Lacrustine days (hiding from the heat wave)

We spent 10 days camping beside Lake Lipno, situated in the wooded hills in the southwest corner of Bohemia, a few kilometres from Austria and Bavaria. I can't recall ever having stayed in one location for that length of time previously. It is a lovely, peaceful spot, but that's not really why we stayed so long. 

The Met Office 'Ten Day Trend' - their in-depth medium range forecast that they put out on YouTube every Tuesday afternoon - predicted the day we arrived in Pilsen that a severe heat wave would develop centred on the borders of France and Germany with temperatures forecast to reach the low forties. The UK on it's western fringe and the Czech Republic to the east were expected to heat up too, but a few degrees cooler than in the Rhine valley. The forecast has been spot on, however the hottest air is now beginning to spread eastwards.

 We figured the area around Lake Lipno would be cooler because it's wooded, near water and a couple of hundred metres higher than the Vitava valley around Prague and Ceske Krumlov.

Under blue skies and in perfectly calm weather it is very beautiful here, dreamlike almost, the lake like a constantly changing mirror. Magritte clouds at midday...

... long magical twilights in the days leading up to the solstice.

The hottest it got was the upper thirties, we carry big cotton throws that we can hang from the awning to create shade.

During the hottest part of of the the only thing you can do is huddle in the shadows.

Nights were more challenging, a couple of them hovered around the low twenties making for an uncomfortable snooze. Mostly though the temperature dropped towards the mid-teens - staying beside a lake in wooded hill country was a good move, I think.

We weren't rendered entirely comatose. In the morning and the evening I managed to get out on my paddleboard. The conditions were perfect. 

The best moment came on our final evening when two swifts decided it would be fun to buzz the paddleboarder, swooping low, almost touching the mirror-still water a couple of metres in front of me.

We split our time between two campsites 

Camping Olšina

We stayed here four nights, then decided we needed a change of view and moved to a different site. Then we concluded that Camping Olšina was one of the loveliest sites we've stayed on so we went back to spend our final three nights in the Czech Republic there.

It's difficult to say just why we loved the place. It's a simple no frills lakeside site. It seems to be family run, the staff were attentive without being intrusive, the facilities simple, but clean and well maintained. 

As well as paddling about and swimming in the lake you can cycle along a track by the shore to the nearby village of Černá v Pošumaví. There's little to see, but it had a café and the coffee cherry and chocolate cake were excellent. 

From here there's a dedicated cycle way across the dam but after then the waymarked route follows minor roads, the temperature was edging up into the low thirties, we decided to head back.

Though it's called Lake Lipno, as the dam indicates it's actually a very big reservoir. Work on the dam began in 1952; it was the first major public infrastructure project undertaken by the recently established communist government and it included hydro-electric power generation as well as water storage. The woods that surround the lake are partially natural - a beautiful mix of broad leafed trees, and pines; the latter, I suspect, were planted for timber.

Camping Lipno Modřín

The second site we stayed on was at the southeast end of the lake near the main dam. It was a bigger and more organised place than Camping Olšina with chalets and Yurts as well as pitches. It specialised in accommodating groups of teenagers and provided outdoor activities for them - mountain biking, water sports and volleyball. Generally Czech teenagers looked very sporty and seemed amazingly sensible, easy going and confident. Though the place never got rowdy it was vibrant and busy. After three days we missed the tranquility of the previous.

The nearby village of Lipno nad Vltavou is a purpose built winter sports centre. The small harbour is lined with purpose built holiday apartments with a ski chalet vibe. The hills behind the place are marked out with toboggan runs and cross& country ski runs. 

There is clearly an attempt to make the place more of an all year resort with a lake steamer service in the summer season and what looks like a recently built marina. The toboggan runs now are repurposed as scooter tracks and a big wooden tower had been built with treetop walkways as a visitor attraction. 

The bike track running along the lake shore from here to Frymburk was more our thing. It's was metalled the whole way and mostly level. 

Much of the 7km track runs through broad leafed woodlands, very beautiful, but the roots bulging through the tarmac created unexpected hazards, particularly in the more shaded sections. Wearing sunglasses made this worse.

Frymburk is an attractive lakeside village, it obviously predates the creation of the reservoir and is more low key than the purpose built resort of Lipno nad Vltavou.

Picnic spots have been created along the way. The one nearest Frymburk had an information board with a picture of the lake in winter. It was frozen solid and featured a skate track. A truck was parked on it so the ice must have been very thick. Standing there with temperatures in the mid thirties this seemed unimaginable.

After three days we felt we had exhausted the delights of this part of the lake. The resort aspect of Lipno nad Vltavou was not to our taste and the campsite was less shaded than the previous one, not good with the forecast predicting temperatures reaching the high thirties.

We decided to head for another campsite by the lake a kilometre or so from the town of Horni Plana. When we got there it looked crowded and the pitches unshaded. So we doubled back and booked for three more days in Camping Olšina. The guy on reception was very pleased that we preferred his site to the others around the lake. He should be proud of the site, the staff are very attentive, the facilities are spotless and the pitches well tended, without destroying the place's 'lost in nature' ambience. 

It joins the shortlist of special places we have stayed, maybe a dozen or so of them out of the hundreds of sites and aires we have used over the past 12 years.

Ceske Krumlov - histories, real and imagined

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. Civilian 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!