


Now settling down and catching up with communications! Are moving on again tomorrow so will post whenever we can get on line again

Elvie