We ate a hearty breakfast at the hotel before heading out on foot to the Prachovské Skály. These are huge sandstone and basalt rock formations in the woods about 8km from Jicín. We didn't exactly know the way, so we first went to the tourist office in the town square. Once we finally got the attention of the girl working there (to be fair, she had to run the post office and the tourist office by herself) we managed to get a decent map and train information for the next part of our trip.
The walk took us back towards our hotel, across a major highway, then out along a country road through the villages of Holín and Prachov. This was the first time I really saw the Czech countryside as picturesque - until now what we had seen from train windows had been fairly flat farmland, but the views from this road were excellent - this was, after all, the Bohemian Paradise.
After we passed through the two villages we found ourselves on the edges of the park, with the terrain becoming more wooded, offering some much needed shade - the day was unseasonably hot and sunny. There were some promising looking shops, but it turned out that these were closed. So we wound our way along the main road through the woods for a couple of kilometres before reaching the visitors centre. Here we could get a drink and figure out exactly how to get to the rock formations.
It wasn't straightforward - the people in this part of the world spoke only Czech and German, and my German is not good at all. However we managed to get a map and a certain amount of information from the ticket seller - apparently a ticket was required to enter the main part of the park..
Before long we found our rock formations, and very impressive they were too. The first thing we had to do was climb 150 feet or so up a stairway that had been built between the rocks. At some points we had to pass through narrow tunnels between them. At the top paths wound between various lookout points over a sort of canyon. The views were superb. It was also good to get away from towns to somewhere more peaceful. There were a few other tourists about but mostly we had the place to ourselves. Climbing around the rock formations was great fun!
Having made sure to visit all the lookout points, we followed a path that led back onto the main road through the woods and made our way back out of the park and through the villages. A couple of times on the way we had been barked at by large dogs that people seemed fond of keeping in their gardens, presumably for the specific purpose of frightening walkers. On the way back the dogs were even worse, and one even managed to squeeze through a fence and try to chase us. Not running away proved to be the best tactic, as we slowly backed away the dog eventually gave up!
Next