Camping Radka, Brno

I need to back track a few days.   We woke on Saturday morning to the sound of birds chirping, instead of rain beating down on the sunroof of the van.   Great.   This made a change.

We could easily have stayed in Camping Chvalsiny, which is by the charming village of Chvalsiny, as there was so much to see in the area surrounding Cesky Krumlov; Clet Mountain (stone tower), Cerveny Dvur (Baroque chateau), Lipno Lake (resorts) plus many more interesting sites.   The area, with its large wooded hills and valleys, and small lakes, was so beautiful, even in the rain, and I think it does rain here a lot.   But, sadly we needed to move on.

So after we cleaned out all the mud and grass clippings from the floor of the van, we set off to drive slowly to Brno.   Slowly meant we were taking back roads rather than the motorway.

 We drove around the edge of Ceski Budejovice, which had grown somewhat since Walter visited in 1998, but decided not to drive into the town centre, as we felt that there were better towns ahead of us.  

We stopped in Trebon, for coffee and a look around.     A lovely little town, very peaceful and quiet, no doubt due to a lack of tourists and the shops being closed.

 Walter stayed in this hotel as part of a tour in 1998.  Lots of reminiscing.

The Plague Post in the town square, erected centuries ago as a thank you to God for deliverance from the plague.   We saw the same post in the town square in Cesky Krumlov. 

There were many cyclists in the town, people on their own, as well as families cycling together.   There was a lake beside the town with a very good cycle path around it.

 Another example of trompe l'oeil on the walls of this arch.  The white is smooth plaster, and the brown is rough cement.  Very effective.

 We then continued on along the roads, stopping briefly for lunch in a carpark in some little town, and moved on again, slowly along the roads.   The scenery was lovely, woods and fields of grain, plus small villages and towns.   We stopped for coffee at a café attached to a petrol station.  Excellent coffee.    Then the sun came out, for about an hour and everything looked so much better.

 Walter was not being arrested in this photograph, or being given a speeding fine, or anything like that.   No he was using his best German in order to try and find out why we could not drive along the road.   We were minutes from the campsite.  Apparently there was a fair, and the street was being used to set up fireworks for the evening display.

So new directions now for the Satnav, and off we went on a very long detour to find that the road was blocked on the other side.   So Walter continued to use his best German.   But apparently the policeman could only speak awful German and Russian and no English.   More confused directions and we did a couple of circuits of the area, whereby the policeman took the name of our camping ground and escorted us there.   Police escort to a camping ground.   Doing it in style.

The camping ground, a one star affair, had just opened for the season.   But we parked the van.   And yes the van was on a lean, due to the sloping ground.   But we were happy, even with no wifi.

 We walked down some very steep, and slippery steps to the lake at sunset, and looked back towards the fairground, the noise of which we heard very clearly.

We shared the camping ground with a group of young people, who had a very big and loud party.   They sang English and Czech pub songs until the very early hours of the next morning.   In the rain.