Czech Republic and Poland

Dobry den!

Well, we got out of Prague fairly easily considering that there are only road signs on about one junction in four, and they are all in Jibberish to me anyway, and headed in the direction of 'Hradek Kralove' which took us most of the way there to argue on how to pronounce it. We shouldn't have bothered though, as the last word we used our combined brain force to decide on how to pronounce was the Czech word for thankyou: 'dekuji'. We decided on a fairly plain der-koo-gee, but it was after we had said it to about 6 people with varying quizzical reactions that we decided to ask someone...how embarassing, it is pronounced completely differently, more like 'ye-ku-ee', so no wonder we got some funny looks!

I think that so far our main resentment is that we haven't ever made an effort to learn more of the worlds languages; in the van coming into Czech Republic, we managed to remember hello, thank you, 1, 2, 3, yes and no, but we're into Slovakia in a couple of days, and that has a whole new language, as does every country we visit, some with many more than one, so that has been a little belittling for us. I think that we were expecting English to be a bit more widely spoken that our experience has led us to believe, infact no one has spoken any English to us until our fourth day at the campsite.

I love all the really old Skodas and Fiat 500's you get in Czech Rep, I think my next trip would have to be buying one of these and driving it home! I was very temped...Rhona not so sure!!


The next day we treked up to Sniezka which is the highest point in Czech Rep at 1602m. This is part of our sideline atempt to climb higher and higher mountains as our trip goes on. This all started in Arran in Scotland with Ed and Lyd when we climbed Goat Fell at 874m. We'll see how that goes..maybe end with a biggie in Nepal? It was a beautiful beautiful day and the scenery was lovely. Pleanty of snow still at the top and fairly deserted of people....that is until we reached nearly at the top to find a paved road going from some huge huts going up to more huge huts, restaurants etc on the top, and crowds of people brought up on the chair lifts to walk up it. That kind of spoilt it a bit. We both felt like we were on some sort of pilgrimage towards the end. Specially amazed at one girl who was attempting the steep, slippery ascent in high heels!!

From the Czech people that we have met so far, they seem to be a little quiet and grumpy, but then that's what you get for going to Tesco Prague I suppose! Lots of Lidls here as well.


We spent our fourth night in a campsite near the mountains in a place called Vrchlabi. It was lovely and we were the only campers there. It gave us a chance to have showers (well needed!!), wash clothes and refill our water tank. Unfortunately we could not use the electric hook-up to recharge all our batteries which would also have been nice but not essential. The showers were interesting though, they kept going off every few minutes and only stayed hot for about a minute! Hmm, not the best but hey, we ended up clean! We also had breakfast for Ł2 each, which was a really lovely continental breakfast.

So after our little re-cooperation, a morning trying to figure out how to dry our washed clothes,a while spent waiting for me to pick up the courage to give myself my final rabies injection (this is Rhona), at the campsite we headed off again.

We headed towards and over the Border into Poland for a brief little drive through. It was again quite different from Czech Rep. The buildings and houses are very run down, although some are very interesting. Then back into the Czech republic once again to return to our original planned route which was to head on down into Slovakia. We managed to cover quite a lot of ground and found a place to camp at the side of the road just before the Slovakian border. The landscape around the border area is absolutely stunning, with vast forested areas and beautiful, large houses built on the sides of rolling hills. Spring time seems to be a good time to visit as well as there are loads of blossom trees all in full flower and fields of yellow rape seed and little spring flowers!

Nachod night mileage: 102220
Vrchlabi night mileage: 102306
Slovakia border night mileage: 102532

Day 4: 86 miles
Day 5: 226 miles

Max temp 18
Min temp 3

Poland Diesel 0.90 GBP

PS we are posting this from Stary Smokovice in the High Tatras of Slovakia, but will write a full report on Slovakia soon.