Five Minutes of Planning
It's early Sunday morning and we are thinking about going for a bike ride. There was no previous plan for where to go or how long the ride should be. We just woke up and decided we should go for a spin.
I can't remember how this route came up, but I had my exploration bug on and I just wanted to go further. I came up with this route in 5 minutes, including the train ride so we could skip the boring paved cycle path that we know by heart.
So this is our story: riding bikes, exploring new roads, getting sunburnt, and drinking delicious coffee — just having a good time.
We caught a train from Olomouc to Hrubá Voda, where we started the ride. We do this sometimes when there's no desire to pedal between cars to reach the end of the road, where it turns into gravel.
Domašov nad Bystřicí is where the river valley opens up. Right in the middle of the city there is a grocery store that has the biggest “větrník” I have ever eaten—too bad they’re closed on Sundays.
*Větrník ("VYET-r-neek") — a Czech pastry with no good English name. It's basically a ring of choux pastry filled with caramel buttercream and topped with a swirled caramel glaze — crisp, creamy, chewy, all at once. A staple of every Czech pastry shop.
Right outside this village there are endless fields with roads to get lost on. Every time I venture out this far I have a feeling that I am far, far away from anyone. I do like this loneliness very much — it intensifies the sense of adventure for me.
As we passed this old collective farm in Stará Libavá, the rough gravel started. The views were beautiful, the sun was strong, no clouds, and the gravel just turned to macadam. Classic roads which used to be smooth are now all beaten up and covered with fist-sized macadam and remains of hard, sharp asphalt. Here and there are smooth pieces of road where you can rest, but mostly the road is a janky mess. The funny thing is, I've been here once, but while planning this route in 5 minutes, I forgot about the harsh roads.
A bit of a downhill made everything better for a short period of time, until the next patch of the great invention of macadam started. I was feeling okay — I still had my adventure spirit on — but I could see that Romča was slowly losing patience. The good thing about her is that she won't let me know and will just power through it, telling me only when it's over, so she doesn't spoil all the fun.
I literally did not know what I had planned. According to the maps, there should be an old forest road. But what usually happens when there's a road that no one uses anymore is nature takes it back. So we took the field along what used to be a road — not to mention the field was uphill, steep, and sometimes very unrideable in the grass. This is when I lost my adventure spirit, and the only thing I could see in front of me was cold coffee.
And… the last section was a brutal macadam road, lined with fences on both sides. No space to ride on the shoulder. This made me laugh and cry at the same time.
Pit stop at Dalov, a small village on the hill before Šternberk. We had to stop and get some water and some pop. I guess this was a life-saving stop before we either died of thirst or Romča killed me for making up such a bumpy route.
All was forgotten when we arrived at MA:ME coffee. No more harsh sun, no more macadam stones, no more uphills. Just cold coffee and something to eat. The route was good — hard, but good. I like challenging rides. They make you appreciate things and also help you recognize what you like and don't like. In other words, they shape your style of riding, unknowingly. It's fun to discover these kinds of things about yourself — suddenly cycling has more layers, and it's not just simple pedaling…
