Kutna Hora would be our furthest point from home, next we headed south west towards Ceske Krumlov, close to the border with Austria and Bavaria. There was no direct route, getting there involved zig-zagging about using a mixture of motorways and main roads through small towns and villages. Away from major urban centres the Czech Republic feels sparsely populated and the roads are quiet. It's only when you drive in less populated places, like rural Czechia or the byways of Extramadura or Arizona that you twig just how crowded the UK's roads are and realise driving at home is rarely relaxed or pleasurable.
Ceske Krumlov is one of the most visited towns in the Czech Republic, famously picturesque, a tourist trap really. The upside of this is that it has a municipally run Aire situated next to the tour bus park.
The medieval core of the place is perfectly preserved, a red roofed village almost encircled by a looping meander of the Vitava, the same river that flows through Prague.
Here, however, it has narrowed, shallower and faster flowing. Rafting is a popular activity.
We stopped for a coffee and cake at a cafe with a riverside terrace.
Next we headed to the old market square. A big stage was being constructed. "What's happening?" I asked my new know-all companion. Chatgpt duly replied -
Five-Petalled Rose Festival (June) – The town's signature event. For one weekend near the summer solstice, the historic centre transforms into a Renaissance town with costumed parades, jousting tournaments, medieval markets, music, theatre, fireworks, and hundreds of locals in period dress.
Even outside of highdays and holidays most shops that aren't cafes seem to be hawking medieval themed knicknacks and the buildings not given over to Airbnbs, catering, or gift shops repurposed as museums.
It's undeniable that Ceske Krumlov's location is spectacular, the way it is almost encircled by the meandering river and overlooked by the palatial looking castle on the craggy outcrop above the town.
However I found it dispiriting, its ancient centre more like a theme park than a functioning town.
The modern town, about a kilometre to the north, looks bland and unremarkable, England too has many historic towns besieged by workaday outskirts where the people actually live and work. In this regard we happened across a slightly startling and very familiar parallel, Ceske Krumlov has an excellent Tesco's superstore. It's the only overt British influence we encountered in our visit Czech Republic.
The store was identical in every way to a Tesco's at home - down to the layout, in-store graphics and club card points, apart from the fact that every label and every sign was equally incomprehensible.
We couldn't even work out which mineral waters were still, which were very fizzy and which only slightly so.
One big difference - 'every little helps' was not emblazoned on the front of the store. Maybe the genius phrase, which manages to encapsulate a core characteristic of Britishness in three simple words, doesn't resonate quite so much in Czech - Každá maličkost pomáhá - so Google Translate informed me.
Back at the van I looked into the history of Ceske Krumlov in a little more detail and began to wonder if the preoccupation with showcasing the medieval period stemmed from a reluctance to confront the more awkward issues surrounding the place's more recent history. It's fair to say that my grasp of the history of central and eastern Europe is somewhat sketchy. I do remember covering the Sudetenland crisis of 1938 in O level history but never appreciated that the German speaking areas of Bohemia had histories stretching back hundreds of years.
Moreover, at the end of WW2 the allied powers - Britain, America and Russia - were complicit in the forced 're-settlement' into Germany of 2.9 million German speaking Czech citizens - almost 20% of the country's population. It was not achieved peacefully - it is thought that up to 200,000 people died. I began to perceived Ceske Krumlov not as a theme park, but a ghost town.
However, these issues are not straightforward. When we visited Kutna Hora a couple of days ago I noticed clusters of small ceramic plaques embedded into the cobbled pavements. They recorded a name and two dates. They were all Jewish residents and the dates recorded day they were born and when they were rounded up and transported to a concentration camp in Germany. One plaque was particularly heartbreaking, it commemorated a girl born in 1935 and transported in 1942, aged seven.
We are both fortunate to have lived most of our adult lives in a largely peaceful country during times when there was a concerted effort to bring Europe together, economically, culturally and politically. Sadly it is becoming ever clearer that such progress not a given, nationalism in Europe is on the rise and the USA is edging towards oligarchy and autocracy.
We crossed the Channel on the 82nd anniversary of D-day, then drove east following the valley of the Somme along roads lined with military cemeteries. It's important that this is commemorated, but sadly this tends to be done along national lines - separate British, American, and Canadian cemeteries, very few German ones and virtually no collective recognition of the scale of civilian casualties. However the extent of the human disaster that engulfed Europe during the mid-twentieth century can only be truly appreciated if you consider the total casualties. So far as military losses are concerned seventeen million deaths between 1939 and 1945 is the most common estimate. Civillian deaths are even higher, it is estimated that between 35 - 40 million non-combatants died and that during WW2 between 40 - 60 million people were displaced.
In this context the creation of the European Union seems almost miraculous and it's motto - “United in diversity” - brave, hopeful and aspirational. It has been great to be here with Matthew, Kristyna and Jesse - a truly European family. Equally, thinking about Europe's violent and bloodstained past is sobering. Collectively European nations really do need to make some savvy electoral choices in the next few years. Take heed of what has happened in America and don't listen to the voices of nationalism intent on rolling back the progress we have made towards a more peaceful Europe. I knew visiting the Czech Republic would be interesting, visiting a new place is always thought provoking, but it has also helped me perceive the history of our continent from a different point of view, realising that European history viewed from an island on it's western fringes is both figuratively and literally an insular perspective. Habitually we have looked on from the sidelines, intervening now and then, but regarding 'the continent' as elsewhere, nearby foreign territory that somehow we are not part of. It's an odd notion, 22 miles of shallow water is not an ocean, it's swimmable!